If you responded to an investment idea like this . . .
          You could get scammed!

You won’t be getting a job at Growth Venture because the company does not exist.  In fact, the entire website is a complete fabrication, posted to alert investors to on-line fraud.   

Growth Venture asks prospective employees to provide their social security numbers and bank account information in an email to the company.  You should know that legitimate entities will not ask you to provide or verify sensitive information through a non-secure means, such as email.  If you have reason to believe that a company actually does need personal information from you, pick up the phone and call the company yourself – using the number in your rolodex, not one from an unsolicited email or an unfamiliar website.  Fraudsters can use sensitive information to steal your identity, ruin your credit rating, and empty your financial accounts.  Read more about identity theft here.  (And by the way, we haven’t collected any information about you.)  

In addition, Growth Venture boasts that some of its fictional employees only have company stock in their retirement plan portfolios.  Owning just your employer’s stock isn’t fraudulent, but it may not be a good idea.  That’s because you’ll be exposed to significant investment risk if you invest heavily in shares of your employer’s stock or any individual stock.  If that stock does poorly or the company goes bankrupt, you’ll probably lose a lot of money (and perhaps your job).  You can reduce your investment risk by diversifying your portfolio, or spreading your money among various investments in the hope that if one investment loses money, the other investments will more than make up for those losses. To learn more about diversification and related topics, read the SEC’s brochure, “Beginners' Guide to Asset Allocation, Diversification, and Rebalancing."