College Freshmen and Sophomores Beware - Avoid these internships
Scammers are everywhere, and they love targeting naive college kids (what about this scam called 'college'?).
anyways some of these schmucks have figured out that there are a ton of hard-working but socially less aware and innocent college freshmen/sophomores wanting internships to prepare them for the IB or consulting track. and theyre out to get us. there is no centralized list on this forum, so i decided to start a thread where we can compile a list of these non-value adding jokesters who deserve to have their illegitimate businesses run into the f---ing ground.
Alpha Capital Holdings/Corporation - this is a joke firm run by some clear non-banker old hag type named Jack Bloom, apparently you need to pay to take an internship, which is already a red flag but they also post on Craigslist... a 'banking' job on Craigslist. their main hunting ground includes most Ivies, Duke, WashU, Johns Hopkins, and more. (really any decent school where they pass the pre-screen for the job campus job board). also the website is straight from 1998
Bastien Capital - consulting firm, yet i can never find a real posting/advertisement regarding their consulting services on google except on their decent-looking but content-lacking website. but a ton of tangentially-internship recruiting related content on linkedin and their website. a friend of mine interviewed there and dropped it right away (expecting to get an email email where he was gonna be asked to pay), and said the guy who leads it (Jack Bloom of consulting lol) promised opportunities in strategic and operational consulting as well as IB-related work (dont see how a 1-man team can cover so much). their main hunting ground includes WashU, NYU, Vassar, Oberlin, and more
please add other firms that youve heard of practicing similar college internship scam tactics
Can we also include on this list anyone who offers to "Trade their time for your money" to teach you FOREX trading?
Actually talked to the guy at Bastien about an internship for after Freshman Summer. First thing that threw me off was the address he listed on his website - with a little searching, I learned it went to an apartment. Also, saying that you are going to pay interns on a performance basis against other interns at the conclusion of the summer is just bs.
Definitely agree to avoid this firm.
Also adding on Chatsworth Securities, an IB in Greenwich. Did the whole wide net cold-email search and sent one to them, without a resume. After sending a follow up email, one of their senior MD's (what I guess is the owners of the firm), emailed me back to set up a time to talk. After getting on the phone, was told that I already had an offer, without them ever having seen a resume/spoken to me before. Further research couldn't find any work they had done since the mid 2000's.
i respect the work you're putting into finding an internship , and im sure youll end up at a legit shop doing real work, learning a lot, and getting good experience... but the amount of internships in fake boutiques have just proliferated so much that when junior recruiting comes around, you have to make sure your experience at a boutique IB sounds legit and very specific. when i've interviewed people, and analysts/associates at my bank interviews people, we make sure to grill them or let them talk in detail about their internship because after a little digging, it becomes clear they worked at a fake bank or some tiny shop where they did literally no real work... im not saying working on a model from scratch is the minimal real work, but you shouldve at least edited some internal presentation powerpoints or data processing on excel for numbers that eventually analysts will work with on models.
Seven Points Capital - was scheduled for an full-time trading interview, but I think they offer internships as well. I showed up and immediately turned around after realizing right away it was one of those crappy chop shop places that pay you like 30% of p/l plus a travel stipend. They did not have a reception area or anyone to greet interviewers, once you open the door it was just a few trading desks. I did not meet anyone or interview with anyone, however a week later I received a general copy and pasted email offering me a job and a start date with orientation.
I'd love to hear more about this. Is the firm simply not legit, or just absurd propr trading structure?
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