Question for any Lawyers here. Is this fraud?

[MH1]

1. I am NOT a lawyer but interested in the response.

I think it is not fraud because I assume it is a widespread practice.

Temp agencies do everything they can to build up their database of potential hires, so that they can fill an opening when it comes up. Temp agencies make their profit by placing people. So they want to be able to quickly submit candidates to jobs. A job is often sent out to several agencies and so they are competing against these other agencies to submit the best candidate.

On the other hand, I can't recall a specific occurrence where I know a "job" was advertised that didn't exist at all. What definitely happens is the same job will be posted by several agencies so of course if there is only one slot, the job ends up as "doesn't exist" once the requesting company hires someone.