Your Guide to Avoiding Job Scams in 2025

[ResidentialBusiness]

You’ve probably felt the thrill that comes with receiving a job offer. You read the congratulatory email, begin to imagine life in your new role, then quickly fill out all the required HR paperwork and receive the necessary equipment. And if all is well, you start preparing for your first day. But what if you find out that the job isn’t real? 

In the first three quarters of 2024, Americans lost $514 million due to business and job opportunity scams, and the Federal Trade Commission received over 93,000 complaints about this type of fraud. 

In the worst cases, people have already resigned from their jobs before they realize their new position isn’t real—and suddenly, they don’t have a paycheck or health insurance. 

Recent economic uncertainty and layoffs may make people more vulnerable to these scams and worsen the problem. But it is possible to outsmart the con artists by understanding why people fall for employment scams, how they work, and the red flags to look out for. 

What kinds of job offer scams are out there?

Scammers use a range of tactics to trick job seekers. Many of the common methods start in a similar way: by creating fake job posts, either with branding that matches a recognized company or with a fraudulent company to trick people into applying for the job. These posts appear on Craigslist or Facebook marketplace but also on sites like LinkedIn and Indeed. 

Cybercriminals will also pose as recruiters or staffing agencies and proactively reach out to their targets offering an interview or a job. Employment scams can be incredibly sophisticated, down to phone or video job interviews and emails that look legitimate. 

Here are some examples of where the scams may go from there:

Identity theft scams

The goal of these scams is identity theft and financial fraud. Fake recruiters will research the job seeker fully, including such things as their work history and industry contacts. This information can be found on social media (for instance on Facebook and Twitter) or on professional platforms such as LinkedIn. It doesn’t take long to get the basics needed for the scam to develop.

The results of this research are aligned with the pitch used during the initial contact with the victim job seeker. The pitch could include references to previous employers, peers, or desired job options, in order to determine if the victim is interested. If the victim is willing to discuss the job offer, the authenticity element of the scam has succeeded. Alternatively, scammers may make fake postings, often on social media or a spoofed version of the company’s legitimate website.

Now, the authority aspect kicks in. Since the recruiter/fake employer has all the power in this dynamic, their authority is rarely questioned. Job seekers are asked to surrender personal information for background screenings. Sometimes this data is submitted via email or uploaded to a fake recruiting website the criminal has created. Or after an interview, the applicant may be asked to provide information, like their address and phone number, so a “formal offer” can be sent. That’s often followed up with a request to provide their Social Security number, photos of their driver’s license or other forms of ID, and/or bank information. 

Criminals can then sell this personal info to marketing firms or other criminals or keep it and use the details themselves for identity fraud. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) issued a warning to Americans about bad actors who use fake job offers to steal money and personal information. The scam artists also are able to file fraudulent unemployment claims in their victim’s name, which not only costs the government, but also could significantly impact the victim’s tax bill and eligibility for future benefits.

Reshipping scams

Marcus Ramos, 50, had been out of a job for nearly a month when he got an email from a recruiter named Glen with an enticing offer. For a base pay of $2,400 a month, Ramos could work from his Las Vegas home sending out packages for a company called Filly Shipping, with a promised $40 bonus for each package he mailed.

This is how Ramos fell for a reshipping scam, which accounts for “the vast majority of scam job offers” reported to the BBB, says Josh Planos, spokesperson for the BBB’s investigations initiative. In these scams, he describes, organized crime units ask victims to reship stolen goods (without informing them that they’re stolen), creating a complicated pathway to obscure the goods’ origins. 

Ramos’s scammers engaged with him primarily by phone, calling or texting from a variety of numbers originating in different states. In addition to his initial contact, Glen, two others got in touch with Ramos regularly, using presumably fake names and only identifying themselves as members of the company’s “shipping department.”

Not much is known about these scammers by the organizations that track victim reports and The Department of Justice didn’t respond to Fast Company’s request for comment. But both ARP’s director of fraud victim support Amy Nofziger and Planos say most of these criminals are from “overseas,” working out of call centers. This means they’re operating out of places with “call center infrastructure,” says Planos, specifically citing Eastern Europe, Russia, and Nigeria. They’re largely targeting people in the U.S., Canada, and Australia, Nofziger adds.

“With the reshipping scams, these are criminal enterprises. These are not slapstick operations,” says Planos. “These are well-oiled machines that have keywords down, that are paying for SEO [and] very visible social media ads.”

With scammers operating internationally, it’s difficult to police them from the U.S. 

Fake check scams

In fake check scams, “employers” send “new hires” a check to pay for items they’ll allegedly need for the job, like home office supplies. After depositing the checks, victims will appear to have money in their accounts, which they use to buy supplies from a vendor provided by the fake employer. The supplies never show up, and the victim’s bank flags the check as fake, removing that money from their accounts—meaning the victims used their own money to pay for supplies they’ll never receive. Prepaid gift card scams work similarly.

“More than a third of the jobs scam complaints that we received involved fake checks,” says Planos, adding that the FTC found a 65% increase in fake check complaints between 2015 and 2020. Anecdotally, he’s seen these types of scams perpetrated most against younger job seekers, who may not have as much experience with checks and may be less likely to find depositing one at the start of a new job suspicious. “We saw that the largest group of job fraud victims were between the ages of 25 and 34 . . . people who are navigating independent life for the first time,” says Planos.

Planos shared statements with Fast Company from several victims in that age group, including someone named Sarah, who was contacted by a scammer pretending to be a representative of The Humane Society, where she’d applied for a job via Indeed. After a convincing interview with someone posing as a real staffer, Sarah was sent what she later learned were fake checks to buy home office supplies. When “problems” arose with her purchases (which her “employers” blamed on COVID-19 and a holiday rush), she was asked to pay other vendors via Zelle, CashApp, and Apple Pay. She ultimately lost $7,000.

A family member of a Tessian employee nearly fell victim to another version of this scam. After receiving a job offer, they instructed her to send a personal check to a specific supplier to purchase a new desk and laptop. In this instance, the attacker was posing as both a recruiter and a phony supplier—the equipment would never have arrived, and they would have kept her money. Fortunately, her guard went up, and she didn’t send them the check.

Recruiter-focused scams

While criminals will impersonate recruiters with no hesitation, they also target recruiters directly because of their access to high-value targets from executives to human resources managers.

Criminals will conduct phishing attacks, posing as a job seeker, against a recruiter and include malicious attachments disguised as résumés. If they’re successful, the malware installed by the criminal gives them access to all the information the recruiter has available, as well as access to corporate contacts and records. This enables the criminal to expand the scam.

In a variation of this tactic, the criminal will pose as an existing client, and either entice the recruiter to disclose corporate authentication credentials via a “recruiting portal” that was recently launched or again attempt to install malware on the system by offering up malicious attachments.

In the second scenario, the criminal will develop a website that uses the branding of the corporate client, and even register a domain with a familiar naming convention, all in order to offer a sense of false security to the soon-to-be-victimized recruiter. Once the corporate credentials are exposed, the criminal has a foothold on the victim’s network, and the opportunity to expand their scam further.

How to tell if a job or job offer is a scam

Employment scams aren’t magic. They work by hijacking the normal workflow of applying for a job. Since job seekers and recruiters are more focused on developing a workforce or landing a job, subtle cues that something is amiss are often overlooked.

Not sure if that new job offer is legit or not? Here are a few things that should set off alarms in your head.

Scam warning signs in job listings

Here are some possible red flags for job scams that you can spot before you even apply:

• If the job seems too good to be true, it usually is. Employment scams often promise high salaries for only a few hours of work a day, move very quickly, or don’t involve thorough interviews. 
• Work-from-home jobs that involve receiving and reshipping packages
• Mystery shopper or secret shopper positions
• The job is listed on a job board, but not on the company’s website
• The more vague the job description, the better the odds it’s not legitimate.
• Email addresses that don’t match other email addresses for the employer or that use free email clients like Gmail or Yahoo. (For example, is the email coming from john.smith@companyx.com or jsmith@companyxjobs.com?)
• The recruiter or manager doesn’t have a profile on the job board or that profile doesn’t seem to fit their role.
• The job listing mentions an application fee
• Background check requests or requests for information required for a background check (such as social security numbers, address details, date of birth, passport details, bank details, etc.) with the initial application.
• Ads that offer information about “hidden” or unadvertised federal jobs 
• Postings that refer you to a toll-free phone number to learn more about the job.

Scam warning signs for job interviews

Sometimes there may be warnings during the interview process that a job is not quite on the up-and-up. Keep in mind that interviewers are people who may not be skilled at what they’re doing, so one of these may not indicate a definite scam—but they may be a sign to look deeper.

• Interviews that don’t take place in-person, via a secure video platform, or through a straightforward phone call.
• Interviews that are chat or text-based (unless as a reasonable accommodation for a disability) 
• Interviewers that don’t have many questions and/or claim to know all they need from your resume/job board profile. 
• Interviewers that focus more on work you will be doing and act like you’ve already committed to the role.

Scam warning signs throughout the hiring process

These red flags might come up at any point during the application, interview or hiring process.

• Requests or requirements to purchase startup equipment or to pay upfront for background investigations or screenings.
• Employers who send an employment contract to physically sign that asks for personally identifiable information (like a bank account number) could also be a sign of a scam operation. Legitimate companies will ask for that sort of thing after an employee is hired.
• Asking for your credit card number.
• You’re getting emails, messages, or calls from recruiters with an unusual sense of urgency or that ask for you to make a commitment before learning more about the job or require you to start immediately. 

How to avoid scam jobs

Employment scams show no signs of slowing down in the coming months as economic, labor, and remote work trends persist. It can be hard to slow down and trust your gut in such an emotional and high-stakes process like a job search. Looking out for the warning signs and common tactics scammers use can help ensure your next job offer is one to truly get excited about. 

So before you turn in your two weeks’ notice and buy that new equipment, take a few steps to ensure your new job offer is legitimate. 

Don’t think you’re immune. 

“As all generations look for flexible and remote work options, it’s important to raise awareness about the widespread prevalence of job scams at all career levels in order to help prevent more people from taking the bait, especially with telecommuting being an undeniable part of the future of our workplaces,” says FlexJobs founder and CEO Sara Sutton Fell.

But a by-product of the proliferation of positions open to telecommuters is the increase of more sophisticated work-from-home scams. Findings from a FlexJobs survey of over 2,600 workers indicates that one-fifth of millennials have been scammed when seeking work-from-home positions—even more than seniors (the group previously thought to be the most susceptible).

Part of the problem is that scammers get more sophisticated every year, says Sutton Fell. “Gone are the days when a scam could be assumed to be fairly obvious to anyone with a healthy dose of skepticism,” she explains, “Yet, many job seekers don’t realize this, and so they still feel confident that they would know a scam if they saw one and would be able to avoid them.”  

Sutton Fell also points out that scammers have broadened their target audience from jobs for more unskilled jobs such as mystery shopping, envelope stuffing, and check processing, to more professional opportunities in a wide variety of career types and with name-brand companies. “By impersonating trusted companies like these, scammers are able to get unsuspecting job seekers to let their guard down much faster, and to successfully get personal information from them more easily,” she says.

Be careful on LinkedIn and other job boards.

Just because something is on LinkedIn, Indeed, or another well-known job board, doesn’t mean that the job posting or recruiter has been verified for the site. For example, in a statement Indeed says it uses a “dedicated search quality team…deploying a variety of techniques to assess the suitability and validity of job listings [removing] tens of millions of job listings each month that do not meet our quality guidelines.” Indeed also says it encourages job seekers to report any suspicious advertisements to them or to the police.

That said, rooting out scammers on job sites is akin to “playing whack-a-mole,” says Planos, as new ones keep cropping up, and veteran scammers keep evolving. 

Don’t pay.

You shouldn’t have to pay to obtain gainful employment. If you’re asked for money upfront to cover training, recruiting fees, or miscellaneous expenses, this is a clear warning the job offer very likely isn’t legitimate. 

“If you’re ever asked to get a check and deposit it and then send money out, it’s a scam. If you’re ever asked to purchase prepaid gift cards . . . it is 100% a scam,” says Nofziger. Same goes for new employers asking you to use cryptocurrency machines or to immediately supply them with bank account information or Venmo details. For a legitimate job, direct deposit would be set up after you’re hired.

Scrutinize emails and research recruiters.

If you receive an email about a job opportunity, always click on the sender’s email address to confirm that it is actually associated with the company. Tessian research found that only about half of people pay attention to the sender’s email address when they check messages, but this is often an important clue. Most companies larger than a mom-and-pop shop will have a corporate email domain, so you can expect emails to come from that domain rather than a personal email account. For example, johndoe@fastcompany.com not johndoefastcompany@gmail.com.  

Check the company’s website.

When you apply through a third-party site or get contacted by a recruiter about a job. Go to the organization’s website to confirm the job opening is there and look for information on hiring procedures and policies. When in doubt, call the company to confirm legitimacy using the contact information that they’ve provided on their website only.

Additionally, Google the hiring company using the company name only. If you see multiple websites for the same company, that should serve as a warning. The Better Business Bureau (BBB) also suggests running a Web search with the company’s name and the word “scam.” This will let you know if the company has scammed people before, or if a well-known company is aware of scammers using their name.

To combat job scams, some organizations are offering information on their websites about what types of messages they will and won’t send during the hiring process. Companies that have had their name used for scams in the past are especially likely to have this information readily available. For example, GE has a dedicated page on its website explaining how to identify a fraudulent job offer. With the GE name and logo featured prominently, “The perpetrators will often ask recipients to complete bogus recruitment documentation, such as application forms, terms and conditions of employment, or visa forms.”

UnitedHealth Group experienced a similar unauthorized use of its name and logo in phony job ads. “Cybercriminals post their ads on legitimate job sites and often use familiar-looking or convincing company logos, language, and links to fake websites that appear to be real,” a company spokesperson writes. “These sites might also charge fees for services. Typically, after a few days the thieves close down the scam and disappear.”

Trust your gut.

If the offer sounds too good to be true, then it probably is. Check Google, and search for the recruiter’s details. If they don’t match up, or if they don’t exist, treat this as a giant red flag. Also, avoid meetings and interviews that are conducted via social media or generic platforms such as Google Hangouts. 

Confirm with the company directly.

Sharing information for a background check can be tricky because there are companies that require this. However, you shouldn’t hesitate to contact the company directly and confirm they are requesting a background check and are actively working with the recruiter. By the time you get to this stage, the hiring company is already aware of who you are. They’ll be happy to confirm the need for a background check, as well as verify the recruiter.

The key to stopping scams like these are keeping a level head, doing a gut check, and having the confidence to verify requests and offers. If you push a scammer too hard to verify details, they’ll fold and “revoke” the offer. But legitimate recruiters and job seekers will have no problem proving themselves to you in a way that leaves no room for suspicion.

What to do if you’ve been scammed

If you fall prey to any of these scams, there are a few steps you’ll want to take. 

• Check and monitor your credit: First, keep a close eye on your financial accounts for fraudulent activity and set up credit monitoring to ensure no one uses your personal information. (Consider a credit freeze, which prevents new credit from being issued without your direct permission.)
• Report the scam: Report the incident to the website where the job was posted, as well as the company being spoofed. And report the incident to your local FBI field office or the Internet Crime Complaint Center. If you act quickly enough, you might be able to prevent the scammers from taking advantage of the information they obtained. 
• Move forward: Besides costing Ramos money to ship out packages, getting involved in a hiring scam affected him psychologically. “It makes me feel like I cannot really trust [anybody] anymore,” he says. He’s still looking for work, but more cautiously. But to find a new job, Ramos has had to bounce back: “You’ve just got to pick up the pieces and move on.”

Coming forward as a victim, Nofziger and Planos agree, is one of the best ways to stop scammers, because it helps others identify red flags. But the shame of falling for an employment scam can keep victims quiet.  

Job hunting is stressful enough, but when the job you’re hoping for turns out to be a scam, the sense of embarrassment and loss compounds things. For employers, employment scams can create reputation and compliance problems, since criminals will leverage established brands for legitimacy. 

Chris Morris, Jessica Klein, Steve Ragan, and Lydia Dishman also contributed writing, reporting, and/or advice to this article and a previous version.

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