Job seekers, beware. In the first three months of 2023, Better Business Bureau (BBB) Scam Tracker received reported losses of nearly $840,000, up over 250% compared to last year. With a median loss of over $1,500 during that timeframe, job hunters tell BBB the financial impact is devastating. 

Since BBB issued the 2021 study, Job Scams: BBB study finds job scams increased during the pandemic and warns job seekers to verify employment offers to avoid illegal jobs, identity theft, and fake checks, the blistering pace at which fraudsters ensnare the public in employment scams has increased each year, according to BBB data. In extreme cases, some individuals found themselves in a deep financial hole with little recourse. 

For Donald from Lake Placid, Florida, it started with an email. A woman calling herself Laura Hoffman said she worked for a company called International and wanted to offer him a reshipping job. All Donald needed to do was purchase and send computers overseas. The pay would be $76,000 with bonuses.  

Donald wanted to test the offer's legitimacy, so he bought a single Apple computer and sent it to an address in Hong Kong. He eagerly awaited the reimbursement on his credit card, and, to his surprise, it came through quickly. After that, he threw himself into the job, buying and shipping over $100,000 computers. 

Things were going exceptionally well until one day, in late January, the payments on his card disappeared. They were fraudulent, his bank said, and Donald immediately owed the total balance on his cards. He frantically reached out to Laura Hoffman and Also International, but they were nowhere to be found. Donald had been scammed out of $105,000. He still hasn’t been able to resolve the issue with his bank. 

“I am afraid to apply for another job,” Donald told BBB in an interview. 

How do employment scams work? 

Like many scams, those perpetuating employment fraud seek at least one of two things from their potential marks: money or personal and financial information. Because normal employers have close access to both regularly, it leaves many with their guard down. 

Scammers sometimes strike immediately upon making contact by extracting personal information. In others, the fraudsters lay a trail of deception for weeks or months, slowly taking money from an unaware victim. 

The BBB Institute for Marketplace Trust found those in the 18-34 age range at the most risk for employment scams. About 15% of reports to BBB Scam Tracker showed a monetary loss, meaning anyone contacted for an employment scam is at significant risk. 

Job seekers should always have their guard up when considering new employment opportunities. 

Scammers contact consumers through various means, including phone calls, text messages, emails, chat platforms like WhatsApp and Telegram, job sites like Craigslist and Indeed, and social media like Facebook and LinkedIn.  

Several reports to BBB describe how scammers found resumes on job listing sites like Indeed and tailored their scams to an individual's background. Scammers sometimes impersonate real companies, tarnishing the names of legitimate businesses. 

According to BBB Scam Tracker reports for employment scams in 2022, job hunters said they often encountered fraudsters on Indeed. Over 700 reports referenced Indeed, with LinkedIn (288) and Telegram (250) trailing behind. 

In an email, Indeed said it “removes tens of millions of job listings each month that do not meet our quality guidelines. A representative from Indeed said its number of reports was likely tied to the large size of the internet job board, and the company “will not do business with an employer if their job listings do not pass our stringent quality guidelines."  

Craigslist, Meta, LinkedIn, and Indeed warn consumers extensively about scams and urge them to report cases to the websites and the authorities. 

In an interview with BBB, a LinkedIn representative said the company works proactively to curb scam profiles and postings.  

In the latter half of 2022, the company removed over 91 million instances of scams or spam. Over 99% of that work was done automatically by the company’s “automated defenses.” 

“Scams and fraudulent activity are something we take seriously,” said Adele Austin, spokesperson for LinkedIn. “There has definitely been a rise in fraudulent activity over the last couple years.” 

To combat the rise, LinkedIn debuted several new features, including one showing the age of a profile and when it was last updated. Job hunters should also look to see if a business has a verified email and phone number, Austin said. 

Facebook and Craigslist did not respond to requests for an interview. 

In many cases reported to BBB, scammers set up a job interview over email, phone, or voice chat. They ask serious interview questions and give their (intended) target the impression the job is legitimate. At this point, the interviewee is already at risk, as the fraudster may ask for their social security number, bank account numbers or other personal information to "do a background check” or “set up direct deposit”. 

Others may run a slower scam, ending the interview and later offering a job. That offer might come with an acceptance letter and an attractive salary, all on official-looking letterhead. 

Most common employment scams reported to BBB 

Reshipping scams 

In these scams, fraudsters hire people to ship items, almost always outside the country. They may use excuses about different laws in their country or the difficulty in obtaining certain pieces of technology, like computers. They will convince their target to purchase high-priced goods on their credit cards before instructing them to send the items overseas. Scammers submit a fraudulent payment to their victim’s credit card, knowing it will bounce. Before it does, they instruct the “employee” to purchase more items, cranking up the debt owed once the bank claws back the false payments. 

In another twist, some scammers may recruit their targets as the address to which they send stolen goods or money. The worker believes they are part of the logistics team for an international shipping business, but they are serving as so-called money mules. Money mules can be prosecuted for their participation in scams, even if they claim to be unwitting victims. Legitimate businesses run reshipping in-house and never send checks to employees through the mail as a part of accounting practices. 

Mystery shopping, car wrap 

While it may seem different, these scams use fake checks to convince potential employees of the company's legitimacy. These scams are well-known to law enforcement agencies and regulators, but their effectiveness means fraudsters continue to deploy them widely.  

Mystery shopping 

In mystery shopping scams, the fraudsters ask a victim to participate in an “undercover” review of a money order company like Moneygram or Western Union or to rate a company’s practices around selling gift cards. 

She was excited when someone claiming to be “Jerry Wallace” supposedly hired Nydia in Highland Falls, New York, to be a mystery shopper at Whole Foods. She received a packet that contained her work to-do list and a check for purchasing American Express gift cards. Wallace told Nydia to review several stores on how they sell gift cards and report back to him. 

Nydia deposited the check and quickly went to the stores to start her work. Everything seemed fine, and she submitted a report which included the gift card numbers. A few days later, Nydia checked her bank account, and the check had bounced. Jerry Wallace disappeared with the cash, but Nydia remains on the hook for over $1,000 in purchases. 

Car wrapping  

In a car wrap scam, a check is sent, deposited, and the victim is asked to send a money order or buy gift cards to pay a company to put temporary advertisements on their car. The victim sends money to the scammers, and the check will be pulled from their account shortly afterward. In some reports, the fraudsters sent “extra” on the check, meant to serve as payment for the job. In other cases, they promised regular paychecks as long as the wrap stayed on the worker’s car. 

Rebecca, in Alpine, Virginia, went looking online for work-from-home opportunities after being out of a job since November 2022. She found a company offering cash to wrap her car with various advertisements. She was told the installation would cost more than $15,000, and the company sent her a check. 

It cleared three days later, and Rebecca believed the company was legitimate, so she sent a money order for wrap installation. Soon after, however, her bank told her the check was bad, and she owed $15,000 to cover the charge. Rebecca was scammed. 

Previously, car wrapping scams were one of the most reported scam types. That type of scam appears to have decreased in popularity since BBB published its job scam study in 2021. 

New reports skyrocket, millions lost 

Employment scams have been one of the three riskiest for the public out of all those tracked by the BBB Institute for Marketplace Trust since 2016. “Though the susceptibility of employment scams remained the same, the number of employment scams reported to BBB Scam Tracker increased 23.1%, from 7.8% of all reported scams in 2021 to 9.6% in 2022,” the report notes. 

According to the most recent BBB Scam Tracker data in which a consumer filled out the contact method category, fraudsters' initial outreach is most likely to occur through email (41% of reports) or text messages (18%). Messaging platforms, like WhatsApp and phone calls, were the next most popular at 9%. 

Online classifieds like Craigslist, social media such as Facebook, and postal mail all showed slight declines in 2022’s BBB Scam Tracker data compared to the previous year.