As remote work has become popular, so have job scams

As a recruiter, Giovanni Dainotto is all too familiar with scams targeting those on the hunt for a job. 

When the Huntington Station resident started his job in May 2021, he found it difficult to break through the noise of scammers offering fake opportunities that confuse job-seekers. 

“My posts [on social media] would get buried in the scams and then people wouldn’t take it seriously,” said Dainotto, 31. After a while, he got “fed up” and decided to create a Facebook group called Long Island Careers & Job Opportunities, where he moderates job listings. All posts and members of the group must be approved and he verifies that posts are from legitimate local companies.

As remote work has become more popular in recent years, so have job scams capitalizing on that trend, experts say, with victims losing as much as several thousands of dollars, sometimes also experiencing identity theft as a result. The rise of artificial intelligence technologies also has made it easier for scammers to blast more people, expanding their reach. 

Reported financial losses to job scams soared over $220 million in the first half of 2024, according to a December report from the Federal Trade Commission, following a more than threefold increase from 2020 to 2023. 

So far this year, four in 10 Americans said they received a fake job offer via text, according to a survey published by the resume builder Resume.org earlier this month.

Of those who received a text, around 14% fell victim to the scam, the survey said, with both men and younger workers more likely to engage with the scammer.

Scammers scheme in many ways

There are a few types of job scams, but one commonly experienced by Long Islanders and others across the country are often initiated via text or email, with someone promising good pay for easy remote work, said Eva Velasquez, CEO at the Identity Theft Resource Center, a nonprofit that aims to help people protect against identity compromise and crime. 

Some scammers are also posting fake jobs on legitimate sites like Indeed or LinkedIn, she said. While those companies screen job listings, “they aren’t going to be able to catch everything.”

Starting around 18 months ago, the nonprofit started to notice fake postings that run the gamut from “very well-spoofed jobs for reputable companies and brands,” to “things like task scams, where people are asked to do things like fake reviews for websites,” Velasquez said. 

Around 20,000 people reported task scams to the FTC in the first half of last year, compared with 5,000 in 2023, the agency said in its December report.

Jim Morris, owner of staffing firm Farmingdale Express Employment Professionals, said he has been targeted by scammers with bogus job offers. Some texts noted they found his information on Zip Recruiter.

“I’m not on Zip Recruiter,” Morris said.

Morris shared with Newsday some of the messages he received, which include images of promotional help-wanted flyers and salary offers that range from $100 to $3,000 a day for a “flexible part-time opportunity” or one to two hours of work per day.

One scam text, from a purported recruiter, Emily at DSL, promoted a job that involved assisting Temu merchants with product reviews. The text urges interested recipients to “please contact us via WhatsApp,” providing a number for the encrypted messaging app.

Many job scammers will, if a person responds, set them up with an online job performing mindless tasks like “scrolling and clicking things on websites,” said Lorrie Cranor, director of the CyLab Security and Privacy Institute at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

Then, they might assign the person a trainer, who will provide feedback and eventually say that, “in order to go to the next stage of training or employment, you need to make a small payment,” she said. They might also say, “Oh, you earned $100, but before we can send you that check, you need to pay us $25.”

Another variation includes scammers saying the person needs equipment, like a laptop, for the job, so they send a check, Cranor said. “And then they say, ‘Oh, we mistakenly sent you too much money. We need you to send us a check for the difference.’ And it turns out they didn’t really send you a check, or they sent you a fake check. And now you’ve sent them real money.”

The median loss in 2023 reported by victims of job scams to the FTC was $2,161, said Kati Daffan, assistant director of the division of marketing practices at the FTC. In 2024, the median was $2,270. 

Some scammers seek personal information, like Social Security and bank account numbers, rather than cash, that they then use to break into people’s accounts, Cranor said.

Who is at risk?

It’s become more common for someone to never have a face-to-face meeting with an employer, making young people entering the job force or those returning from a long absence “prime targets” for scammers, Velasquez said.

“There’s a lot of economic uncertainty,” as a potential factor driving the trend, she noted.

Also, as more people work online, many are seeking jobs that can be performed remotely, or on a flexible schedule to supplement income from another job, Daffan said. “There are a lot of scammers capitalizing on that.”

In addition to being bombarded with scam offers himself, Morris, of Express Employment, said he’s had job seekers increasingly come to him asking if a text they received was legitimate.

“You see more of it because AI is just making it so easy for the fraudster to blast millions of phone numbers with this info,” Morris said. “You’re going to get some who click on the link or give their Social Security number.”

“It’s a numbers game,” he said.

According to Resume.org, 20% of Gen Zers reported falling for a job scam, followed by 16% of millennials; 10% of Gen Xers; and 4% of Baby Boomers.

The survey noted that men were more likely to fall victim to these scams, with 24% of Gen Z men and 31% of millennial men interacting with scammers.

“I think a lot of people are victimized because they’re not familiar enough with how these things work that” they recognize red flags, Cranor said.

“We’re actually doing some research right now with international graduate students who are new to the U.S. and they become a victim to a lot of these scams because they don’t know how things work in the U.S.,” she added. “So when they get these calls, it doesn’t seem that unusual to them.”

Watch for these red flags

“The first thing is to realize that nobody is going to text you and just offer you a job without knowing anything about you,” Cranor said. 

Nobody is going to text you and just offer you a job without knowing anything about you.

– Lorrie Cranor, director of the CyLab Security and Privacy Institute, Carnegie Mellon University

Real employers will also never ask job seekers to send them money, she added. “That’s not how jobs work.”

Another red flag, Velasquez said, is if the details about the job and employer are unclear.

Nobody should be asking for a copy of driver’s licenses, Social Security cards or bank account information until after a person is hired, she added, and legitimate recruiters are not likely to conduct interviews via text.

“I just want people to step back, because often, a lot of these are offering a pay scale that really isn’t commensurate with the scale level. You’re not going to get rich stuffing envelopes or writing reviews,” Velasquez said.

You’re not going to get rich stuffing envelopes or writing reviews.”

– Eva Velasquez, CEO, Identity Theft Resource Center

Morris said he recommends that job seekers who are waiting to hear back from an employer and who receive a suspicious text in the meantime should look up the number of the company supposedly offering them the job and call the employer directly.

“Go onto the company’s website and see if those job openings are listed there also,” he said.

Daffan also advises people to never click on strange links or respond to unexpected text messages or WhatsApp messages about jobs, and “never trust anyone who says they’ll pay you to rate or like things online.”

“That kind of reviewing activity is illegal so no honest company is going to do it,” she said.

Clare Rosenzweig, president and CEO of New York Metro Better Business Bureau, offered similar advice in an emailed statement.

“If something sounds like a dream job, check it out carefully. Look at BBB Scam Tracker to see if others have reported similar offers,” she said.

What to do if you’ve been scammed 

But, even the most careful people can still fall victim to scammers.

Experts say it’s unlikely that financial losses will be recovered, but it’s still worth reporting the crime to the appropriate law enforcement agency, including the FTC, and, if it was perpetrated online, the Internet Crimes Complaint Center. 

“Reporting the fraud that you see in the marketplace is so important, both because it helps law enforcers like the FTC build our cases and prove our cases in court, but also because it helps us identify the trends that are happening and then warn other people about the newest frauds and scams,” Daffan said.

“The best way to help consumers is to help them recognize fraud so that they don’t lose money in the first place. And people’s reports can really help us do that,” she added.

Some consumer protections require a police report, so if a victim shares their bank account information or any other financial details, they will need to report the scam to local police as well, Velasquez said.

Victims should also immediately contact the company used to send the money to report the fraud and ask for the transaction to be reversed if possible, Daffan said, pointing to the FTC website for further advice.

Most scam victims, though, never report the incident to authorities, according to a study published recently by Pew Research. Roughly three-quarters of financial victims say they did not reach out to law enforcement after losing money from an online scam or attack, although those who were significantly financially harmed were more likely to file a report.

Nassau County police said they have recorded six job scam incidents so far in 2025, up from three in 2024 and one in 2023 and 2022. Newsday has filed a public records request for a recent incident report for further details.

Suffolk County police said the department has not received any recent reports about job scams, but “there are individuals who are constantly creating new scams to steal money from unsuspecting people.”

A department spokesperson in an emailed statement warned against answering unknown calls, providing personal information, wiring money or sending gift cards.

It’s very difficult to trace perpetrators, Velasquez said, which makes it hard for police to “even begin to conduct an investigation.”

Scammers are also often based in other countries, which means American law enforcement can’t bring them to justice even if they did find them, she said.

“That’s a systemic problem for all different types of scams and identity crimes,” she said. “And then it’s also a resource issue. There’s so many of these crimes that for them to investigate each and every one, that they would never be able to get through them.”

It’s still important, however, to report scams to agencies like the FTC and the Internet Crimes Complaint center, which can use patterns to start investigations, she said.

Sometimes, there’s even results.

New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit in January that aims to recover up to $2.2 million worth of cryptocurrency stolen from victims primarily in Queens in a remote job scam that promised pay in exchange for product reviews, spokesperson Halimah Elmariah said.

But in the meantime, be careful about job postings online, Dainotto said. 

“I hate to see people get targeted and lose their money or become vulnerable because they’re looking for a job,” he said.