Scams targeting job seekers have been on the rise during the Covid pandemic, and young adult women are the group most frequently targeted, according to a study by the Better Business Bureau.
The organization, in its “2020 BBB Employment Scams Report” released today, said last year was a treacherous year for employment scams because pandemic shutdowns led to a massive increase in job seekers, creating a "perfect storm" for scammers.
"Employment scams typically occur when job applicants are led to believe they are applying or have just been hired for a promising new job, but they have actually fallen for a scam," the report said. "This can mean giving personal information that can be used for identity theft or sending money for 'training' or 'equipment.' In another variation, the victim may be 'overpaid' with a fake check and asked to wire back the difference."
The report estimated that 14 million people are victims of job scams each year, and suffer total losses amounting to about $2 billion. Even before the pandemic, job scams were identified by the Better Business Bureau as the riskiest scams it monitored in 2018 and 2019 in terms of how many people are exposed and susceptible and the monetary losses involved. The report noted that the FBI recorded a 27% increase in job scam reports between 2018 and 2020, while the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre reported that such reports nearly doubled last year.
The most common job scam victims are women between the ages of 25 and 34, the report said, adding that 67% of complaints are filed by women. The median losses suffered by job scam victims is about $1,000, with identify theft the most common outcome of the scam. Victims also commonly suffer losses by providing driver's license information and Social Security numbers to bogus employers, the report said.
In the majority of cases, fraudsters are the first to contact job scam victims, usually through emails or text messages. The social media platforms most frequently used to carry out the scams are Indeed (involved in 32% of the scams on online platforms), LinkedIn (which represented 7% of the scams), Facebook (6%) and CareerBuilder (5%), the report said.
"Employment scams are a good example of a high-touch approach where scammers take the time to prepare elaborate setups," the report said. "Scammers conduct in-depth interviews via Skype, Zoom or Google Hangouts and other online technologies, provide employment forms, and ask their targets to perform job duties before the scam is discovered."
Fake paychecks are a frequent tool used by scammers, with victims often asked to deposit a check and transfer funds to another account, only to realize later that the original check was bad, the report said.