Job scams surged with remote work. The bait is a great salary for easy work, hired fast with little or no interview. The hook is either your personal information, your money, or both.
The fake check trick
The classic version: you're "hired" and they send a check to buy home-office equipment — say $3,000. You deposit it, they tell you to wire $500 to their "approved vendor." A week later the check bounces, the bank pulls the full $3,000 back out of your account, and the $500 you wired is gone forever.
Banks make deposited funds available before checks fully clear. Scammers exploit that gap. Any job that involves depositing a check and sending money back is a scam, every single time.
Five checks before you say yes
1. Verify the company independently — find their official site and careers page yourself, don't click links from the message.
2. Check the email domain. Real recruiters at real companies don't email from Gmail addresses.
3. Be suspicious of interviews conducted entirely over text or Telegram.
4. Never pay for equipment, training, or background checks. Employers pay you.
5. Never share your SSN or bank details before you've verified the company and signed a real offer.
You can also paste the recruiter's message or email address into Scambook. Recruiter emails used in scams get flagged in our database, and job scam scripts are among the most common patterns we catch.
