Fake job offers often borrow real company names and remote-work language. They move quickly, avoid normal interviews, and eventually ask for money, banking details, identity documents, or package reshipping.
Does this affect you?
Use this for offers received by email, text, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Telegram, job boards, or other messaging apps, especially remote or work-from-home roles.
Recognize the warning signs
Real hiring usually has more friction than a scammer wants to allow.
- You receive an offer with no real interview, or after only a short text chat.
- The recruiter refuses phone or video conversation and communicates only through messaging apps.
- You are asked to pay upfront for a laptop, software license, training materials, background check, or onboarding fee.
- You receive a check and are told to deposit it, then send part of the money to a vendor or back to the company. The check can later bounce.
- The job involves receiving packages at your home and reshipping them elsewhere. This can involve stolen goods and legal risk.
- The pay is unusually high for vague work such as data entry, product testing, personal assistant tasks, or simple remote admin work.
If several of these signs appear together, treat the offer as fake until independently proven otherwise.
Verify the company and the person contacting you
Use your own search, not the links in the message.
- Find the company’s real careers page and check whether the job is listed there.
- Search the recruiter’s name plus scam or the company name plus fake job.
- Check the email domain. A real recruiter normally uses the company domain, not Gmail, Yahoo, or a lookalike.
- Call the company using a phone number from its official website and ask whether the role and recruiter are legitimate.
- Search a distinctive sentence from the job description. Scam posts are often copied across many sites with only the company name changed.
What to do if you are already involved
The response depends on what you shared or did.
- If you deposited a check, do not spend or transfer the money even if it appears available. Contact the bank and explain the situation.
- If you sent money, wire transfers, or gift cards, contact the bank or issuer immediately and ask whether cancellation is possible.
- If you shared a Social Security number, bank account, driver’s license, or ID, file at identitytheft.gov and consider freezing your credit with all three bureaus.
- If you shipped packages, stop immediately and keep records of labels, messages, and tracking numbers.
- Report the scam at reportfraud.ftc.gov and through LinkedIn, the job board, or the platform where it appeared.
More control
Speed is the biggest clue
A legitimate hiring process rarely goes from first contact to final offer in the same day, especially for a well-paid remote role.
Apply through official channels
Applying through a company’s own careers page or established job boards does not eliminate scams, but it cuts down on random unsolicited offers.
Sources
- FTC Consumer Advice – Job Scams (2025)
- Better Business Bureau – Employment Scams (2025)
- LinkedIn Help – Report Suspicious Job Postings (2025)