There’s loads of scams and fraud attempts that occur everyday, and even more innocent people who find themselves becoming victims to nefarious attacks like this. In 2023 alone there were over 10 billion dollars lost due to scammers and fraudsters in the US alone. And this is just the number reported, as many who fall victim to fraud schemes don’t report for one reason or another.
But in the digital age, one type of fraud scheme has only grown more and more ubiquitous, that being the fake job posting. In 2023 the number of fake job scams went up 118%. Fake job scams can hit victims with major financial setbacks that take months, if not years to recover from, and leave them with burdens both monetary and emotional.
The reason I know this is because, in early 2022, I myself fell victim to a fake job scam. It was by far one of the worst things to ever happen to me, and something that still gives me anxiety when conducting business online. Unfortunately, to make matters worse, I was never compensated and never able to bring the scamsters to justice.
That’s why I felt it necessary to share my scam story, to show how this could happen to anyone, as well as what red flags to look out for, what steps to take once you realize you’ve been scammed, and how you can recover both financially and mentally.
A little bit about me
To truly understand this story, I feel that it’s necessary to know a little bit about who I am as a person and also who I was when this scam occurred. Unsurprisingly, I am a writer, a trade I still do professionally, as is being demonstrated right now. But I am also an artist. In 2016 I graduated high school and began attending college in order to pursue a career in the arts. Initially, I majored in game design, but switched to a double major in visual arts and writing about halfway through my sophomore year. I also ended up transferring schools a couple of times for reasons I won’t get into here.
Because I had to change my major and transferred, my graduation year was pushed later a bit, so I wouldn’t be getting my degree in 2020 as I had hoped. To delay things even further, the COVID 19 pandemic occurred, resulting in me cutting back on my classes and going from a full time student to part time. It’s not really possible to get the full studio art class experience from a remote class, so for a couple semesters I just took lecture classes remotely. So by the time I had finished all my credits for graduation, it was the winter of 2021. I ended up graduating with a bachelors in studio arts and an associates in writing.
My situation during the scam
All throughout college, I lived with my parents when I wasn’t in the dorms, in order to save some extra cash. So after graduation, I went back to stay with them full time while I looked for a career. I was 23 at the time and relatively inexperienced when it came to actually finding a job I could make a career out of. Up until that point I had only had part time retail jobs, as well as the time in high school when I worked for the tech crew and AV department.
So my strategy for finding a job right out of college was essentially to cast a wide net on LinkedIn. I pretty much applied for any remote job with “art” or “writing” in the title. Looking back I don’t think I would recommend this method for finding a job straight out of college, especially after what happened next. After maybe a week of applying to any job I could, I eventually got an email from a marketing consultant company asking if I would like to interview for a position as a graphic designer, a field I have some experience in.
A survey of job seekers by the BBB identified the platforms where people saw the most employment scams. Source.
The fake job-scam
For the sake of privacy, I won’t use the real name of this company, so I will be referring to them as Fang, based on the fact that they almost sucked my finances dry. Looking at the email they sent me, they were offering quite the opportunity. Part time, but at around $30-$40 an hour, with benefits like health insurance, paid days off, and a retirement package. I really thought I’d hit the jackpot and found the perfect job right out of college.
However, things definitely started to feel too good to be true, and I knew that a healthy amount of skepticism was necessary when looking for a job like this. I consider myself an optimist, though I still must acknowledge from time to time that the world isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. Therefore, I decided to do some more research on Fang.
I went on their website and it seemed pretty legit! It was well made, they made their mission clear, and even provided examples of clients they’ve worked with in the past. So I thought “Awesome! I’ll go ahead and schedule an interview”.
I figured that, since this was a remote position, that the interview would be conducted virtually through Zoom or a similar service. But to my surprise, when the day of the interview came, Fang requested that we conduct via text message. Red flag number 1.
I had already set up my computer on my desk and dressed nicely from the waist up, as it was a virtual interview, and prepared to make a good first impression. But, I figured that the pandemic changed how we do a lot of things, so I just went for it.
I felt that the text interview went very well and thought that this might just be an initial screening so that they could vet candidates to move onto the next step and receive a real interview. This was not the case, however, as I received a text the next day offering me the job. Red flag number 2.
So after looking through the job description and asking about some more specifics, Fang informed me that they would be giving me a new computer and smartphone to do my work. Awesome, right? WRONG! This is where I hit the point of no return and crossed that dark chasm into the world of fake job listing scams.
Fake job scams affect people all over and every day. In 2020 alone, over 16,000 complaints about this type of scam were made to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, according to the Better Business Bureau. This was an increase of over 2,000 from the previous year, likely due to the increase in people looking for online work-from-home jobs during the pandemic. And keep in mind that this is only the number of cases that were reported. Many people who were caught up in scams do not report it due to embarrassment, fear of legal repercussions, or outing themselves as an easy target. This is why I felt it necessary to talk about my own personal scam experience, in order to bring more awareness to the issue and show how this could happen to anyone.
Speaking of, back to my story. Where were we? Oh right! Oh yes! The pit of despair! Fang informed me that they were going to provide me with equipment to do my job. Cool! But the way they were going to do so was to send me a check for $2000, red flag, then I was supposed to send it to another party, redder flag, who would then set me up with the proper equipment, blood red banner.
This is a classic tactic fraudsters use, though modernized to a post COVID world. What they will do is write an intentionally bad check, have you spend it, often by sending it back to them, and then report the check as fraud leaving their victims with the bill. And this is EXACTLY what happened to me.
So I did all that fraudy junk, thinking everything was all peachy, and decided to reward myself with a treat from the local general store, and perhaps a sandwich on my way back. But when it came time to pay, my debit card declined. Now it was time to panic.
I called my bank and tried to explain the situation, thinking maybe they were just worried about $2000 suddenly coming in and out of my account. However, after a thorough explanation, they gave me the bad news. I had been scammed. I then went to check my bank account to see that I had somewhere around -$1700, since I had only had about $300 at the time in my checking account.
Luckily, I kept most of my money in my separate savings account, which was not touched, so I still had around $700. This is something I’ve been doing since I first got a bank account, keeping the majority in savings and only transferring over when I needed it. I cannot stress enough how much I would recommend this tactic, as it really saved me during this time of my life. Fang had been talking about sending me more money for “equipment”, so I think they were banking on me having far more than $2000 in my checking account at the time.
Still, while the damage had been slightly mitigated, ironically by not having money, more pain was about to begin. I was still living with my parents at the time, so I had to inform them of the bad news. This was rough, as I had been telling them about this job and they were very excited for me, and they were just as heartbroken as I was when we found out it wasn’t real. Luckily, my parents are awesome, and remained supportive through this endeavor.
Now, I bet you’re thinking well things can’t possibly get worse after that, right? So, above I mentioned that I worked all through high school on the tech and theater crew. This was a paid position and I received direct deposit from it, and that required me to set up my first checking account.
But since I was 15 at the time, my parents had to be there to sign off on it and my account would be linked to theirs. This wasn’t an issue for a while, other than needing both my parents, at least 5 grandparents, a teacher, a rabbi, a priest, God, Jesus, and Spongebob present to do literally anything with my baby’s first bank account. I couldn’t even get a debit card until I was 16, I had to have my mom withdraw cash to give it to me.
But how does this relate to the scam? You may be asking. Well, because I was a child when I set up my bank account, it was still linked to my parents’, and my brothers’ by proxy. So when the bank locked my account they also locked the accounts of my entire family. And all of this happened on grocery day.
Despite only a very small increase in the number of complaints since 2018, the total losses reported has risen by 52%, from $46M to $70M. Source.
After the scam
The next course of action was to get the law involved so that this doesn’t happen to anyone again and I can potentially get my money back. First thing was to inform the bank. Unfortunately, there was nothing they could do, despite our best efforts. Great! Then I tried to inform Linkedin, first by trying to find the job listing they put up. But for the life of me I could not find it. So either they scrubbed Linkedin of all trace of them or they posted the job listing under a different name.
In hindsight, I should have gone back and checked to see if this was actually a job I applied to on LinkedIn before responding to their email. I imagine either they set up a job posting under another name or they somehow found out I was applying to a bunch of graphic design positions and decided to roll the dice. Either way, LinkedIn was no help.
But this was a legit company, right? I checked their website and it seemed legit. I could just report them to the authorities now. Well, I did contact Fang from their official website and it seems like the people who scammed me were not the real Fang. They were using the name and website to seem more legit. So essentially, I had no idea of finding out who scammed me. Super!
With all of my efforts exhausted, the only option left was for me to weather the storm.
So this was all pretty terrible, but it could have been far worse. If I had more money in my checking, they would have just kept taking money from me and probably would have gotten away with it. I’m also fortunate that my family was super supportive and stuck by me though this whole endeavor. This definitely wasn’t the worst thing to happen to me…but probably the worst that didn’t involve a death or an illness.
My situation now
The scam was difficult to recover from, but still doable. While I unfortunately couldn’t get my money back or make sure that the fraudsters were held accountable, I still managed to bounce back stronger than ever. Shortly after the scam, I was offered a remote writing and editing position for a variety of online content, a position that I still hold today and is the meaning for my writing this piece.
Since then I have been making more money, got a place of my own, adopted a cat, and even had time to do some passion projects, namely a children’s book I’m still trying to get published. Overall, I think I’m doing fairly well for myself and I’m thankful to have had a wonderful support system of friends and family to help me through this trying time.
Still, I have one regret…well other than getting involved in the scam in the first place. I was never happy that I couldn’t bring the fraudsters to justice and I often think about how they likely went on to scam more people just like me out of thousands of dollars.
This is why I was so passionate about writing this piece. My case was a textbook case of a fake job scam, though had I known then what I know now, perhaps I would have been able to avoid this situation. So my goal in writing this is to inform you all of the warning signs to look out for. I also want to assure you that this can happen to just about anyone, even a skeptical and tech savvy person like myself.
Furthermore, if you do find yourself a victim of a scam like this I encourage you to report it in any way you can. While I was unable to get anything done, I hope there are others out there who have the means of taking these fraudsters down and saving others from the heartache of being scammed.
The world can be a dark place sometimes, full of less than virtuous people. But if we all look out for each other and remember that there are people out there willing to help out, then I believe we can make the world a safer and brighter place.
