Job scams are surging. How to tell a real hiring process from a fake one

Reported losses to job scams run into the hundreds of millions a year, and the reports are still rising. The warning signs are consistent: paying to get a job, a check you must partly send back, a recruiter on a personal email, an interview only in chat. A hiring process that verifies the employer and names the interviewer removes most of that risk.

Job scams have moved from a nuisance to a large and growing fraud. The reports and the losses are public, and the warning signs are consistent. This is what the FTC and the FBI report, the signs they list, and how a verified hiring process removes most of the risk.

The scale

The numbers come from the agencies that collect the reports.

• The FTC reported that consumer reports of business and job-opportunity scams grew to over 105,000 in 2024, with reported losses of over 513 million dollars.
• The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center recorded 24,688 employment-scam complaints in 2025, with losses of about 363 million dollars, up from 264 million in 2024.
• The Better Business Bureau reported that nearly 50,000 people filed employment-scam reports over three years, that reports roughly doubled in 2025, and that half of the more than 23,000 reports it received in 2025 named a text message as how the scam reached them, often impersonating a recruiting company or a well-known studio.

These are reported figures, and most fraud is never reported, so they are a floor.

The warning signs

The FTC's guidance is specific, and the signs repeat across scams:

• You are asked to pay. "Honest employers, including the federal government, will never ask you to pay to get a job." A request for equipment fees, training or a starter kit is a scam.
• A check arrives and you must send money back. "No honest potential employer will ever send you a check to deposit and then tell you to send on part of the money, or buy gift cards with it."
• The offer is too good. A lot of money for little work, offered fast, is "almost certainly a scam."
• The recruiter is on a personal email. The FTC notes that recruiters "will generally email from a corporate email account, not from a personal email like @gmail.com or @yahoo.com."
• Everything stays in chat. A hiring process that never moves to a verifiable company, a named person and a real interview is a warning in itself.

How a verified process removes the risk

A scam depends on the candidate not being able to confirm who is on the other side. A hiring process that makes that easy removes the opening. In Vettasy:

• The employer is verified before it can invite anyone: it proves it owns its email domain and provides its legal entity documents, reviewed by a person. See both sides verified.
• The invitation comes from the employer's own domain, and the same company, interviewer and date appear in the email, on vettasy.com and in the app, so they can be compared.
• Nothing is ever asked of the candidate to pay. Vettasy is free for candidates.
• The candidate gets a copy of the recording, the transcript and the same report as the employer.

None of this replaces care. It changes the ground the candidate stands on: instead of guessing whether an employer is real, they can check it.

A short checklist for candidates

• Confirm the company is a real, named legal entity, and that the invitation comes from its own domain.
• Never pay for equipment, training or a job, and never deposit a check to send part of it back.
• Be wary of a recruiter on a free email address and of a process that stays entirely in chat.
• Prefer a process that names the interviewer and gives you a copy of the interview afterwards.

Sources

• FTC, Job scams and Job scammers are looking to hire you.
• FTC, Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book 2024.
• FBI, 2025 Internet Crime Report.
• Better Business Bureau, Employment scams 2026 update.
• Vettasy, Verified Session and Trust center.

Written by the Vettasy team

Vettasy is a desktop application for job interviews. Employers run structured, recorded interviews in it with verified participants. It is free for candidates. Windows and macOS.