A job scam asks you for something before it gives you anything: a fee, a deposited check, your Social Security number, a conversation on WhatsApp. Real employers do none of those things, so each one is a red flag on its own. Americans reported $362.9 million in losses to employment scams to the FBI in 2025, up from $264.2 million in 2024.
This is a different problem from ghost jobs. A ghost job is lazy: a real company posts a role it won't fill soon and wastes your afternoon. A job scam is criminal: nobody at the company knows the posting exists, and the person messaging you wants your money or your identity.
Ghost job or scam
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Both start with a posting that leads nowhere. The tells are different.
| Question | Ghost job | Job scam |
|---|---|---|
| Who posted it | The real company | Someone impersonating a company, or a company that doesn't exist |
| What they want from you | A resume for the pipeline | Money, bank details, ID documents, or your labor for free |
| Speed | Slow or silent | Fast: an offer within a day or two |
| Interview | Eventually, maybe | None, or a text-only "interview" on a chat app |
| Where it goes wrong | Nothing happens | You are asked to pay, deposit a check, or hand over personal data |
| What it costs | Your time | Your money, your identity, or both |
If a posting looks stale and vague, run it through the ghost job detector and move on. If a recruiter is moving fast and asking for things, keep reading.
The nine red flags
1. The recruiter contacts you by text or WhatsApp
The Federal Trade Commission is blunt about this: ignore unsolicited job messages sent by text or WhatsApp, because legitimate employers don't recruit this way. The FTC's data shows why. So-called task scams, which usually open with a vague text about online work, went from zero reports in 2020 to 5,000 in 2023, then about 20,000 in the first half of 2024 alone.
A real recruiter who found you on LinkedIn messages you on LinkedIn, or emails you from a company domain. An unknown number with no company name and no role is not recruitment.
2. You get an offer without a real interview
Scam "interviews" happen in a Telegram or WhatsApp chat window, last twenty minutes, and end with an offer. No company hires a stranger for a salaried role after a text conversation. The offer is fast because the request that follows it is the whole point.
3. They ask you to pay for anything
Training, a background check, a starter kit, a "certification," a processing fee. Real employers pay these costs themselves. The task-scam version is being told to deposit money to release your earnings, and the FTC's press release calls someone telling you to pay money to get the money you have supposedly earned a sure sign of a scam.
4. They send you a check to buy equipment
The pattern: a check arrives for $3,000, you are told to deposit it and send $2,400 to the "equipment vendor," and you keep the rest. The check is fake. It clears provisionally, you wire the money, the check bounces a week later, and your bank takes the full amount back from you. Real companies ship laptops or reimburse receipts.
5. They want personal data before an offer
Your Social Security number, National Insurance number, passport scan, or bank details belong on onboarding paperwork after a signed offer from a verified company. Asking for them at the application stage is identity theft in progress.
6. They move you off the platform
"Let's continue on Telegram" appears early in every scam conversation. Job boards and LinkedIn keep a record and can shut down an account. Chat apps don't.
7. The pay is too good for the requirements
$45 an hour, remote, no experience, start Monday. Real entry-level pay sits on a curve, and a posting that ignores it is pricing in your excitement rather than the work.
8. You are asked to buy crypto to release your pay
The FTC reported $41 million in crypto losses to job scams in the first half of 2024 alone, nearly double the figure for all of 2023. The setup is always the same: you complete simple online tasks, a balance builds up in an app, and then you must deposit crypto to withdraw it. The balance was never real.
9. The email domain doesn't match the company
A recruiter for a Fortune 500 company writing from a Gmail address, or from a lookalike domain such as company-careers.com instead of company.com, is not a recruiter for that company. This one takes ten seconds to check and catches a large share of impersonation attempts.
Verify a recruiter and a company in five minutes
Do this before you reply to anything that came in cold.
Check the domain age. Look up the sender's email domain in any WHOIS tool. A company that claims 20 years of history and a domain registered six weeks ago has a problem. Run the URL through the website analyzer too: a legitimate employer has contact details, legal pages and a careers section, not a two-page template.
Find the job on the company's own careers page. Type the company's real URL yourself rather than clicking a link in the message. If the role isn't listed there, or the careers page doesn't exist, the recruiter is not working for that company.
Find the recruiter on the company's LinkedIn page. Open the company page, click People, and search the name. A real recruiter has tenure, mutual connections and a work history that makes sense. A profile created last month with 40 connections and a stock photo does not.
Call the switchboard. Use the phone number on the official site, not the one in the email, and ask for the recruiter by name. Two minutes settles it.
If any step fails, stop replying. You don't owe anyone an explanation.
If you already paid or shared data
Move quickly and skip the embarrassment. These operations fool people with years of hiring experience.
If you paid by card, bank transfer or payment app, contact the issuer or bank right away and ask them to reverse the payment. The FTC's recovery guidance walks through each method and notes that crypto payments lack the legal protections cards have, which is exactly why scammers ask for them.
If you shared a Social Security number, go to IdentityTheft.gov, which the FTC uses to give you a recovery plan. Change any password you shared and turn on two-factor authentication.
Report it. In the US, file at ReportFraud.ftc.gov and at ic3.gov, and include the phone numbers, wallet addresses and account details you were given. In the UK, forward scam texts to 7726 for free, and if you lost money report it at reportfraud.police.uk or call 0300 123 2040 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, or call Police Scotland on 101.
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FAQ
Is it normal for a recruiter to contact me on WhatsApp?
Not as a first contact. Some recruiters in the UK and Australia use WhatsApp for scheduling once you have already spoken by phone or email, but a cold message from an unknown number offering work is the opening move of the most common job scam in the FTC's data. Ask for a company email address and verify it before you say anything else.
Can a job offer be a scam if I never paid anything?
Yes. Some scams want your identity rather than your money: a passport scan, Social Security number and bank details collected on a fake onboarding form are enough to open credit in your name. Others want free labor, sending you weeks of "trial tasks" with pay that never arrives. Treat a request for personal data before a signed offer the same way you would treat a request for a fee.
What should I do if I deposited a fake check?
Call your bank immediately, before the check is returned, and tell them you were tricked into depositing it. Do not send any more money, even if the "employer" is pressuring you to finish the equipment purchase. Then report it to the FTC and the FBI with the check images and the sender's details.
How can I tell whether a work-from-home job is real?
Real remote roles come from companies with a working website, a careers page that lists the job, a named hiring manager you can find on LinkedIn, a video interview with a person whose face and voice match, and a written offer before any paperwork. Anything that skips those steps, promises high pay for simple tasks, or asks you to pay to start is a scam, however professional the messages look.
