The job market is hell for us, and heaven for scammers

Two years after graduating at the top of her class in college, Amisha Datta could not believe she’d lost $4,300 in a job scam.

It wasn’t just her 4.0 GPA that made her think she was impervious to fraudsters. It was also because the scam started when Datta, now 26, did what she’s done dozens of times and what millions of people do daily: She applied to a job on LinkedIn.

Brenda Smith can relate all too well. The 56-year-old, who holds a master’s degree and works in higher education, lost roughly $15,000 in a job scam that also began on LinkedIn.

Both tell me they were initially embarrassed by being swindled, but now want to share their stories to help others avoid the same fate. Their experiences highlight how, with cheap AI tools like ChatGPT and social engineering, scammers are capable of deceiving even well-educated job seekers of any age by using a reputable career site as a launchpad for their crimes. Between 2020 and 2024, consumer reports of job and employment-agency scams tripled, while the amount of money that victims lost rose to $501 million from $90 million, according to data released in March by the Federal Trade Commission.

Meanwhile, applying to any job has become a nightmare, as openings are now overloaded with AI-generated applications, filters are automatically rejecting qualified applicants, and the entire white-collar job market stalls. Scammers feed on desperation, and the desperation of the American worker is surging.

In 2023, Datta was living in Detroit and looking for part-time remote work to supplement her income from a seasonal job in film production. She searched LinkedIn and found an ad for a transcriber job with reasonable pay from a contractor for an Oklahoma school district called Five Star InterLocal Cooperative. The ad wasn’t specific but gave Datta the sense that she would be transcribing audio of teachers speaking to students in special-education classrooms or giving lectures to other teachers about their work.

It was shock that faded quickly into anger that went quickly to shame and humiliation.Amisha Datta

Datta had done transcription work while in college, and after visiting the co-op’s website, looking up its office on Google Maps, and finding positive reviews about it on Glassdoor and Indeed, she applied via LinkedIn. “It seemed a very wholesome place to work,” she says.

A few hours later, Datta received an email from someone claiming to be a recruiter for the position. The sender’s email address was similar to others she’d seen from school districts, as well as the co-op’s website address, fsilc.k12.ok.us. The only difference was that it contained hyphens instead of periods, but she says she figured that was an “Oklahoma thing.”

The sender asked Datta to fill out a form with common interview questions, like “How do you handle conflict?” and “How do you manage your time?” The request seemed reasonable since it was a typing-heavy role.

“I noticed a couple of typos,” Datta says. “I did sort of naively think to myself like, oh, this is something I could bring up to them.”

Hours later, Datta received another email from the recruiter saying she had landed the job. The recruiter asked her to sign an employment contract that lacked typos and closely resembled others she’d seen. Her mother reviewed it and nothing unusual or worrisome stood out. Though unaware of the irony at the time, Datta was also instructed to verify her identity through ID.me, a service many employers use to validate candidates, and a step her mother had taken several times before starting jobs.

Next, Datta needed a laptop loaded with certain software to start working. The recruiter sent her a $4,300 check to cover the costs and pointed her to a specific vendor in the Detroit area to buy it. Though she found the process a bit odd, she felt reassured after finding a website for the Oklahoma bank it came from, and even more-so once she saw the money appear in her account shortly after she deposited it. She then ordered the laptop and paid for it via a wire transfer as instructed and waited for it to arrive. Only now does she know this payment method is a telltale sign of fraud.

The laptop never came, and Datta’s bank rescinded the money a few days later, after determining the check she’d cashed was bogus. Since she’d already wired $4,300 to the alleged laptop vendor, she realized the money the bank took back had actually come out of her own pocket.

“I felt very alone and just sort of rudderless,” Datta says. “It was shock that faded quickly into anger that went quickly to shame and humiliation.”

When I called the Oklahoma co-op, the person who answered the phone refused to say their name and told me that several people from across the country called around the time Datta was scammed and described similar events. The person said the co-op notified LinkedIn about the phony job listing and that it was quickly removed.

In early 2025, Brenda Smith uploaded her résumé to a LinkedIn page for what appeared to belong to the staffing firm Robert Half in hopes of getting contacted about a part-time job. When she received a text message from a recruiter claiming to represent Robert Half a few days later, she happily replied.

Smith was looking to make extra money to help pay for her daughter’s wedding. The recruiter cited a job opportunity for DataAnnotation, a real company that offers remote AI training work, and said she’d get a call from a hiring manager named Niamh. Someone with that name and a female-sounding voice did call, from a number with a Washington, DC, area code, and they had a brief chat.

“Please take a deep breath and try to calm down,” she wrote. “This isn’t a scam, and I promise I’m still here to help you through it.”

A Robert Half spokesperson said scams are rising across industries, including recruitment, and the company posts alerts and guidance to help job seekers spot fraud. A DataAnnotation representative said the firm only contacts candidates via official accounts, calling the scams predatory.

From there, Smith was asked to move the conversation from her phone’s native chat app to WhatsApp. She received a link to a tutorial on how to perform the job, which entailed little more than clicking on icons representing consumer goods — a task she was told would help those items rank higher in people’s search results on digital marketplaces like Amazon and eBay. The commission-based job was hers if she wanted it. Smith says she accepted because the work seemed easy, and she was short on time. The wedding was just a few months away.

Niamh then told Smith she would need to set up an account on a cryptocurrency app and deposit $100 into it to get started. Smith followed through and quickly received some modest payments for her work in her crypto wallet. But as time passed, she was required to keep depositing small sums of money into the account to continue working, which she needed to do in order to click on certain number items to be allowed to cash out her earnings. Whenever she came close to reaching a point where she was eligible to cash out, she was encouraged to hold out a little longer because that would she’d qualify for a bigger payout.

“It seemed like I had made a few hundred dollars, but I always had to add more,” she says.

In between tasks, Niamh would send her friendly texts, which were viewed by Business Insider. “Enjoying some iced coffee while I tackle my work,” read one, followed by a coffee cup emoji. “How’s your day going?” Another showed a picture of a woman and a child, which Niamh said was her and her daughter.

In April, Smith texted Niamh saying she wanted to quit and get the money she was owed. Days passed without a reply. She tried again, and again. She then texted a general support number that she’d contacted earlier for help with setting up the crypto wallet, and a person replied, telling her that she was being rude and that Niamh would respond as soon as possible.

When Niamh did respond, about a week later, she initially acted as if nothing was wrong. When Smith repeated her desire to get paid, Niamh pressured her to continue working.

“I truly hear your frustration, and I’m really sorry you’re feeling this way. I know this has been incredibly difficult and stressful for you,” Niamh wrote. “Please take a deep breath and try to calm down. This isn’t a scam, and I promise I’m still here to help you through it.”

Niamh then went a step further, offering to cover the next deposit that Smith would need to make to continue, a sum of $2,000.

“That’s how much I want to see you withdraw successfully and get your funds back,” Niamh wrote. “All I need from you is to trust me one last time so we can get this done. You’re not alone in this — I’m with you until the end. Let’s take this step together and finish strong.”

Smith refused. At this point, she accepted the reality that she had been scammed, as she was never compensated. She wasn’t able to help pay for her daughter’s wedding.

Fraud experts expect job scams to continue flourishing thanks to the twin forces of the generative AI boom and an exceptionally tight labor market. The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest report on job openings and labor turnover showed that, for the first time since April 2021, there are more job seekers than job openings in the US.

“The more people that don’t have jobs, if I’m a criminal, the better the market is for my scam,” says Lisa Plaggemier, executive director of the National Cybersecurity Alliance, a nonprofit dedicated to internet safety.

Many scammers are running a long con, betting that job seekers will let their guard down once they get to or past the interview process.

Anyone can be victimized, though people in vulnerable positions — such as those who’ve been out of work for a long time, are going through a divorce, facing health problems, or are lonely — tend to be especially susceptible. Job scammers are “gaming our own psychology against us,” says Plaggemier.

Recent college graduates are also prone to getting fooled since they lack experience in the job market, says Jeremy Schifeling, a career-development advisor based in Mountain View, California. Getting pinged by someone claiming to be a recruiter on a site like LinkedIn for the first time can be exciting, he says.

Oscar Rodriguez, vice president of trust at LinkedIn, says the company proactively detects and removes the vast majority of fake accounts on its platform. It doesn’t disclose how quickly it removes them. LinkedIn also recently started requiring users who add recruitment-related job titles to their profiles to verify their employment.

Many scammers are running a long con, betting that job seekers will let their guard down once they get to or past the interview process. That is why scammers go as far as to set up fake company websites and even establish formal business entities.

“These are people that are masters of social engineering, that have built incredible backstories, that have websites that look legitimate, that have registered LLCs,” says Plaggemier. “The gains are worth it for them to actually invest in the scam.”

Datta’s woes didn’t end after she discovered she’d been had, even though she reported the scam to a police officer in her area. A few months later, the IRS contacted her because someone had filed fraudulent tax returns in her name.

“These people not only took money from me, but they were attempting to steal my identity,” she says.

Datta then requested a copy of the police report she filed to share with the IRS, but she learned that the officer never actually filed it.

“I didn’t get any information on how to seek justice or even just recover from what had happened,” she says. “I was very fortunate that my family could help me out.”

Last month, Datta started attending Texas A&M University’s School of Law. “This was my catalyst to go to law school,” she says.

Sarah E. Needleman is Business Insider’s leadership & workplace correspondent.

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