Employment scams are on the rise in the turbulent job market created by the COVID-19 pandemic, a new Better Business Bureau® (BBB®) study finds.
BBB warns job seekers to verify employment offers to avoid illegal jobs, identity theft and fake checks to which millions are exposed annually.
Job scams have been a problem for years.
In 2020, BBB estimated 14 million victims with $2 billion in direct losses related to job scams.
Last year, the 2020 BBB Employment Scams Report by BBB Institute for Marketplace Trust found job scams to be the riskiest of all the scams they tracked in 2018 and 2019.
However, BBB’s study finds that the problem worsened in 2020.
Losses reported to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) about employment scams were up 27% between 2018 and 2020, while complaints to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre (CAFC) nearly doubled in 2020.
