Job-seeker scams are now going after thousands of laid-off federal workers whose positions have been slashed as part of cuts from the Department of Government Efficiency.
The scammers tend to create spoof websites that resemble legitimate employers and then post fake job openings or email and text prospective employees about their fraudulent job opportunity in the hopes of getting the victim to divulge personal and financial information via a form or other means.
Since 2019, victims of job opening scams have lost nearly $3,000 on average, according to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3). Now, scammers are going after former federal employees.
“I got a ’job offer’ the other day that was, you know, clearly a scam,” dismissed federal employee Lea Clark told WJLA-TV.
Clicking links in scam messages or responding to scam texts can allow scammers to take personal information, the FBI told WJLA-TV.
On the Job Scam Report podcast that helps job seekers avoid scams, one person warned that it is easy for scammers to find former federal employees on platforms such as LinkedIn.
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“It’s really easy to identify who was a federal employee who got laid off because they’ll usually put their end date and it’s very easy to target them for scams. You have to really be paying attention to what you’re responding to and not allow that desperation to have income coming in cloud your judgment,” Ashley Price-Horton, founder of CyberCareer Advancemen, said on the podcast Monday.
Using hashtags to identify oneself as former government employees also makes it easier for scammers to find a target.
IC3 recommends searching for the purported hiring company’s name — those with multiple websites could be scams. The center also says never to provide credit card information to employers, to withhold bank account information until you can verify your employer is real, and not to send money to people one knows only online.
Legitimate employers, IC3 explains, ask for bank account information only for payroll and other personal identifying information after they hire, not during the hiring process.
