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Youve probably felt the thrill that comes with receiving a job offer. You read the congratulatory email, begin to imagine life in your new role, then quickly fill out all the required HR paperwork and receive the necessary equipment. And if all is well, you start preparing for your first day. But what if you find out that the job isnt real? In the first three quarters of 2024, Americans lost $514 million due to business and job opportunity scams, and the Federal Trade Commission received over 93,000 complaints about this type of fraud. In the worst cases, people have already resigned from their jobs before they realize their new position isnt realand suddenly, they dont have a paycheck or health insurance. Recent economic uncertainty and layoffs may make people more vulnerable to these scams and worsen the problem. But it is possible to outsmart the con artists by understanding why people fall for employment scams, how they work, and the red flags to look out for. What kinds of job offer scams are out there? Scammers use a range of tactics to trick job seekers. Many of the common methods start in a similar way: by creating fake job posts, either with branding that matches a recognized company or with a fraudulent company to trick people into applying for the job. These posts appear on Craigslist or Facebook marketplace but also on sites like LinkedIn and Indeed. Cybercriminals will also pose as recruiters or staffing agencies and proactively reach out to their targets offering an interview or a job. Employment scams can be incredibly sophisticated, down to phone or video job interviews and emails that look legitimate. Here are some examples of where the scams may go from there: Identity theft scams The goal of these scams is identity theft and financial fraud. Fake recruiters will research the job seeker fully, including such things as their work history and industry contacts. This information can be found on social media (for instance on Facebook and Twitter) or on professional platforms such as LinkedIn. It doesnt take long to get the basics needed for the scam to develop. The results of this research are aligned with the pitch used during the initial contact with the victim job seeker. The pitch could include references to previous employers, peers, or desired job options, in order to determine if the victim is interested. If the victim is willing to discuss the job offer, the authenticity element of the scam has succeeded. Alternatively, scammers may make fake postings, often on social media or a spoofed version of the companys legitimate website. Now, the authority aspect kicks in. Since the recruiter/fake employer has all the power in this dynamic, their authority is rarely questioned. Job seekers are asked to surrender personal information for background screenings. Sometimes this data is submitted via email or uploaded to a fake recruiting website the criminal has created. Or after an interview, the applicant may be asked to provide information, like their address and phone number, so a formal offer can be sent. Thats often followed up with a request to provide their Social Security number, photos of their drivers license or other forms of ID, and/or bank information. Criminals can then sell this personal info to marketing firms or other criminals or keep it and use the details themselves for identity fraud. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) issued a warning to Americans about bad actors who use fake job offers to steal money and personal information. The scam artists also are able to file fraudulent unemployment claims in their victims name, which not only costs the government, but also could significantly impact the victims tax bill and eligibility for future benefits. Reshipping scams Marcus Ramos, 50, had been out of a job for nearly a month when he got an email from a recruiter named Glen with an enticing offer. For a base pay of $2,400 a month, Ramos could work from his Las Vegas home sending out packages for a company called Filly Shipping, with a promised $40 bonus for each package he mailed. This is how Ramos fell for a reshipping scam, which accounts for the vast majority of scam job offers reported to the BBB, says Josh Planos, spokesperson for the BBBs investigations initiative. In these scams, he describes, organized crime units ask victims to reship stolen goods (without informing them that theyre stolen), creating a complicated pathway to obscure the goods origins. Ramoss scammers engaged with him primarily by phone, calling or texting from a variety of numbers originating in different states. In addition to his initial contact, Glen, two others got in touch with Ramos regularly, using presumably fake names and only identifying themselves as members of the companys shipping department. Not much is known about these scammers by the organizations that track victim reports and The Department of Justice didnt respond to Fast Companys request for comment. But both ARPs director of fraud victim support Amy Nofziger and Planos say most of these criminals are from overseas, working out of call centers. This means theyre operating out of places with call center infrastructure, says Planos, specifically citing Eastern Europe, Russia, and Nigeria. Theyre largely targeting people in the U.S., Canada, and Australia, Nofziger adds. With the reshipping scams, these are criminal enterprises. These are not slapstick operations, says Planos. These are well-oiled machines that have keywords down, that are paying for SEO [and] very visible social media ads. With scammers operating internationally, its difficult to police them from the U.S. Fake check scams In fake check scams, employers send new hires a check to pay for items theyll allegedly need for the job, like home office supplies. After depositing the checks, victims will appear to have money in their accounts, which they use to buy supplies from a vendor provided by the fake employer. The supplies never show up, and the victims bank flags the check as fake, removing that money from their accountsmeaning the victims used their own money to pay for supplies theyll never receive. Prepaid gift card scams work similarly. More than a third of the jobs scam complaints that we received involved fake checks, says Planos, adding that the FTC found a 65% increase in fake check complaints between 2015 and 2020. Anecdotally, hes seen these types of scams perpetrated most against younger job seekers, who may not have as much experience with checks and may be less likely to find depositing one at the start of a new job suspicious. We saw that the largest group of job fraud victims were between the ages of 25 and 34 . . . people who are navigating independent life for the first time, says Planos. Planos shared statements with Fast Company from several victims in that age group, including someone named Sarah, who was contacted by a scammer pretending to be a representative of The Humane Society, where shed applied for a job via Indeed. After a convincing interview with someone posing as a real staffer, Sarah was sent what she later learned were fake checks to buy home office supplies. When problems arose with her purchases (which her employers blamed on COVID-19 and a holiday rush), she was asked to pay other vendors via Zelle, CashApp, and Apple Pay. She ultimately lost $7,000. A family member of a Tessian employee nearly fell victim to another version of this scam. After receiving a job offer, they instructed her to send a personal check to a specific supplier to purchase a new desk and laptop. In this instance, the attacker was posing as both a recruiter and a phony supplierthe equipment would never have arrived, and they would have kept her money. Fortunately, her guard went up, and she didnt send them the check. Recruiter-focused scams While criminals will impersonate recruiters with no hesitation, they also target recruiters directly because of their access to high-value targets from executives to human resources managers. Criminals will conduct phishing attacks, posing as a job seeker, against a recruiter and include malicious attachments disguised as résumés. If theyre successful, the malware installed by the criminal gives them access to all the information the recruiter has available, as well as access to corporate contacts and records. This enables the criminal to expand the scam. In a variation of this tactic, the criminal will pose as an existing client, and either entice the recruiter to disclose corporate authentication credentials via a recruiting portal that was recently launched or again attempt to install malware on the system by offering up malicious attachments. In the second scenario, the criminal will develop a website that uses the branding of the corporate client, and even register a domain with a familiar naming convention, all in order to offer a sense of false security to the soon-to-be-victimized recruiter. Once the corporate credentials are exposed, the criminal has a foothold on the victims network, and the opportunity to expand their scam further. How to tell if a job or job offer is a scam Employment scams arent magic. They work by hijacking the normal workflow of applying for a job. Since job seekers and recruiters are more focused on developing a workforce or landing a job, subtle cues that something is amiss are often overlooked. Not sure if that new job offer is legit or not? Here are a few things that should set off alarms in your head. Scam warning signs in job listings Here are some possible red flags for job scams that you can spot before you even apply: If the job seems too good to be true, it usually is. Employment scams often promise high salaries for only a few hours of work a day, move very quickly, or dont involve thorough interviews. Work-from-home jobs that involve receiving and reshipping packages Mystery shopper or secret shopper positions The job is listed on a job board, but not on the companys website The more vague the job description, the better the odds its not legitimate. Email addresses that dont match other email addresses for the employer or that use free email clients like Gmail or Yahoo. (For example, is the email coming from john.smith@companyx.com or jsmith@companyxjobs.com?) The recruiter or manager doesnt have a profile on the job board or that profile doesnt seem to fit their role. The job listing mentions an application fee Background check requests or requests for information required for a background check (such as social security numbers, address details, date of birth, passport details, bank details, etc.) with the initial application. Ads that offer information about hidden or unadvertised federal jobs Postings that refer you to a toll-free phone number to learn more about the job. Scam warning signs for job interviews Sometimes there may be warnings during the interview process that a job is not quite on the up-and-up. Keep in mind that interviewers are people who may not be skilled at what theyre doing, so one of these may not indicate a definite scambut they may be a sign to look deeper. Interviews that dont take place in-person, via a secure video platform, or through a straightforward phone call. Interviews that are chat or text-based (unless as a reasonable accommodation for a disability) Interviewers that dont have many questions and/or claim to know all they need from your resume/job board profile. Interviewers that focus more on work you will be doing and act like youve already committed to the role. Scam warning signs throughout the hiring process These red flags might come up at any point during the application, interview or hiring process. Requests or requirements to purchase startup equipment or to pay upfront for background investigations or screenings. Employers who send an employment contract to physically sign that asks for personally identifiable information (like a bank account number) could also be a sign of a scam operation. Legitimate companies will ask for that sort of thing after an employee is hired. Asking for your credit card number. Youre getting emails, messages, or calls from recruiters with an unusual sense of urgency or that ask for you to make a commitment before learning more about the job or require you to start immediately. How to avoid scam jobs Employment scams show no signs of slowing down in the coming months as economic, labor, and remote work trends persist. It can be hard to slow down and trust your gut in such an emotional and high-stakes process like a job search. Looking out for the warning signs and common tactics scammers use can help ensure your next job offer is one to truly get excited about. So before you turn in your two weeks notice and buy that new equipment, take a few steps to ensure your new job offer is legitimate. Dont think youre immune. As all generations look for flexible and remote work options, its important to raise awareness about the widespread prevalence of job scams at all career levels in order to help prevent more people from taking the bait, especially with telecommuting being an undeniable part of the future of our workplaces, says FlexJobs founder and CEO Sara Sutton Fell. But a by-product of the proliferation of positions open to telecommuters is the increase of more sophisticated work-from-home scams. Findings from a FlexJobs survey of over 2,600 workers indicates that one-fifth of millennials have been scammed when seeking work-from-home positionseven more than seniors (the group previously thought to be the most susceptible). Part of the problem is that scammers get more sophisticated every year, says Sutton Fell. Gone are the days when a scam could be assumed to be fairly obvious to anyone with a healthy dose of skepticism, she explains, Yet, many job seekers dont realize this, and so they still feel confident that they would know a scam if they saw one and would be able to avoid them. Sutton Fell also points out that scammers have broadened their target audience from jobs for more unskilled jobs such as mystery shopping, envelope stuffing, and check processing, to more professional opportunities in a wide variety of career types and with name-brand companies. By impersonating trusted companies like these, scammers are able to get unsuspecting job seekers to let their guard down much faster, and to successfully get personal information from them more easily, she says. Be careful on LinkedIn and other job boards. Just because something is on LinkedIn, Indeed, or another well-known job board, doesnt mean that the job posting or recruiter has been verified for the site. For example, in a statement Indeed says it uses a dedicated search quality teamdeploying a variety of techniques to assess the suitability and validity of job listings [removing] tens of millions of job listings each month that do not meet our quality guidelines. Indeed also says it encourages job seekers to report any suspicious advertisements to them or to the police. That said, rooting out scammers on job sites is akin to playing whack-a-mole, says Planos, as new ones keep cropping up, and veteran scammers keep evolving. Dont pay. You shouldnt have to pay to obtain gainful employment. If youre asked for money upfront to cover training, recruiting fees, or miscellaneous expenses, this is a clear warning the job offer very likely isnt legitimate. If youre ever asked to get a check and deposit it and then send money out, its a scam. If youre ever asked to purchase prepaid gift cards . . . it is 100% a scam, says Nofziger. Same goes for new employers asking you to use cryptocurrency machines or to immediately supply them with bank account information or Venmo details. For a legitimate job, direct deposit would be set up after youre hired. Scrutinize emails and research recruiters. If you receive an email about a job opportunity, always click on the senders email address to confirm that it is actually associated with the company. Tessian research found that only about half of people pay attention to the senders email address when they check messages, but this is often an important clue. Most companies larger than a mom-and-pop shop will have a corporate email domain, so you can expect emails to come from that domain rather than a personal email account. For example, johndoe@fastcompany.com not johndoefastcompany@gmail.com. Check the companys website. When you apply through a third-party site or get contacted by a recruiter about a job. Go to the organizations website to confirm the job opening is there and look for information on hiring procedures and policies. When in doubt, call the company to confirm legitimacy using the contact information that theyve provided on their website only. Additionally, Google the hiring company using the company name only. If you see multiple websites for the same company, that should serve as a warning. The Better Business Bureau (BBB) also suggests running a Web search with the companys name and the word scam. This will let you know if the company has scammed people before, or if a well-known company is aware of scammers using their name. To combat job scams, some organizations are offering information on their websites about what types of messages they will and wont send during the hiring process. Companies that have had their name used for scams in the past are especially likely to have this information readily available. For example, GE has a dedicated page on its website explaining how to identify a fraudulent job offer. With the GE name and logo featured prominently, The perpetrators will often ask recipients to complete bogus recruitment documentation, such as application forms, terms and conditions of employment, or visa forms. UnitedHealth Group experienced a similar unauthorized use of its name and logo in phony job ads. Cybercriminals post their ads on legitimate job sites and often use familiar-looking or convincing company logos, language, and links to fake websites that appear to be real, a company spokesperson writes. These sites might also charge fees for services. Typically, after a few days the thieves close down the scam and disappear. Trust your gut. If the offer sounds too good to be true, then it probably is. Check Google, and search for the recruiters details. If they dont match up, or if they dont exist, treat this as a giant red flag. Also, avoid meetings and interviews that are conducted via social media or generic platforms such as Google Hangouts. Confirm with the company directly. Sharing information for a background check can be tricky because there are companies that require this. However, you shouldnt hesitate to contact the company directly and confirm they are requesting a background check and are actively working with the recruiter. By the time you get to this stage, the hiring company is already aware of who you are. Theyll be happy to confirm the need for a background check, as well as verify the recruiter. The key to stopping scams like these are keeping a level head, doing a gut check, and having the confidence to verify requests and offers. If you push a scammer too hard to verify details, theyll fold and revoke the offer. But legitimate recruiters and job seekers will have no problem proving themselves to you in a way that leaves no room for suspicion. What to do if youve been scammed If you fall prey to any of these scams, there are a few steps youll want to take. Check and monitor your credit: First, keep a close eye on your financial accounts for fraudulent activity and set up credit monitoring to ensure no one uses your personal information. (Consider a credit freeze, which prevents new credit from being issued without your direct permission.) Report the scam: Report the incident to the website where the job was posted, as well as the company being spoofed. And report the incident to your local FBI field office or the Internet Crime Complaint Center. If you act quickly enough, you might be able to prevent the scammers from taking advantage of the information they obtained. Move forward: Besides costing Ramos money to ship out packages, getting involved in a hiring scam affected him psychologically. It makes me feel like I cannot really trust [anybody] anymore, he says. Hes still looking for work, but more cautiously. But to find a new job, Ramos has had to bounce back: Youve just got to pick up the pieces and move on. Coming forward as a victim, Nofziger and Planos agree, is one of the best ways to stop scammers, because it helps others identify red flags. But the shame of falling for an employment scam can keep victims quiet. Job hunting is stressful enough, but when the job youre hoping for turns out to be a scam, the sense of embarrassment and loss compounds things. For employers, employment scams can create reputation and compliance problems, since criminals will leverage established brands for legitimacy. Chris Morris, Jessica Klein, Steve Ragan, and Lydia Dishman also contributed writing, reporting, and/or advice to this article and a previous version.
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With its powerful camera, the French Navy surveillance plane scouring the Baltic Sea zoomed in on a cargo ship plowing the waters belowcloser, closer, and closer still until the camera operator could make out details on the vessel’s front deck and smoke pouring from its chimney.The long-range Atlantique 2 aircraft on a new mission for NATO then shifted its high-tech gaze onto another target, and another after that until, after more than five hours on patrol, the plane’s array of sensors had scoped out the bulk of the Balticfrom Germany in the west to Estonia in the northeast, bordering Russia.The flight’s mere presence in the skies above the strategic sea last week, combined with military ships patrolling on the waters, also sent an unmistakable message: The NATO alliance is ratcheting up its guard against suspected attempts to sabotage underwater energy and data cables and pipelines that crisscross the Baltic, prompted by a growing catalogue of incidents that have damaged them.“We will do everything in our power to make sure that we fight back, that we are able to see what is happening and then take the next steps to make sure that it doesn’t happen again. And our adversaries should know this,” NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said this month in announcing a new alliance mission, dubbed “Baltic Sentry,” to protect the underwater infrastructure vital to the economic well-being of Baltic-region nations. What’s under the Baltic? Power and communications cables and gas pipelines stitch together the nine countries with shores on the Baltic, a relatively shallow and nearly landlocked sea. A few examples are the 152-kilometer (94-mile) Balticconnector pipeline that carries gas between Finland and Estonia, the high-voltage Baltic Cable connecting the power grids of Sweden and Germany, and the 1,173-kilometer (729-mile) C-Lion1 telecommunications cable between Finland and Germany. Why are cables important? Undersea pipes and cables help power economies, keep houses warm, and connect billions of people. More than 1.3 million kilometers (807,800 miles) of fiber optic cablesmore than enough to stretch to the moon and backspan the world’s oceans and seas, according to TeleGeography, which tracks and maps the vital communication networks. The cables are typically the width of a garden hose. But 97% of the world’s communications, including trillions of dollars of financial transactions, pass through them each day.“In the last two months alone, we have seen damage to a cable connecting Lithuania and Sweden, another connecting Germany and Finland, and most recently, a number of cables linking Estonia and Finland. Investigations of all of these cases are still ongoing. But there is reason for grave concern,” Rutte said on January 14. What’s causing alarm? At least 11 Baltic cables have been damaged since October 2023the most recent being a fiber optic cable connecting Latvia and the Swedish island of Gotland, reported to have ruptured on Sunday. Although cable operators note that subsea cable damage is commonplace, the frequency and concentration of incidents in the Baltic heightened suspicions that damage might have been deliberate.There also are fears that Russia could target cables as part of a wider campaign of so-called “hybrid warfare” to destabilize European nations helping Ukraine defend itself against the full-scale invasion that Moscow has been pursuing since 2022.Without specifically blaming Russia, Rutte said: “Hybrid means sabotage. Hybrid means cyberattacks. Hybrid means sometimes even assassination attacks, attempts, and in this case, it means hitting on our critical undersea infrastructure.”Finnish police suspect that the Eagle S, an oil tanker that damaged the Estlink 2 power cable and two other communications cables linking Finland and Estonia on Dec. 25th, is part of Moscow’s “shadow fleet” used to avoid war-related sanctions on Russian oil exports.Finnish authorities seized the tanker shortly after it left a Russian port and apparently cut the cables by dragging its anchor. Finnish investigators allege the ship left an almost 100-kilometer (62-mile) long anchor trail on the seabed. Intelligence agencies’ doubts Several Western intelligence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of their work, told the Associated Press that recent damage was most likely accidental, seemingly caused by anchors being dragged by ships that were poorly maintained and poorly crewed.One senior intelligence official told AP that ships’ logs and mechanical failures with ships’ anchors were among “multiple indications” pointing away from Russian sabotage. The official said Russian cables were also severed. Another Western official, also speaking anonymously to discuss intelligence matters, said Russia sent an intelligence-gathering vessel to the site of one cable rupture to investigate the damage.The Washington Post first reported on the emerging consensus among U.S. and European security services that maritime accidents likely caused recent damage. Cable operators advise caution The European Subsea Cables Association, representing cable owners and operators, noted in November after faults were reported on two Baltic links that, on average, a subsea cable is damaged somewhere in the world every three days. In northern European waters, the main causes of damage are commercial fishing or ship anchors, it said.In the fiber-optic cable rupture on Sunday connecting Latvia and Sweden, Swedish authorities detained a Maltese-flagged ship bound for South America with a cargo of fertilizer.Navibulgar, a Bulgarian company that owns the Vezhen, said any damage was unintentional and that the ship’s crew discovered while navigating in extremely bad weather that its left anchor appeared to have dragged on the seabed. NATO’s ‘Baltic Sentry’ mission The alliance is deploying warships, maritime patrol aircraft and naval drones for the mission to provide “enhanced surveillance and deterrence.”Aboard the French Navy surveillance flight, the 14-member crew cross-checked ships they spotted from the air against lists of vessels they had been ordered to watch for.“If we witness some suspicious activities from ships as seafor example, ships at very low speed or at anchorage in a position that they shouldn’t be at this timeso this is something we can see,” said the flight commander, Lt. Alban, whose surname was withheld by the French military for security reasons.“We can have a very close look with our sensors to see what is happening.” Burrows reported from London. AP journalists Jill Lawless in London, David Klepper in Washington and Veselin Toshkov in Sofia, Bulgaria, contributed to this report. John Leicester and Emma Burrows, Associated Press
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If youre an egg lover, you know that the cost of a dozen has skyrocketed in recent months. As Fast Company previously reported, depending on where youre located in America, you could be paying anywhere from around $5 per carton to nearly $9. Gone are the days of cheap eggs. But just how bad have things gotten, and where will egg prices likely go in the coming year? Two online egg price tracking tools help crack those answers. Egg price tracking tools The first online egg price tracking tool comes from TradingEconomics.com. Its Eggs US tracker is updated daily and shows how the price of eggs has changed from 2012 to today. Its prices represent the price of futures contracts for eggs. As the site states, Prices for Eggs displayed in Trading Economics are based on over-the-counter (OTC) and contract for difference (CFD) financial instruments. The trackers most recent update shows that the price of a dozen eggs reached $7.09 in January 2025. Thats an increase of over 22%, or $1.28 per dozen, since the beginning of the year. But the chart also reveals some good newsand bad news. If you click on its forecast tab, it will reveal that it expects the price of a dozen eggs to drop to $6.28 by the end of this quarter. However, by the end of 2025, it expects a dozen eggs to surpass even todays high pricetopping out at $7.95 per dozen by the end of December. A second online tool that tracks the price of eggs is from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The tool tracks the average cost of a dozen large Grade A eggs in U.S. cities. While this egg tracking tool will reveal egg prices going back to 1980, the tool is also only updated monthly, so its egg prices are only current until December 2024, when, it reveals, the average cost of a dozen eggs was just $4.146. But those who miss the heyday of cheap eggs might want to avoid this tool, lest they are reminded that, with a few exceptions, up until 2021, the price of a dozen eggs rarely broke the $2 barrier. Why are egg prices skyrocketing? Both charts reveal that egg prices have skyrocketed since around September 2023. But why? As Fast Company previously reported, three main factors are affecting the cost of eggs. The first is inflation: Since 2023, the cost of nearly everything has been going up for American consumers. The second reason is supply chain issues that are partially a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The egg industry continues to suffer from a labor shortage, which hurts production. The third reason is the ongoing bird flu outbreak, which has led to the demise of tens of millions of the creatures we rely on to lay our eggs. President Trump has previously promised on the campaign trail to bring down the prices of eggs, but given the challenges the industry faces, it seems like that is easier said than done.
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