Your phone might be inundated with texts offering you a job these days. However, the Federal Trade Commission says many of those job offers aren’t from legitimate companies — they are from scammers.
Many people have already lost millions to these text job scams — and the fraud, the FTC says, is on the rise. Consumers reported losing $14.8 million in 2023 — a figure that jumped to $61.2 million in 2024.
“And the worrying thing is that we know these high numbers are just the tip of the iceberg, ” said Kati Daffan, an assistant director of the FTC’s Division of Marketing Practices, “because, of course, not everyone reports to us when they experience this fraud.”
In September 2024, Sunita Dhougoda, a 37-year-old freelance software engineer from North Carolina, also received a text offering a job. Without much thought, the mother of two clicked a Microsoft Teams link and had what turned out to be a written — not video — interview that lasted over an hour.
“The interview went well, and they told me they would get back to me in a few days,” said Dhougoda.
Three days later, an offer letter arrived — but the email it came from, careers@assurecarecareers.us, instead of the legitimate @assurecare.com, raised red flags. “It was a scam, so I never responded,” she said. AssureCare did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Dhougoda was lucky not to fall victim to the job scam. However, over the past four years, job scams via text have seen a sharp rise in both reports and financial losses. According to the FTC, in 2020, there were 4,872 reports of text-based job scams, resulting in $2 million in losses. By 2024, those reports had surged to 20,673, with losses escalating to $61.2 million.
“Anything that is immediate, you’re hardwired to respond to it. So, a text has a certain amount of immediacy to it. So you see that (and think) I need to either click on that link or I need to call that phone number, whatever it is that it’s asking you to do,” said James E. Lee, president of the nonprofit Identity Theft Resource Center. “We’re just sort of natural instinct is to do that, which is why it’s important we resist that natural instinct.”
Some experts say people are more vulnerable to job scams during uncertain times like these, when a wave of job cuts draws widespread attention and recession fears make the economy feel increasingly unstable.
“Now that the labor market is more competitive, people may be willing to take jobs that they weren’t necessarily willing to take before,” said Kory Kantenga, LinkedIn’s head of economics for the Americas. “As a result, there may be some advertisements that they receive that they would have previously ignored, that they’re willing to click on. Folks who are looking to commit scams know this, and they may be taking advantage of that as a result.”
Watch the video above to learn how the job market and economic uncertainty fuel the rise of text job scams — and how to protect yourself.
