The ubiquity of remote work and online hiring has led to a sharp rise in job scams across industries. In
these swindles—sometimes called employment scams or recruitment
scams—fraudsters impersonate job recruiters from real
companies and convince job seekers, who have often posted their
résumés on job recruiting websites or social media
platforms, that they are taking part in legitimate recruitment
processes or have landed jobs, which are in fact phony and
nonexistent. Usually communicating through email or text message,
the fake recruiters induce victims to hand over personal
information, cash bogus checks, or send money for training or
office equipment.

These are profitable crimes. The financial losses of job scams
swelled when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, from $174.2 million in 2020
to $209.1 million in 2021, to $367.4 million in 2022, according to the Federal Trade Commission
(FTC), a 110% increase in just two years.

Job scams may grow more common with the rapid adoption of chatbots that can mimic human-conversation.
These programs may make it easier for malicious actors whose first
language is not English to converse convincingly with
English-speaking victims. (For a discussion of this and other legal
and business risks of chatbots and generative artificial
intelligence, see WilmerHale’s recent client alert.)

In addition to the victimized jobseekers, these frauds harm the
impersonated companies, by tarnishing their brands and harming
their reputations in the contest for talent, all while creating
significant distractions and unplanned costs. Every case is
different, and a business should work with counsel to respond to
the circumstances of each situation. But in general, companies
should consider the following key steps when responding to a job
scam incident.

• Act Quickly. Malicious actors are
  likely to keep at a fraud so long as it is successful, and to
  desist and move on to the next victim if the company or law
  enforcement take steps to impede the swindle.




• Speak Out. To warn potential victims
  of the fraudulent activity, companies should consider posting a
  public statement advising jobseekers of the fraud to their
  websites, social media accounts, and profiles on recruiter
  websites, such as LinkedIn, Indeed, and ZipRecruiter, once they
  learn of it.




• Report Impersonation Accounts.
  Fraudsters often set up webpages and email accounts that
  impersonate a legitimate company’s website to give the scam a
  believable gloss. For example, a fraudster targeting
  XYZConsulting.com may create the website XYZConsultingJobs.org, to
  which it can lure victims for their “job interviews.”
  Impersonation campaigns often infringe on a company’s
  intellectual property and violate the domain hosts’ terms of
  service. Businesses, either on their own or working with counsel,
  can usually have these impersonation sites taken down by filing
  reports with the web or email domain hosting companies. Likewise,
  companies should report phony job posts to job recruitment websites
  or social media platforms.




• Keep Records. Companies should hold
  on to documentation both of the scams and the financial harm caused
  by the scammers to jobseekers and the company.




• Contact Law Enforcement. The FBI is
  responsible for investigating job scams, and companies, either
  directly or through counsel, should consider reporting job scams to
  the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center
  (“IC3”) and directly to the relevant FBI field office.
  Law enforcement may ask for the documentation both of the scams and
  of the financial harm caused by the scammers to jobseekers and the
  company.




• Send Cease-and-Desist Letters.
  Companies may choose through counsel to send a cease-and-desist
  letter to the malicious actors directly.

The content of this article is intended to provide a general
guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought
about your specific circumstances.