Fake recruiters use AI polish as job-scam losses climb
Employment scams are drawing more reports and higher losses as fraudsters pose as recruiters, send fake meeting links and demand upfront payments.
By Hana Yoshida · Markets Reporter
3 min read
Employment scams are becoming harder for job seekers to spot, and reported losses have risen sharply. The Better Business Bureau says nearly 50,000 people reported employment-scam victimization over the past three years, while losses tied to the schemes grew from $90 million in 2020 to $501 million in 2024.
The reports to the BBB doubled last year from the prior year, according to the agency. Roger Grimes, a chief information security officer adviser at KnowBe4, told Fortune that fraudsters increasingly use polished language, fake recruiter identities and familiar hiring tools to make the approaches look legitimate.
Grimes, who has worked in cybersecurity for nearly 40 years, said scammers typically want either direct payments from applicants or a path into a victim’s employer. KnowBe4 works with more than 70,000 organizations on human and AI-related security risks, according to Fortune.
Fake interviews and upfront fees
Mary Ann Morrison, an instructional design manager in Fayetteville, Arkansas, told Fortune she received an interview email after applying for a job at the University of Arkansas in Little Rock. The message included a Microsoft Teams meeting link, but Morrison said the link did not look right and prompted her to update Teams even though her own app showed no update notice.
Morrison checked the sender, searched for the recruiter in the university directory and compared the email domain with the university’s human resources domain. She told Fortune she could not verify the recruiter and reported the message to the university, which said it would warn others about possible scams.
Vanessa Goodman, who works in technology sales and marketing near Houston, told Fortune she began receiving messages after posting on LinkedIn that she was “open to work.” She said people posing as recruiters for Microsoft and Palo Alto Networks contacted her, sent job information and later asked for documents they said should be prepared by a third party for $800.
Goodman told Fortune the supposed recruiters said she would be reimbursed and sent payment links through services including PayPal, Remitly and Upwork. She said the sender name on one PayPal link did not match the person contacting her, and the scammers pressed her to pay by a deadline before she blocked them across payment apps, Teams and email.
The contact did not stop immediately, Goodman said. She told Fortune the scammer called her three times late at night at the phone number listed on her resume and that she eventually uninstalled WhatsApp from her phone.
AI raises the risk
Grimes told Fortune that scammers often lure applicants with appealing offers, including high pay, remote work and benefits such as child or elder care. He said some fraudulent listings appear directly on job platforms such as Indeed and LinkedIn.
New graduates are frequent targets, Grimes said, especially in a competitive job market. LinkedIn data cited by Fortune found that nearly a third of Gen Z respondents said they had been a victim of job scams.
Grimes said many scammers operate outside the United States because cross-border cybercrime is hard to track. An Oxford-linked cybercrime index cited by Fortune ranked Russia, Ukraine and India among top cybercrime hubs.
AI is making the scams easier to run, Grimes said, by reducing language barriers and helping fraudsters avoid detection. He told Fortune that more than 80% of phishing attempts use AI, and blockchain firm Chainalysis found AI-enabled scams were 4.5 times more profitable than traditional scams.
How job seekers can check offers
Grimes advised applicants to verify recruiters through official company websites, phone numbers and email domains before responding. He also said applicants should be wary of new recruiter accounts, sparse social profiles, requests for upfront fees and links asking them to download software or documents.
He told Fortune many victims later said they had sensed something was wrong but were drawn in by an offer that matched what they wanted in a new job.
This story draws on original reporting from Fortune.