Is that job offer real? How to spot fake recruiters, fake checks, and reshipping scams.

Fake job offer scams have adapted to wherever people actually look for work now: a LinkedIn message from a "talent acquisition manager," a text from an unknown number about a remote data-entry role, a Telegram invite promising $35 an hour to "review products from home." The pitch varies, but the mechanics repeat across almost every version — get you excited about easy remote pay, skip the parts of hiring that would let you verify anything, and get you to move money or personal information before you've had time to think it through. The FTC warns that scammers are "always hiring," using real company names and believable job titles to reach people who are actively job hunting and, often, financially motivated to say yes quickly.

What makes this scam category effective is that it doesn't feel like a scam while it's happening. There's no obviously broken English, no request to click a suspicious link — instead there's a friendly conversation, an offer letter with a logo on it, and a "recruiter" who answers questions promptly. The manipulation isn't in the grammar; it's in what the process quietly skips: a real interview, a verifiable company domain, and any hiring step that doesn't ask you to pay, ship, or wire something.

The fake check overpayment scam

You're hired, and shortly after, a check arrives — sometimes framed as a "sign-on bonus," sometimes as money to buy your own laptop and software. The instructions are always some version of the same trick: deposit the check, keep a portion as pay, and wire or gift-card the rest back to the company, a "vendor," or a "shipping agent." The check clears at first, because banks make funds available before they've actually verified a check is genuine. The FTC explains that it can take weeks for a bank to discover a check is counterfeit — and once it does, the bank reverses the deposit and holds you responsible for the full amount, including whatever you already sent onward. The employer disappears, the check bounces, and the money you wired is gone for good.

Gift cards and crypto for "equipment"

A close cousin of the check scam skips the check entirely and asks you to pay upfront. You need a laptop, specialized software, a "training kit," or access to a portal, and you're told to buy gift cards, send cryptocurrency, or wire funds to cover it — with a promise that it'll be reimbursed in your first paycheck. No legitimate employer requires a new hire to personally fund their own equipment or onboarding before day one, and no legitimate reimbursement process runs through gift card codes read aloud over chat. This is simply a payment extracted from you with a job offer as the cover story.

The interview that never leaves the chat app

A real hiring process eventually involves a phone call or a video call with someone whose identity you can cross-check, and it happens on a work email tied to the company's actual domain. Fake recruiters avoid all of that. The entire "interview" is a scripted back-and-forth of typed questions on WhatsApp, Telegram, or Signal, often with suspiciously fast responses at odd hours, and the offer letter arrives from a free email address or a domain that only superficially resembles the real company's. If you can't find the recruiter on the company's actual employee list, can't get a call on a number you can trace to the business, and can't verify the domain independently, you're not in a hiring process — you're in a script.

Warning signs

• You were contacted out of the blue about a job you never applied for, often for vague "remote," "data entry," or "product reviewer" work
• The recruiter only communicates through WhatsApp, Telegram, or Signal, and never offers a phone or video call
• The email domain is a free provider (Gmail, Outlook) or a near-miss of the real company's domain
• You're asked to pay for equipment, training, a background check, or "onboarding" — in any form, including gift cards or crypto
• You receive a check and are told to deposit it and send part of it elsewhere
• You're asked for a bank account number, routing number, or a photo of your ID before any real interview has happened
• The job involves receiving packages at your home and reshipping them, or "processing" payments through your own account
• Pay sounds high for minimal, vaguely described work, and the process moves unusually fast

None of these signs need to appear together for a listing to be worth stepping back from. A single request to pay for your own equipment, or a single check that shows up before any real interview, is reason enough to stop and verify independently before doing anything else.

What to do if you're mid-conversation with a recruiter right now

Pause before replying to anything involving money, a check, your bank details, or a photo of your ID. Open a new browser tab and go to the company's real website directly — not through any link the recruiter sent — and look for the role on their official careers page. Search the recruiter's name alongside the word "scam." Ask for a video call on a number or platform you control, and if they refuse or make excuses, treat that as your answer. A legitimate employer will never penalize you for taking a day to verify who they are.

If you already sent money, cashed a check, or gave your bank details

Call your bank or credit union immediately and explain what happened — ask them to flag the deposit or reverse a pending wire if it's still possible, and follow their guidance on the check specifically, since a fake check can take weeks to be identified as fraudulent even after it initially "clears." If you sent gift card codes, contact the retailer that issued them right away; some can freeze an unused balance if you're fast enough. If you shared a bank account or routing number, tell your bank so they can watch for unauthorized activity, and consider closing the account if you're concerned it's compromised. If you sent a photo ID, put a fraud alert or credit freeze on your credit file, since a copied ID can be used to open other accounts in your name. Keep every message, email, and the offer letter itself — screenshots included — and report the scam to the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov and to the platform where the initial contact happened (LinkedIn, WhatsApp, or your email provider).

Other variants you'll run into

The fake check, the equipment fee, and the chat-only interview are the three pillars, but the same underlying con gets repackaged into several other shapes. The job title and the platform change; the request to move money or goods on someone else's behalf never does.

• The mystery shopper / product reviewer scam. You're "hired" to evaluate a retailer or a money-transfer service, sent a check, and told to use part of it to buy gift cards or send a wire as your first assignment, keeping the rest as pay. The check is fake and the "assignment" is just a way to extract money you never actually had.
• The reshipping / package-processing job. You're told your job is to receive packages at home, remove the original packaging and receipt, repackage the contents, and ship them to a new address the "employer" provides. In reality, those packages were bought with stolen credit cards, and you've just become the link in the chain that launders the goods and puts your own address on a fraud investigation. This is money muling with a shipping label instead of a bank transfer, and it's not a job — it's a way for someone else's crime to end up traced back to you.
• The check-cashing / payment-processing "job." You're asked to receive payments into your own bank account, keep a cut, and forward the rest. This is money laundering regardless of how it's framed, and being the account that moved the funds can trigger your own bank freezing your account or law enforcement contacting you directly.
• The personal assistant scam. A "busy executive" hires you as a remote assistant and, within days, asks you to buy gift cards for clients, family members, or a "conference," reimbursing you later. The reimbursement never comes; the gift card codes were the entire point.
• The fake staffing agency. A convincing agency website and a real-sounding recruiter represent a client company that, on closer inspection, has no record of the role or the agency at all. The website itself can be assembled in an afternoon.

How it plays out: a realistic example

This is a composite, illustrative scenario — not a report of a specific real case.

Priya is between jobs and applies to a handful of remote listings on a general job board. A few days later, a recruiter named "Alex" messages her on LinkedIn about a data-entry and customer-support role at a company she's vaguely heard of, paying more than she expected for the hours involved. The entire process happens over WhatsApp: a PDF job description, a short round of typed questions, and an offer letter two days later — no call, no video, just a friendly, fast-moving conversation. Alex explains that remote hires are issued a company laptop, and a check for $2,300 arrives by mail a few days after she accepts, with instructions to deposit it, keep $300 as a "welcome bonus," and wire the remaining $2,000 to the "IT vendor" who will ship the laptop.

Priya's bank shows the funds as available two days after depositing the check, so she wires the $2,000 as instructed. A week later, her bank flags the check as counterfeit and reverses the deposit — she's now $2,000 out of pocket for a wire she can't get back, on top of losing the $300 "bonus" that was never really hers to begin with. Alex and the "company" are unreachable, the LinkedIn profile is gone, and the domain the offer letter came from no longer resolves. Nothing about the process felt rushed or careless in the moment — the mistake was trusting that a check clearing meant the check was real, when only her bank's full verification, which takes far longer than the funds being "available," actually confirms that.

Prevention that goes one level deeper

A few verification habits, applied consistently before you accept anything, make almost every version of this scam fall apart on its own. The goal is to verify the employer independently, using channels the recruiter doesn't control.

• Match the email domain to the real company website. Go to the company's site directly, find its actual domain, and compare it character-by-character to the recruiter's email address. A single swapped letter or an extra word is a scam, not a typo.
• Look the recruiter up on LinkedIn before replying seriously. Check for a real work history, mutual connections, and a profile that's more than a few weeks old. A brand-new profile with no shared connections and a generic headshot is a red flag on its own.
• Call the company through a number you found yourself. Never use a phone number the recruiter provides. Search the company's official site or a source like its verified LinkedIn page, call the general line, and ask to confirm the role and the recruiter's name.
• Treat "pay to get hired" as a hard rule, not a judgment call. Equipment fees, training fees, background-check fees, "refundable" deposits — a real employer absorbs these costs itself. Any version of paying to start a job is disqualifying on its own.
• Never deposit a check tied to a job you haven't fully verified. If a check shows up before you've confirmed the company independently, that alone is enough reason to not deposit it, regardless of how official it looks.

Quick checklist

• Verify the recruiter's email domain against the company's real website before replying with any personal information
• Insist on a phone or video call — treat a chat-app-only process as disqualifying
• Never pay for equipment, training, or onboarding, in cash, gift cards, or crypto
• Never deposit a check and wire back part of it, no matter how the request is framed
• Never agree to receive and reship packages, or receive and forward payments, on someone else's behalf
• Hold off on sharing a bank account number or ID photo until you've independently confirmed the employer is real

Job hunting already involves sending your information to strangers by design, which is exactly why this scam works as well as it does. Building a short verification habit — checking the domain, insisting on a call, refusing to pay or ship anything — costs a few extra minutes and closes off nearly every version of this scam, no matter which platform or job title it shows up wearing.

Frequently asked questions