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Personal & Everyday LifeAnywhere· Source · Dec 2025

Job seekers can't easily tell whether a remote job offer that arrived by text is a scam before they send money.

Job seekers looking for online or remote work

Where it stands

  1. Sourced (done)
  2. Kit (done)
  3. Wanted (next)
  4. Building
  5. Solved

How this problem came to be

  1. Found2 sourcesny1.com, ic3.gov
  2. Quoted4 claimseach checked against its page
  3. BriefWrittenand what solved looks like
  4. Market4 signals20,000 people
  5. Kit5 steps21 tools · 6 routes
  6. People0 want0 live it · 0 would test

The problem, broken down

Who it hurts
People looking for work online, including those new to the job market, returning after a break, or newly arrived in a country.
The moment
A friendly 'recruiter' on WhatsApp offers paid tasks like rating products, then asks for a deposit to unlock earnings.
What people do today
People search the company name, ask friends, or find out after paying. Reports go to fraud agencies after the loss.
Why it's unsolved
Scams are built to feel normal, change names often, and start on private messaging apps that no job board checks.
What solved looks like
A free checker where someone pastes the message or job offer and gets a plain answer on whether it matches known scam patterns, such as unsolicited texts, paid tasks or upfront deposits, with what to do next and where to report it.

Evidence

Every claim is tied to the source it comes from
AP via NY1: Beware of scams that promise good pay for completing easy online tasks (July 2025) ↗
  1. 1Reported losses to job scams in the US more than tripled from 2020 to 2023 and topped $220 million in the first half of 2024.
  2. 2About 20,000 people reported gamified task scams in the first part of 2024, compared with 5,000 in all of 2023.
  3. 3The scams typically begin with an unexpected text or WhatsApp message from a 'recruiter', and later ask victims to deposit their own money, often in crypto.
FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center: 2025 IC3 Annual Report ↗
  1. 4The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center recorded $362.9 million in employment-scam losses in 2025, up from $264.2 million in 2024.

Written from the cited sources. Anything they don't say is left as a question, not a guess.

Sources

From a public page with a citation.

  1. [1]AP via NY1: Beware of scams that promise good pay for completing easy online tasks (July 2025)
  2. [2]FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center: 2025 IC3 Annual Report
What the source says, in short

Reported losses to job scams in the US more than tripled from 2020 to 2023 and topped $220 million in the first half of 2024. About 20,000 people reported gamified task scams in the first part of 2024, compared with 5,000 in all of 2023. The scams typically begin with an unexpected text or WhatsApp message from a 'recruiter', and later ask victims to deposit their own money, often in crypto. The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center recorded $362.9 million in employment-scam losses in 2025, up from $264.2 million in 2024.

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