Exclusive: How fraudsters are duping job applicants

• Victims reported losing a combined $501 million in 2024 to these scams, up from $90 million in 2020.

Driving the news: On Tuesday, Socure is publicly sharing details of the weeks-long impersonation scam that Sally reported earlier this year. The blog post was first shared with Axios.

How it works: Sally was strung along through emails, phone calls and video interviews into believing she'd been hired as an executive assistant.

• She found the role on a legitimate job board, and it was a real position Socure was hiring for. But scammers had posted their own duplicate listing to ensnare victims like her.
• Once Sally applied, she was contacted via Microsoft Teams under the name of a real Socure HR employee. The email came from a convincing @socure.team domain.
• After a video call with a fake hiring manager, Sally received a job offer, including a forged appointment memo.

The big picture: Hindsight is 20-20 when it comes to scams, but they're easy to fall for when a victim is overextended or desperate to find employment, Rivka Gewirtz Little, Socure's chief growth officer, told Axios.

• The prime targets are typically fresh college grads or mid-career applicants returning to the workforce after a few years away.
• But now, that pool of potential targets is growing as U.S. workers continue to navigate a tense job market.

What they're saying: "Really smart people become victims of these attacks," Little said. "We fool ourselves into thinking that it wouldn't happen to me."

• "This victim was really smart, really capable and had a really good, amazing employment background," she added.

The intrigue: The scammers also asked Sally to purchase an Apple gift card — another tell of a scam — and sent her a digitally manipulated check to make the purchase.

• At first, the check appeared to have been successfully deposited in Sally's account, so she went to her closest Apple Store and purchased roughly $5,000 worth of gift cards. She then sent the gift card codes to the scammers so they could use them.
• The next day, the scammers sent another check and asked her to go back to the Apple Store. But an employee who remembered her intervened and warned she might be getting scammed.

• Soon after, Sally's credit union confirmed both checks had been returned.
• That's when she reached out to Socure's actual HR team about the scheme, as well as the FBI, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Nevada Secretary of State, since the checks originated in Nevada.

Yes, but: Some of the messages Sally received included classic signs of a scam, including poor grammar and awkward conversations.

• At one point, the purported HR representative asked Sally if she had slept well the night before.
• During the Teams call about the position, the fake hiring manager who interviewed Sally kept his camera off and asked several questions that didn't appear relevant to the position.

Between the lines: While investigating the case, Little tested popular job boards and found she could post fake listings with little to no verification.

• "It's just way too easy to get in," Little said. "These folks really need controls."

The bottom line: After investigating this report, Socure received a similar report from someone else who had experienced the same scam.

• Since then, the company has published its actual hiring practices on its website and is listing jobs only on sites that verify the employers' identities.
• The company has also set up alerts for any new job listing that purports to come from Socure.

Go deeper: Americans lost billions more to fraud last year