Scam Checker
Back to all scam alerts and blog posts

Is My Job Offer a Scam? Red Flags to Watch For

By Published
  • job-scams
  • employment-scam
  • recruitment
  • remote-job

Disclaimer: This post is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal or financial advice. If you suspect a job offer is a scam, do not share documents or money, and contact your local fraud reporting body.

A real job offer almost never arrives on WhatsApp. It almost never asks you to buy your own laptop. And it never, ever asks for your bank password.

If you are reading this with an offer letter open on your phone, slow down for five minutes. Most fake job offers fail every one of the checks below.

How fake job offers actually work

The scammer scrapes your name off LinkedIn, Indeed, Seek, or Naukri, sends an unsolicited DM about a remote role, and offers high pay for simple work. Once you bite, one of three things happens: they ask you to pay an upfront cost (training, equipment, platform fee), they send a fake cheque and ask you to forward part of it elsewhere, or they collect "onboarding" documents — ID, tax forms, bank details — and disappear with your identity.

The FBI's 2024 IC3 report recorded over $501 million in US employment-scam losses. The pattern is essentially identical in the UK and Australia.

Six red flags

  • 🚩 Unsolicited contact about a CV you don't remember uploading
  • 🚩 The interview happens only over WhatsApp or Telegram
  • 🚩 You are asked to pay anything up front — training, equipment, "platform top-up", visa processing
  • 🚩 A cheque or payment arrives before you have started work
  • 🚩 The recruiter emails you from a generic Gmail or Outlook address
  • 🚩 The salary is above market rate for a remote junior role with no experience required

How to verify a job offer in 5 minutes

  1. Verify the company. Open Google, type the company name yourself, ignore the recruiter's link. Cross-check on LinkedIn — does the company have real employees? Is it registered with Companies House (UK), ABN Lookup (AU), or the relevant national register?
  2. Verify the recruiter. Find them on LinkedIn independently. Is the company listed as current? Profile older than a year? Any mutual connections you can ping?
  3. Verify the email. Real employers do not send offers from @gmail.com. The domain should match the company website.
  4. Search the listing. Paste the exact job title and salary into Google. Fake offers are often word-for-word reused across multiple platforms.
  5. Run the message through our free scam checker. It flags urgency phrasing, payment requests, and known job-scam patterns.

What a real employer will never do

  • Ask you to send money for any reason.
  • Ask you to cash a cheque on their behalf and forward part of it.
  • Demand a full passport scan or photo of you holding your ID to a personal Gmail before a signed contract.
  • Pressure you to accept "today".

If you have already shared information

  • Sent money or cashed a cheque? Call your bank's fraud line now.
  • Shared ID documents? Contact a free identity-theft service: IDCARE (Australia/NZ, 1800 595 160), IdentityTheft.gov (US), Action Fraud (UK).
  • Walk through the full damage-control checklist.

Where to Report

A real job offer survives all five verification steps without complaining. A fake one collapses at the first one. When in doubt, paste the message into our free scam checker before you reply — and read the full job scam checker guide for the longer version of this checklist.

External sources and references