Recruitment fraud

How to spot a fake job offer

A job offer you never applied for, a recruiter who only speaks to you on WhatsApp, and pay that sounds too high for the hours: that combination is one of the most reported fraud patterns right now. The scam is built to feel like a hiring process, and it only asks for money once you are already invested in the story. The US Federal Trade Commission describes the same shape: scammers advertise jobs the way honest employers do, and what they want is your money and your personal information (FTC, job scams).

The pitch is often dressed up as a remote task: writing reviews, rating companies or trading crypto from home. Small, plausible payments keep the conversation alive — and then the conditions change.

Direct answer: five checks before you reply

1. Verify the company outside the offer. Find the organisation through its own website or a number you look up yourself, never through the link or details in the message. Scammers regularly impersonate the staff of job boards and staffing agencies, entirely outside those organisations. A real employer can be reached through a channel you found independently.
2. Never pay to work. No administration fee, deposit, training, starter kit or crypto “activation” before your first payment. The FTC lists exactly this pattern: you end up paying for starter kits or useless certifications, or you get pulled into a fake check scheme where you deposit a cheque from your new employer and send real money back (FTC, job scams). A job never requires a payment from you.
3. Check the channel and the urgency. Unsolicited contact through a chat app, a recorded voice message offering you a role, an instruction to save a number before you can ask questions, and pressure to decide fast are all part of the pattern. The FTC also flags requests to move money through gift cards, crypto or a direct transfer to a private individual, and work-from-home offers that promise a lot for very little time.
4. Do not share identity documents early. Name, address, bank account number and a scan of a passport or ID are exactly what is needed for identity theft, which can lead to loans or subscriptions in your name. Share those details only after the employer, the role and the contract have been confirmed through a route you found yourself.
5. Recognise the payment build-up. Sometimes a first small payout really does arrive. Then you hear that you have not completed enough tasks, that you must add money to avoid a penalty, or that a large balance can only be released after a further payment. That is the structure of a task or crypto scam, not of employment: an employer pays you, never the reverse.

What a detector does and does not see

A job offer is text, sometimes with an image attached. You can run the text through the text detector and a logo or screenshot through the image detector. That is triage: it helps you choose which offer to verify first. It says nothing about authenticity. Job adverts and phishing messages are often built from templates, which carry too little writing style for a reliable signal, and a genuine message can pick one up. A low score therefore never proves that the job exists.

What a job offer cannot establish

• whether the company exists and whether this role is actually open;
• whether the sender works for that company, even when the domain, logo and job title match;
• whether the salary, hours and contract are real;
• whether fraud is involved; only a bank, regulator or investigating authority can establish that.

Treat the offer as a reason to check with the company, not as proof that you have a job. To assess a posting that uses AI imagery, read the guide on spotting a fake job posting. Employers reviewing applications can use the recruitment review workflow.

If you already paid or shared documents

• Contact your bank immediately and ask about a block or a recall while that is still possible; speed decides the outcome.
• A crypto payment is effectively irreversible, but report it anyway so the route is on record.
• If you sent an ID copy, report it to your national identity-fraud service and watch your bank and post for unexpected accounts or contracts.
• Keep everything: the phone number, account names, the chat, the job text, the payment records and the timestamps.
• Were you asked to use your own account to receive and forward money? That is money-mule recruitment: follow the five checks in the guide on avoiding money-mule recruitment and tell your bank.
• Report it to your national fraud desk and report the advert, account or number on the platform where you found it.

More on judging this kind of evidence is in the guides on spotting a fake payment proof, checking a suspect invoice and spotting AI-generated reviews. To check a file or a piece of text on its own, use the free checker.

Frequently asked questions

Is a job offer on WhatsApp automatically fake?

Not automatically, but it is the channel where the pattern appears most often: unsolicited contact, a recruiter reachable only through chat, and a payment requested before you earn anything. Verify the company through a number or address you found yourself before sharing any details.

Does a high detector score prove a job offer is fake?

No. The score describes patterns in a text or a file and says nothing about the company, the role or the sender’s intent. A low score does not prove the offer is genuine either; checking with the company remains the only real test.

May I send my CV or an ID copy?

A CV is standard; a full ID or passport copy is not. Share identity documents only after the employer and the contract have been confirmed through a route you found yourself, and report it to your national identity-fraud service if you already sent one without a genuine hiring process.