We’ve all gotten the texts. A mysterious recruiter says they have the perfect job for you: one that you can do from home, on a flexible schedule, for great pay.

Here’s one message I received recently:

Usually I delete these messages and report them as junk. But in the name of journalism, I decided to reply, “Yes, I’m interested.”

Almost immediately, I got a reply from someone named Shirley. She was looking for part-time team members at a digital ad company.  

I answered: “Hi Shirley, nice to meet you. I would love to hear more about the job!”

Shirley hearted the message and we texted back and forth. But when I declined to move the conversation to WhatsApp, Shirley went dark. 

There’s always a new scam popping up in email inboxes and text messages. And with a tight labor market, job scams are especially effective right now. Employers aren’t doing a lot of hiring and even though the unemployment rate is still relatively low, at 4.3%, it has been inching up. The Federal Trade Commission says reports about these scams have tripled from 2020 to 2024.

Scammers come in all forms. They might be working on their own. They could be working at a scam farm, a big operation overseas. They may also initially be bots. AI has made it easier for scammers to send convincing messages that use perfect grammar and respond conversationally.

“For example the AI bot can do the first few messages and then it can give it to the human,” said Murat Kantarcioglu, a professor of computer science at Virginia Tech.

The human’s job is to close the deal, which usually means steal your money. Scammers might ask for banking information so new hires can get paid or a credit card number for work supplies.

PSA: These are not things real jobs ask for, especially not over text.

“Never trust, always verify,” said Kantarcioglu, who suggests calling the recruiter’s company and the company that’s hiring to make sure the posting and people are real.

Maybe you’re rolling your eyes right now because these scams are often obvious. But fraudsters have gotten savvy. Eva Velasquez, CEO of the nonprofit Identity Theft Resource Center, recently got and a job scam text that looked quite real.

“They had spoofed a legitimate business, spoofed the HR hiring manager’s name and there was an actual open position on the website for this position,” said Velasquez. “That was the level of sophistication.”

Job scams are especially common on job boards. And what’s tricky about this is companies are increasingly recruiting online — especially as more people work remote.

“And it’s really confusing for people to understand what is the real process now because it’s a fundamental shift,” Velasquez said.

Imagine job hunting after years of being a stay-at-home parent or following a layoff after a decade at one company. The job market is ripe for scams because job hunting is usually not something we build routines around. And when people are looking for work, it can be overwhelming. 

“The longer they’re out of work, the more they may be willing to ignore or just say, ‘well, but I really need this so that red flag, I’m just going to see what happens,“ said Velasquez. “And it’s out of desperation.”

What’s maybe most confusing of all though is there are recruiters out there who actually recruit this way, over text. I know because I got a text from Joshua Turner, a health care recruiter. I answered for this story, thinking he was a scammer. He said he got my contact info from a medical professionals database and invited me to apply for an emergency room job in Maine. 

I told Turner that I’m not a doctor, and he said this happens sometimes. A quick Google shows there is a Kristin Schwab in New York in the medical field. Turner said though he hires plenty of doctors via text, he’s well aware that some people think he’s a scammer.

“I get people saying wrong number, stop,” he said.

Sometimes people are super rude. “It’s, you know, I mean it is what it is. We work with what we’ve got, the resources we have.”

Turner has a built out LinkedIn and is on the staff page of his company’s website. The company also verified that he is a recruiter there. And I believe them. But I’ve gotta be honest. After all this, there’s a teeny tiny piece of me that doesn’t know what’s real and what’s not.