Scammers prey on unemployed Texans with phony job postings

AUSTIN, Texas — Scammers are preying on Central Texans looking for work during the pandemic. Falling victim to a phony job posting could give strangers access to your bank account or lead to identity theft.

Before applying to a job online there are red flags you can look for.

Isi Imoisi thought she struck gold when just days after applying to an online job posting she landed an interview and hours later--- the job.

"I was very skeptical but also happy to finally be wanted for a job," Imoisi said.

The company told her the next step was printing and depositing a check they’d send her to cover the cost of job materials.

"That’s when I kind of paused for a little bit," she recalls. "[I] called my bank and they said, 'No. Don’t submit this check. It's not valid,'" Imoisi explained.

When she refused the check the so-called employer got hostile and began insulting her.

"I was scared. Immediately, I was like, 'You know what? It’s not worth it. It's okay,’" she says. Imoisi reported the incident to the Better Business Bureau in early February, but she's not the only Central Texan to recently apply for a job only to learn it's fake.

Alexis Alvarez responded to a Facebook listing — someone offering $3,000 to advertise a well-known beer brand on peoples’ cars.

"They said they were going to send me a check in the mail next week for about half of it up front," Alvarez said.

After weeks of sporadic communication, she started having second thoughts. When someone left a check and a letter with strange instructions on her porch she backed out -- but says they got pushy and unprofessional.

"They were blowing up my phone and my email, and I just knew it was a scam," she said.

According to the Better Business Bureau, in 2020 more than 400 Texans lost a collective $130,000 to job scams.

"It is easy to impersonate another company via email or maybe even a fake website," said Erin Dufner, chief marketing officer for the Better Business Bureau.

Erin Dufner with the BBB says “work from home” used to be a red flag but now that so many jobs are remote because of the pandemic, spotting the phony ones is getting harder.

"If you are interested in working for a specific business go to their website directly rather than answering an email or a pop up ad you might see while surfing the internet," Dufner said.

Both women said in hindsight, they did notice misspellings and typos in communications. They also said the offers seemed too good to be true.

"My dad was like, 'This is a scam, honey,’ and I was like... 'No. It's not,’ but yeah, I should have listened to my dad there,'" said Alvarez.

The BBB says red flags to look for when trying to spot a phony job posting include:

• typos, misspellings, or incorrect use of English
• requests to pay upfront training costs or fees
• requests for personal or banking information
• generic job titles with vague responsibilities
• high salary that doesn’t require specific experience