Americans lost a record $68 million to job scams and bogus business opportunities in the first quarter of 2022

The United States is currently at near-record-low unemployment and a strong labor market. While millions of Americans quit their job due to the Great Resignation, we’re surprised to learn that bob scams are still on the rise.

The business and job opportunities fraud category includes offers for work-at-home jobs, like stuffing envelopes or processing medical claims, multi-level marketing schemes, job scams, job listings, employment services, inventions or idea promotions, and business opportunities.

According to a report from Atlas VPN using public data extracted and analyzed from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over the past few months, US citizens lost over $68.3 million to various job and business offer scams in the first quarter of 2022.

US Citizens can submit fraud reports to the FTC for further investigation. The FTC shares this data to inform the nation about the state of the cybercrime landscape in the US. All in all, US citizens have lost $701.4 million to bogus job and business opportunities since 2018. We will dissect the data into smaller increments to better understand this fraud type.

To start, criminals swindled $17.7 million from unsuspecting victims in 2018 Q1, which comes out to around $197 thousand lost daily. These damages were a result of 1,969 scams with a median loss of $1,036.

In contrast, Americans lost $68.3 million or nearly $759 thousand daily throughout the first quarter of 2022, which represents a growth of 285% over 2018 Q1. The FTC received 5,999 reports indicating a loss, with the median loss standing at $1,950.

The report shows that Americans lost $68.3 million or nearly $759 thousand daily throughout the first quarter of 2022 to job and business offer fraud.  The losses amounted to $62.5 million, or an average of $680 thousand per day in the fourth quarter of 2021. The jaw-dropping report also found that US citizens have lost $701.4 million to bogus job and business offers since 2018.

Yet the significant upsurge in business and job opportunities scams started in 2021 Q4, where total losses amounted to $62.5 million, or an average of $680 thousand per day, a growth of 29% over 2021 Q3. The median loss was $2,000, while the number of reports totaled 6,353.

The FTC notes that scammers advertise fake jobs in the newspapers, online, or even on signs, posters, and flyers.

In a statement, Rhonda Perkins, attorney and chief of staff of the FTC division of marketing practices said: “We are definitely seeing job scams.” Perkins said that In 2021, the agency received more than twice the number of job scam reports than in 2020. More than 16,000 complaints were already filed in the first quarter of this year, the agency said.