Nearly 30,000 social media accounts and 2,000 fake job ads have been removed as part of the competition watchdog’s six-month campaign against recruitment scams.
The National Anti-Scam Centre, which sits under the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), ran a ‘fusion cell’ from September last year until March, coordinating efforts of government, law enforcement, academics and the private sector to tackle increasingly dangerous jobs and employment scams.
These scams involve the advertisement of fake jobs for the purpose of stealing individuals’ money and personal information.
The jobs are commonly well-paid and require low effort, with contact typically made through text message or via direct messages (DMs) on an encrypted messaging platform.
Some scams also involve malicious actors pretending to be hiring on behalf of high-profile companies or online shopping platforms.
These scams have been growing in popularity in recent years due in part to increasing cost-of-living pressures, with vulnerable individuals seeking additional, flexible work.
Tom Ward, a director and specialised technology recruiter at Robert Half, said this type of scam was widespread and an “escalating concern”.
“As recruiters, we encounter these malicious schemes far too frequently,” Ward told Information Age.
“They pose serious risks to job seekers, including financial loss, identity theft, emotional strain and wasted time.
“With the increasing volume and sophistication of such scams, it’s essential for job seekers to stay highly vigilant throughout their job search.”
From 2022 to 2023, the financial losses due to job scams in Australia jumped by more than 150 per cent, and last year Scamwatch received more than 3,000 reports of jobs scams with associated losses of $13.7 million.
The average loss of these types of scams is more than five per cent higher than the average of all other scam types.
The crackdown
To combat this, the National Anti-Scam Centre launched the fusion cell with an aim of reducing losses from these cons and stamping out the accounts pushing them online.
Across the six-month operation, the agency worked with social media giant Meta to remove 29,000 accounts that were sharing job scam content, and referred more than 800 scammer cryptocurrency wallets to digital currency exchanges, leading to many being blocked and blacklisted.
The operation also flagged 1,850 incidents of scammers impersonating Australian government entities; ran awareness and prevention forums; and a coordinated social media campaign.
Job ad scams rose to prominence in 2023 with a large number of people looking for new jobs following mass tech layoffs.
They have also been used to target university students, offering the promise of easy money while working from home.
“Job scams have been one of the fastest growing scam types, as scammers are increasingly preying on people seeking relief from cost-of-living pressures,” ACCC Deputy Chair Catriona Lowe said.
“These scams disproportionately impact people on low incomes, culturally and linguistically diverse communities, international students, non-resident visa holders, people with caring responsibilities, and others with limited employment options.
“Job scams result in significant financial losses and put people at risk of identity theft through loss of personal information.
“That’s why we’ve worked collaboratively to disrupt these scams through intelligence-sharing, awareness campaigns and targeted interventions.”
What to look out for
Ward said that common red flags to look for when job hunting are unsolicited job offers using generic language and with many typos and suspicious interview formats such as by text message only.
“One of the most important things to remember is a legitimate company or recruiter will never ask for any upfront payments,” he said.
“Asking for payments for training, background checks or equipment is a major red flag.
“If an offer seems too good to be true, like an unusually high salary or guaranteed employment without a proper interview, it almost certainly is.
“My advice for jobseekers who would like to verify whether an opportunity is legitimate is to get in touch directly through official company websites or established professional networks.”
The crackdown also focused on scam job ads in the healthcare sector, with the agency and its partners offering tailored advice to more than 40 organisations, including major state and territory hospitals and small healthcare services.
The National Anti-Scam Centre said this led to the near-elimination of reports involving the impersonation of healthcare organisations by the end of the fusion cell.
The federal government earlier this year passed legislation paving the way for a “world-leading” scam prevention framework, which will require telecommunications firms, banks and social media platforms to prevent, detect, disrupt, respond to and report scams and attempted scams.
