# Is this job offer a scam? How to tell > A job offer is probably a scam if it does any of these: asks you to pay or share bank or Social Security details up front, makes an offer with no real interview, pushes you onto WhatsApp or Telegram, or sends money before you have done any work. One of these is enough to walk away. Here is the full sixty-second check. Source: https://realjobcheck.com/answers/is-this-job-offer-a-scam/ Updated: 2026-06-02 - Real Job Check Trust and Safety Research Team --- If a job offer set off your instincts, trust that and slow down. Scammers rely on excitement and urgency to rush you past the checks that would expose them. The good news: almost every job scam trips at least one of a short list of signals, and you can run the whole list in about a minute. ## The 60-second check Ask these in order. A yes to any of the first four means stop.
**Walk away if any of these is true:** - They ask you to **pay** for anything - training, equipment, a background check, a starter kit - or to buy gift cards or cryptocurrency. - They ask for your **bank account, routing number, or Social Security number** before a signed, written offer. - They **send you money or a check before you have worked**, then ask you to send part of it back or buy something with it. - They **moved you to WhatsApp or Telegram** within the first message or two and want to keep everything there.
If you cleared those four, keep going. These next signals are softer, but two or more together is a strong warning: - **No real interview.** A job offer with no live video or phone conversation is rarely genuine for a professional or remote role. - **The pay is too good.** Hundreds of dollars a day for simple, unskilled, work-from-home tasks is the shape of a lure, not a salary. - **The email does not match the company.** A recruiter for "Acme" who writes from a Gmail address, or from `acme-careers.com` instead of `acme.com`, is a red flag. See [lookalike domains](/glossary/lookalike-domain/). - **The job is not on the company's real careers page.** If the role does not appear on the employer's own site, the message may be an impersonation. ## Why these specific signals Each one maps to how a scam actually makes money or steals identity. A real employer's cash flows toward you; a scam needs your cash, your bank account, or your identity to flow toward it. So any **upfront payment** ([advance-fee scam](/glossary/advance-fee-scam/)), any **early "overpayment"** ([fake-check scam](/glossary/fake-check-scam/)), and any **demand for financial identifiers** before you are truly hired are the load-bearing parts of the fraud. Remove them and the scam does not work, which is exactly why scammers push so hard to get them. The softer signals - no interview, off-platform chat, unreal pay - are how scams scale. Skipping the interview lets one operator run thousands of "hires" at once. Moving you to [Telegram or WhatsApp](/answers/recruiter-messaged-me-on-whatsapp-or-telegram/) gets you off a platform that might suspend the account. Unreal pay is the bait that makes people override their own doubts. ## How big is this problem, really Big, and growing fast. Americans reported losing about **$501 million** to job and business-opportunity scams in 2024, up from roughly **$90 million** in 2020, according to the [Federal Trade Commission](https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/12/new-ftc-data-show-skyrocketing-consumer-reports-about-game-online-job-scams). The Better Business Bureau puts the **median individual loss** around **$1,500**. The fastest-growing variety, the [task scam](/glossary/task-scam/), went from a small share of reports to about **40 percent** of 2024 job-scam reports, per the FTC. You are not being paranoid. This is common. ## What to do next 1. **Do not pay, and do not share bank or SSN details.** Nothing about a real hire requires either before a signed offer. 2. **Verify independently.** Go to the company's official website yourself - type the address, do not click the link in the message - and find the role on its careers page. Confirm the recruiter's email uses that same domain. 3. **Get a second opinion in seconds.** Paste the posting or message into the [free job checker](/#check). It checks the domain age, the recruiter email, the official careers-page cross-listing, the pay realism, and known scam patterns, then gives you an evidence-backed verdict and the right next step. 4. **If it is a scam, report it.** File with the [FTC](https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/) and the FBI's [IC3](https://www.ic3.gov/), and tell the real company being impersonated. If you already shared something, follow the [recovery checklist](/answers/i-already-gave-a-scammer-my-information/). For the complete walk-through of every red flag and how the scams are built, read [how to spot a job scam](/learn/how-to-spot-a-job-scam/).