The United States Postal Service hires real employees, and scammers lean on that to run two cons at once: fake remote postal jobs, and package-reshipping schemes dressed up as a postal job. Because the Postal Service is a trusted name, a message with its logo can slip past your guard. Here is how to tell a real postal job from an impersonation.
Signs a postal job offer is fake
Walk away if any of these is true:
- It charges an application fee or processing fee, or asks you to pay for a background check.
- It asks you to receive packages at home and reship them, or to forward mail. That is a reshipping scam, not a job.
- It asks for your Social Security number or bank account before any official hiring.
- It arrived by unsolicited text and offers a postal job with no formal application.
Any one of these is enough to walk away.
How to find a real USPS job
The Postal Service posts every opening on its official site, usps.com/careers. Federal postal roles do not charge a fee to apply, and a real hire goes through an official application rather than a chat app. If a postal job asks for money, or wants you to handle packages from home, it is not the Postal Service.
The reshipping trap
Many fake postal jobs are really reshipping schemes. You are told to receive packages, repackage them, and send them on. The packages are usually bought with stolen cards, which makes you a money mule moving stolen goods and can put you on the hook with law enforcement. The Postal Inspection Service warns about exactly this. No legitimate employer hires strangers to reship packages from home.
Check the offer now
Paste the message into the free job checker for an evidence-backed verdict in about twenty seconds. If you have already shared details or shipped a package, report it to the FTC and the FBI's IC3, and see the recovery checklist.