Skip to Main Content

The Cuyahoga County Department of Consumer Affairs warns residents to guard themselves against work-from-home scams. These scams promise employment, but they’re designed to siphon money from jobseekers or pull people into fraudulent schemes.

Job scams can promise jobs with a variety of titles – personal assistant, bookkeeper, secret shopper – but to spot a scam, it’s more important to look at what the job entails. If it involves moving money or packages around or paying to get a job, that’s a danger sign.

In job scams involving counterfeit checks, new hires are typically directed to:

• Deposit checks and forward money to someone else.
• Use their own bank accounts to deposit and process checks on behalf of an employer.
• Send funds to an employer or anyone else through money wires, gift cards or e-currency services.

Other common job scams entice people to:

• Pay for useless software, leads or materials to make money from home
• Accept and forward mail or packages that, unbeknownst to the employee, further a fraud.

Consumers often think – wrongly – that because they can spend money from a deposited check, the check is good. But because bank rules require banks to give customers fast access to deposited cash, financial institutions often make funds available to customers before a deposited check clears. It can a week or more for a bank to discover a counterfeit check and take the funds back. Con artists try to exploit that short window.

Not only do people who thought they had a job wind up not getting a paycheck, they’re responsible for any payment they made from their account. The average loss in a fake check scam is $2,000, which is tough to handle anytime, let alone when you don’t have a job.

Reshipping scams exploit job seekers who believe they’ve landed work as quality-control specialists. The work is supposed to involve accepting packages, checking the contents for accuracy and then forwarding the packages to another, often foreign, location. The package-checking is just a ruse, though. The actual purpose is to help scammers acquire fraudulently purchased goods without alerting store security.

Other job scams offer people work – on the condition that they buy training, materials, equipment or marketing plans first. These materials are likely to be useless, if they’re sent at all.

Job seekers – particularly those who’ve posted resumes or advertised services for sale online – should be wary of job offers that involve:

• Paychecks that have a company name that doesn’t match employer’s name, or from a location different from the employers.
• Depositing checks and then sending funds -- in any form -- to someone else.
• Requirements that applicants pay the company, rather than the other way around.
• Jobs, particularly well-paying jobs, extended after quick or generic text or email interviews.
• Foreign-based employers who claim to be looking for a U.S.-based associate
• Jobs involving receiving and reshipping packages, particularly sought-after goods or electronics.

Cuyahoga County residents are encouraged to report suspicious job offers through our Report A Scam form or by calling 216-443-SCAM (7226).