EXCLUSIVE: There’s A New Breed of Scams Targeting Freelancers and Remote Workers
Scammers are finding ways to prey upon freelancers and remote work employment seekers — in this comprehensive deep dive article, I expose one such scam and teach you ways to identify such scams before it’s too late
I know this is a long article, but most truly investigative deep-dives are. Because of the importance of the subject matter, however, I sincerely suggest you stick it out and read or listen to this article to the end. I will be providing you with quite a bit of intricate information that can absolutely help to protect you from scammers such as this one, including very specific warning signs to look for if you are ever offered a similar job.
Sadly, scammers and fraudsters have been continuously creating new ways to separate people from their hard-earned money since humans began exchanging currencies for goods and services. And while I’ve found myself the intended target of more than my share of such scams, last week found me the (almost) victim of a scam I was previously unaware of — more on that in a minute.
In today’s world, many of us make our living or at least supplement our incomes using online freelancer sites such as LinkedIn Job, Upwork, Freelancer, Fiverr, Medium, NewsBreak, and many others. There are also many more of us who look for remote employment for any number of personal reasons.
Up to now, I have been blissfully unaware of too many scams directed toward people like us — that is, at least scams that aren’t immediately identifiable as such.
To be sure, I’m nobody’s fool. I understand many of the warning signs of fraudulent behavior and over my more than half-century on this Earth, I’ve also learned to trust my instincts and my gut when one or both tell me there is something just not right about a particular situation.
That being said, I now have to admit, that this one almost got me — at least for a little while — until my trusty gut eventually chimed in. But it’s because of that almost gotcha that I felt compelled to share this scam with my followers, listeners, and friends.
Here’s how it began —
Like many of you, I maintain profiles on sites such as Upwork, LinkedIn, Freelancer, Fiverr, and several others. That’s because, despite our full-time jobs, many of us are always looking for a few extra bucks or even an unforeseen and unsolicited career improvement opportunity to come along.
Last week, I received a seemingly innocuous and unassuming message on LinkedIn by, of all places, Lime Digital Media — a leader in the digital corporate branding space. To help facilitate my susceptibility, I’ve done a significant amount of remote freelance work for Lime over the past few years, so the message really didn’t take me by surprise too much, except for the fact that they usually contact me through Upwork, and this time elected to do so via a private message on LinkedIn.
Nevertheless, that didn’t raise too many flags since LinkedIn was designed for exactly that kind of thing, and after all, we do have a good working relationship, so I really thought nothing of it, at least not initially.
To my surprise, after exchanging the requisite pleasantries, the sender of the message (a high-ranking executive within the company) asked me if I might be interested in applying for a full-time position with Lime as a senior copy editor.
Once again, since I have worked for the company as a freelancer several times since 2019, and each of those times I functioned as a copy editor, I really had no reason to be suspicious of the message. It was literally “The Perfect Storm” of a scam set up, that I’m sure even the perpetrators of the scam had no way of knowing about.
After a brief negotiation regarding salary and benefits, I agreed to apply for the job and was sent a link to a very professional-looking employment application. I filled it out completely and submitted it in the manner requested by the person who contacted me. Several hours later, I was sent a congratulatory email informing me that I had gotten the job.
I was told that I would be receiving $25 per hour during training and $35 per hour thereafter — with full benefits. This was not surprising since it is exactly in line with the rates I had charged the company in the past and the rates that are currently published on my Upwork and Freelancer profiles for that type of work.
I was also told that the company required my home office to be equipped with several specific and expensive pieces of office equipment that would be able to communicate with the company’s closed servers without having to risk interception or hacking via the internet — again, nothing out of the ordinary as the full-time position I currently hold requires a very similar setup.
To make a longer story short, I completed all of the HR paperwork, attended a pre-recorded virtual personnel sensitivity training workshop, and was told one of the executive VPs would be contacting me via Zoom to make the arrangements for the office equipment to be delivered to my home office.
When that call happened, I was at first surprised that it was a chat-only call meaning — no video or audio, just a Facebook Messenger kind of communication. I thought that was odd because we could have done that right on LinkedIn through their chat client. There was literally no reason to connect on Zoom for exactly that same type of communication — this was my first red flag.
My suspicions would only increase and begin hitting me faster and more furiously over the next few minutes
When the Zoom connection was sent to me to accept, I decided to click on the link in the name (something many of us don’t do when connecting remotely for a teleconference) and I noticed a few oddities in the requester’s email address — oddities that are not readily apparent unless you take the time to click on the link that is their name and look at the background info.
First, the person requesting to chat with me was named Jamie …… (I can’t share specific names or email addresses because that is a violation of Medium policy), however, the email address requesting the chat was samantha@lime……
I’m familiar with many nicknames but I am unaware of any person named Samantha using Jamie as a nickname. That was my first really intense instinctual feeling that something was amiss. It caused me to investigate deeper and what I found was equal parts compelling and scary.
The very next thing I decided to do was go back and look at the previous email communications I had had with members of Lime staff. I was looking for the vanity email extensions that are commonly used by the company.
For example, most of you who have followed me for a while know that my true crime podcast The Veritas 7, has a website theveritas7.com. As a part of the hosting plan for the website, we also receive vanity email accounts such as [email protected] (not a real email address that we use, but you get the idea).
Lime Digital Media has a similar setup where their executives and most of their employees use company-hosted email accounts that end in @lime……...com.
What I found odd here, is that instead of coming from a typical company-hosted email account, the people who had been communicating with me were using vanity email addresses that ended in @lime…….jobs.com.
But wait, the situation would only get more peculiar
After the connection was made and a few pleasantries were exchanged, the person on the other end of the Zoom call, identifying as Jamie, explained that the company pays for the office equipment by issuing me a check that I am to deposit in my bank using the mobile deposit feature in my banking app.
Once that check clears and the funds are available, they will connect me with their approved vendor where I will purchase the required equipment and arrange for it to be shipped to my home office.
This, of course, is now a clear scam.
For starters, yes, many companies require work-from-home remote staff to set up company proprietary equipment that can connect only to their dedicated and closed networks and servers. However, in EVERY case, the company will pre-load the equipment with their software and send it to you directly — they will NEVER send you money and ask you to purchase the equipment from ‘an approved vendor.’
At this point, I decided to escalate this into a full-scale investigative deep-dive to get a grip on the breadth and scope of this fraud. As it turns out, it went pretty deep.
Once all doubt was removed, I decided to continue allowing the fraudsters to believe they had me buffaloed and I went on with the ruse, basically never letting on that I was suspicious and agreeing to deposit their check through the mobile banking app on my phone once I received it.
In reality, this is nothing more than a semi-elaborate double-edged check fraud scheme.
As the scam progressed, the perpetrators used blank business computer checks you can buy at any stationary store, to fill on my info along with the specific routing and account numbers for one of Lime’s accounts.
They then emailed me images of the front and back of a check, ostensibly drawn on the account of Lime, in the amount of $7,590.10 USD. Along with the email, I received instructions to bring up the images of the check on my computer screen or iPad and use my phone to take pictures of each side, loading them into my bank’s mobile app for immediate mobile deposit.
They also asked me to please let them know if the bank informed me there would be a hold of any kind or if the funds would be immediately available and if there was no hold, to upload a screenshot to them verifying the deposit and the available funds ‘for proper documentation.’
That is where my game with them ended. It had to end because I had absolutely no intention of ever depositing the check, however, I had to continue with the scam long enough for them to send me the check images so that I could turn them over to the proper federal authorities.
As a true crime reporter and podcaster, I submit numerous FOIA requests to the FBI almost daily and have a very good working relationship with the Bureau. They were more than a little happy to receive the info and the check, however, I suspect these scammers are not located within the geographic confines of the United States, and therefore there is virtually no chance they will ever be charged with or convicted of the crime.
Be that as it may, I felt it was important to share this info with all of you who similarly work from home or who engage in online freelancing.
Now, for the purpose of this investigative report — how can you protect yourself by quickly identifying scams like this one?
I promise we will get there, but to do that, we need to understand the various elements of this scam because there are more than one of them
Initially, the first part of the scam was posing as a prospective employer and asking me to fill out a comprehensive employment application, including authorization to release my personal information for a criminal background check and credit bureau reports. The request even asked for front and back photos of my Driver’s License to prove my identity.
As you can imagine, this opens the door for all manner of identity theft and fraud scams as the receiver of the info has what amounts to every scrap of personal identification information about you.
What’s worse, the request seems legitimate on its face since any prospective employer offering a $70k + per year position would almost certainly require that info as well as the authorizations for background and credit checks. Add to that the fact that the remote position will need to start with them trusting you with installing several thousands of dollars worth of equipment in your home before even working your first day, and you can see these aren’t exactly unreasonable requests.
What to do before supplying a prospective employer with your personal HR-type information:
I know the situation can seem overwhelming. In fact, there are more than a few people who simply refuse to take the chance of having their info exposed in that way. Many of them simply drop out of online side hustles and opportunities to make money from writing, editing or working remotely.
That’s sad. Its also an extreme resolution, but it isn’t necessary. There are absolutely a list of things you can do to protect yourself from scammers posing as employers online, and I’m going to address a significant list of them. However, I’m sure to neglect to list them all, so I want to extend an open and ongoing invitation to anyone reading this: if you can think of other methods and tactics that I’ve left out here, please feel free to add them in the comments. I know our readers would greatly appreciate the assistance.
Steps you can take to protect yourself and your information from scammer fake employers:
Please keep in mind, this list is definitively not exhaustive, but it is a really good list for all but the most sophisticated scammers.
- When you receive a virtual job offer and request for your personal information, the first thing you should do is obtain the name of the hiring manager that made the contact with you.
- Call the company's main number (not a number you received from that same hiring manager, but one you obtain from their public website or social media accounts.
- Verify that the name of the person contacting you is in fact an employee that holds that specific talent acquisition type of job with the company — but take note this is NOT a good enough place to stop if you get a match. That’s because many of the higher level scams research the companies they intend to use as fronts and make sure they use the names of the proper personnel. This is only a tactic to catch the laziest of the scammers.
- If the prospective employer passes this muster, the next step is to actually call or email the company (if they don’t post a phone number), and request to speak the very same person who allegedly reached out to you. Once again, be sure to only use the contact information you find on their public webpage or social media profiles an NOT the contact info provided by the person that contacted you.
- If you are successful and actually reach that person, and if they confirm that they in fact did make contact with you, then you are 100% clear to proceed with the application process. You no longer have to worry about the job being a scam. If, however, the person you reach has never heard of you, isn’t hiring, or has no clue what you are talking about, then you know that you were approached by a scammer.
Another important note, you should definitely be a bit more suspicious if you get contacted about a job you did not apply for, but some other things to be on the lookout for when being approached by prospective employers are:
- Any job that requires you to pay anything during the application process is a scam.
- Any job that offers to send you a check that requires you to deposit it in your bank and then send the money to another location or purchase equipment or supplies through a site or company they designate is ALWAYS a scam. No legitimate employer will EVER do this.
- Any job that asks you for your banking information (such as direct deposit info) before officially hiring you, is a scam. Human Resource functions like payroll, I-9s and other similar forms are only permitted to be requested by law from employees, not tentative employees. Therefore it is illegal to request that type of information prior to hiring. If a prospective employer asks for that type of information before officially hiring you, it is a scam.
As stated earlier, this list is important and will cover many types of employment scammers, but it isn’t exhaustive. Hopefully, in time, other writers with experience with scammers like this will add to this list in the comments.
Until then, keep alert and stay safe. Here’s wishing you the best of luck in your future online and remote working success.
About The Author
Kurt is a 12-time Medium Top Writer in Politics, Social Media, and True Crime, owns the Medium true crime publication Veritas True Crime and is an editor for ILLUMINATION Integrated Publications.
He holds an M.A. in Journalism and an M.S. in Forensic Psychology from Columbia University in New York City.
Kurt is also the owner of WOMEN — Wild Orchid Media & Educational Network, Inc., the parent company of The Veritas 7 True Crime Podcast, The Veracity Report global news agency, and The Peach Explorer — the Peach State E-Zine about Everything Georgia.
He and his wife, Crystal are avid animal rescuers. Kurt also enjoys true crime investigations, cooking, investigative journalism, studying and writing about ships of all kinds, mysteries, and American politics.
