Employment scams on the rise during COVID-19: Better Business Bureau

September 13, 2021

There has been a rise in employment scams in the “turbulent job market” brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new Better Business Bureau (BBB) study.

Job scams have been a problem for years, the BBB said in a statement on Thursday, noting that, in 2019, there were an estimated $14 million victims with $2 billion in direct losses related to the job scams.

The problem worsened in 2020, when complaints to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre nearly doubled and job scams were among the top five of BBB’s list of riskiest scams across Canada.

The bureau said that identity theft is a common outcome of job scams, as scammers often steal job seekers’ personal information in order to open bank accounts to further their fraud.

In fact, the BBB found 34 per cent of victims provided their driver’s license number and 25 per cent, their Social Insurance Number.

The bureau also found that employment scams most commonly victimized people aged 25 to 35, with women filing 67 per cent of complaints.

Victims often reported loss of their time, with 32 per cent never paid for the work they did for an “employer” that turned out to be fraudulent.

The median financial loss reported in the Canadian Risk Report was $500, according to the BBB.

Source: Vancouver is Awesome