A new spin on an old scam is increasing, with more and more victims reporting lost funds each year. <\/p>\n
Scammers are sending unsolicited job offers via text message and offering money for simple tasks. As Kane In Your Corner has reported over the years, a lot of people have fallen prey to these offers only to find out later that they were being scammed. <\/p>\n
\u201cI’ve got to say, ‘hook, line and sinker,’ I was there,\u201d says Steven Gogerty.<\/p>\n
He says he was taken in by a secret shopper scam. <\/p>\n
Lonna Vaughn says she fell for a work-from-home scam. <\/p>\n
\u201cI was excited about it,\u201d says Vaughn, \u201cI was.\u201d <\/p>\n
New research from the Better Business Bureau shows these scams are becoming more and more common.<\/p>\n
\u201cEmployment scams are always high on our list,\u201d says Claire Rosenzweig, of BBB Metro New York, “But what we found is task optimization scams\u2014those are skyrocketing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reports of task-oriented scams went up from 11,748 incidents in 2024 to 23,234 in 2025. That\u2019s an increase of 98% in just one year.<\/p>\n
The BBB says these scams tend to work one of two ways. The scammers may simply get you to supply your bank account information \u2013 and then clean out your account. Or they tell you that you can make even more money if you put out some cash. Either way, they say, you lose. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere are some terrible stories,\u201d says Rosenzweig. \u201cYou look at BBB scam tracker, and you can see stories of people who have lost thousands upon thousands of dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n
The BBB says there are some red flags to watch out for. For example, beware of any unsolicited job offer, especially one that comes in by text. Also, don\u2019t get fooled by high pay for simple work, such as liking videos. Always avoid upfront costs. It shouldn\u2019t cost you money to get paid. And if a so-called job recruiter starts using high-pressure tactics on you, hang up immediately. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere’s always that fear of missing out,\u201d says Rosenzweig. \u201cBig red flag\u2014anybody who’s pressuring you, walk the other way.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new spin on an old scam is increasing, with more and more victims reporting lost funds each…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":273787,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-273786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273786\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}