So, for those of you who may not know, I’ve been desperately looking for a work-from-home job for the past six months. Why a work-from-home job? Crippling anxiety, but that’s not the point here.

Things have been pretty dire for me. I’ve depleted my savings and have had to sell a bunch of things to stay afloat. I sold a laptop, a pair of audiophile headphones, and my Steam Deck. Selling my Steam Deck really hurt. I loved that thing.

But that’s the kind of situation job scammers want you to be in. Desperation can lead to leaving your guard down in hopes that the opportunity is real.

Anyway, about a week ago, I came across an ad for a remote content moderator. The alleged employer listed the job as such…

We are currently seeking a detail oriented and reliable Remote Digital Content Moderator to join our platform support team. In this role, you will assist in managing data quality and content safety for our clients online platforms. 

Normally, an ad like this would be a giant red flag. Scammers love to target the work-from-home crowd. It allows them to hide behind the remoteness of it all.

The difference between this ad and most remote job scams is that this ad was offering a reasonable salary. Most scam ads will offer some ridiculous salary like $30 an hour for what is essentially data entry. No offense to data entry; I’d kill for a data entry job right about now.

I didn’t just send my resume once I saw the ad. I did do some research before sending it. And in my precursory research, I couldn’t prove it was a scam, but I was looking at the position through rose-colored glasses due to my desperate need for employment.

So, I submitted my resume and heard back from them in a few days, and by them I mean Joe. Just Joe. No last name, no job title, no phone number, and no LinkedIn profile. He wanted to set up some kind of Zoom meeting for the interview, and I made the appointment for the next morning.

In the hours after making the appointment, the rose-colored glasses started to fall off. Or maybe my meds just kicked in. But I started becoming way more suspicious of the ad. My usual methods of detecting a scam had failed so far. But I forgot one last tool in my arsenal, and that’s the reverse image search.

I went to the ’employer’ website, and I found this picture on their About page of their supposed co-founder.

I dropped the picture into Google Image Search, and this was the result.

It seems ‘Jessica’ has several names and careers, including that of a stock image model.

She also goes by Emily Johnson at another firm…

Thanks to Jessica/Emily (Jemily?), I was able to determine the job was a scam.

So, what was the point of this scam? There can be several.

The first one that comes to mind for me and my situation is identity theft. Unfortunately, they now have my name and address. If my Social Security number were to be divulged to them, it would be game over. They could take out loans or credit cards in my name. Thankfully I already ruined my credit on my own. Anybody who would steal my identity would probably give it back.

If I went through the interview and I was ‘hired,’ they probably would have asked for my bank account number so they could ‘pay’ me. In reality, they could empty my bank account. Again, in my case, if they tried to rob my bank account, they would just be practicing.

Then there’s the fake check scam, which is common in remote job schemes. The scammer sends a check and tells the victim to use it for office supplies purchased through a vendor the “employer” recommends. The victim deposits the check, the funds show up before the bank flags it as fraudulent, and by the time the victim wires money to the “vendor,” they’re really just sending it straight back to the scammer. Once the bank catches the fraud, the money’s gone, and the victim is on the hook for the overdraft.

So let my near miss be your warning. As I said, desperation, or any charged emotional state, can lead you to miss red flags because you want to believe what’s being promised is true. But as the cliché goes, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

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