We see graduates booing commencement speakers over AI comments.
The CEO who was booed at Middle Tennessee State University’s graduation ceremony has doubled down on his comments about artificial intelligence.
- Recent college graduates between the ages of 22 and 27 may be particularly vulnerable to job scams this year, as they collectively face significantly higher unemployment rates than all other workers.
- The Federal Trade Commission announced that in 2025, consumers reported losing $79.5 million to some type of job fraud.
We all would like to imagine if a recruiter found us a high-class job that would be a perfect fit for us. Who wouldn’t be happy to have been selected for a high-priority shortlist for our uniquely refined skills?
Or why not try working from home for a reputable company, performing “click-based” tasks on your mobile phone or laptop?
Yes, it’s all a scam.
Fake recruiters make you feel wanted
In late March, I suddenly received a long and highly complimentary email that included a long list of my colleague’s personal and professional highlights.
Amazingly, the recruiter had done his homework, knowing how long my colleague had been in the news industry and his unique skillset in video production. They didn’t need generalists, or even the leadership role envisioned at the New York Times, but they needed something more. My colleague in Detroit had it too.
It took just 48 hours for the recruiter to make the leap, according to an email with a photo attached.
“If you’re interested in connecting with the team and discussing the trajectory of this application, please let me know.”
Interestingly, my colleague ended up receiving three different emails one day. All from different recruiters. All for a variety of high-end jobs. All fraud.
Interestingly, Richard Graham also recently received a flattering email with a photo of the recruiter.
“I had second thoughts. I knew it was a scam, but I was like, ‘Let’s take a look,'” said Graham, director and industry practice leader in Moody’s financial crimes division.
After carefully reading the email, I realized that the scammer had scraped his highly public social media profiles and other information available online to create a convincing letter.
“They didn’t mention my current company, Moody’s. They mentioned my company from about three years ago,” Graham said.
“So we found out they were using some kind of bot to collect the correct ones.”
However, by leveraging someone’s real-life work experience, your emails are rich enough to get some job seekers to respond.
“They were smart and sophisticated and easily fooled, especially if they were seriously looking for work and needed income,” Graham said.
Why do recruiters use Gmail?
But there should be a big clue here. The emails sent to my friend and Graham were both sent from Gmail accounts.
Many large companies prohibit their employees from using Gmail at work due to security concerns. The scammer used the name of a real person at a real company, but professional recruiters would never use Gmail.
When responding to these messages and emails, Graham says it’s important to be aware of another red flag if your only contacts are through text or chat apps.
“No one hires someone just by text message or chat app,” Graham said.
Another sign of a recruitment scam: Every step from the moment of recruitment, interview, and hiring is all done online. And you may never be asked for a professional referral.
What do recruitment scammers want?
How fraud unfolds varies, Graham said.
Presumably, the scammers behind these emails will at some point request money to be transferred in virtual currency, wire transfers or even gift cards to cover false claims that they need to pay for equipment, training or other requirements to perform the fake job, he said.
“They may tell you there’s a check you need to deposit and then ask you to refund it,” according to the Federal Trade Commission.
Sadly, you’re dealing with a fake check that will bounce at some point along the way, leaving you with no cash.
How a man found a job but lost money
The 44-year-old man found a job in May 2025 after being contacted on WhatsApp for a part-time job related to cryptocurrencies. The scammers said they needed to “invest in cryptocurrencies to cover negative balances.”
But the job ultimately turned out to be a scam, according to a police report he prepared nearly a year later. He was instructed to invest in cryptocurrencies as part of a scam, but lost his money.
To make matters worse, the millennial was then contacted by someone claiming to be a lawyer who offered to help him recover the money.
“The victim transferred additional funds in virtual currency to the recovery service before realizing it was also a scam,” according to the police report.
Experts point out that scammers often cause so-called negative balances in some accounts in order to panic users. The scammer may claim that you did something wrong or there was a glitch when performing the task. They will then ask for more payment or say your account has been frozen. After all, you will no longer have access to the money you deposited into your account and the money you earned from this so-called job.
How recruitment fraud can occur
Employment fraud is likely to increase as unemployment rates rise or major industries cut jobs.
Recent college graduates between the ages of 22 and 27 may be particularly vulnerable this year, as they collectively face significantly higher unemployment rates than all other workers. The unemployment rate for young college graduates was 5.6% in March, compared to 4.2% for all workers, according to the New York Fed.
Moody’s Graham said the use of AI is also likely to increase employment fraud in general.
Fraudsters will increasingly leverage artificial intelligence agents to seamlessly personalize their pitches and flood mailboxes.
These agents may be able to find what you’ve published on social media or job sites, and easily scan the web to see details about your professional work, such as published reports, Graham said. These additional pieces of information will make your recruitment email sound even more authentic.
He said AI agents could allow a small group of fraudsters to scale up massively.
AI will only make recruitment scams more believable
In 2025, people who filed reports with the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center reported approximately $13 million in losses due to employment fraud involving AI.
People have been manipulating video and audio to commit fraud for years, but the FBI noted in its latest IC3 report that new technology has made it possible to create high-quality content that is more difficult to detect.
Scammers often don’t just want money. Authorities and consumer watchdog groups say criminals are using recruitment scams, as well as other scams, to gain control of users’ devices and private computer networks. They try to collect personal and financial information or install ransomware.
Criminals may ask for your bank account information or social security number as part of the so-called recruitment process. Scammers can use your information for identity theft or later sell it on the dark web.
Recruitment fraud has skyrocketed in recent years
According to the Federal Trade Commission, fake touts are in full force. In 2025, the FTC reported that 30,715 consumers reported being a victim of some type of job fraud. These consumers either lost money or were not scammed. Total reported losses amounted to $79.5 million.
This is nearly 10 times more than the $8 million in job and employment fraud losses reported in 2021.
Recruitment scams don’t always start with scammers sending elaborate emails. According to the FTC, scammers often contact you through unexpected texts or messaging apps like WhatsApp or Telegram messages.
In a new development, some scammers don’t ask you to click on a link. Instead, some fake recruiters ask you to say “yes” or “I’m interested,” the FTC said.
According to the FTC, “No matter how ‘professional’ the graphics or messages may look or sound, don’t do this. They want you to engage with them in order to deceive you.”
Fraudsters and fraudsters stole a record $15.9 billion through various scams in 2025, up from $12.5 billion in 2024, according to the latest data from the Federal Trade Commission.
The data doesn’t tell the whole story, as people often don’t report losing money to fraud.
The FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center, known as IC3, celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2025 as the central hub for reporting cybercrime. Initially, the center received a few complaints a month, but now averages about 3,000 complaints a day. Consumers are encouraged to file complaints at www.ic3.gov.
According to FBI data, in 2025, 24,688 people filed charges related to employment-related fraud and crimes, resulting in the loss of nearly $363 million. Employment fraud in this context is defined as a case where someone loses money believing they are legitimately employed. Alternatively, the victim may launder money or items while at work.
Employment fraud has skyrocketed in just two years, with 15,443 consumers reporting employment fraud incidents to IC3 in 2023 and approximately $70 million reported lost to employment fraud.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the FBI’s IC3 data showed that people between the ages of 20 and 49 were particularly vulnerable to employment-related fraud. For example, in the 40-49 age group, 4,524 people reported losses due to employment fraud and crime in 2025, with losses exceeding $57 million.
Total losses from all types of fraud reported to IC3 totaled more than $20 billion due to cybercrime.
What kind of jobs are likely to be fraudulent?
In some cases, you may be invited to complete a series of online tasks. You may be asked to open a bank account. Or complete a cryptocurrency transfer.
Or the scammer may ask you to give positive ratings or reviews in order to make money. According to the FTC, “Don’t trust anyone who offers to pay you to give them good reviews or likes online. Honest companies won’t do that.”
According to the Better Business Bureau, in some cases, recent college graduates can be drawn in by scammers advertising unrealistic wages for common jobs such as “virtual assistant” or “customer service representative.”
In some cases, scammers can keep you in trouble for an extended period of time, increasing your losses.
“These tasks vary by scheme, but all require victims to deposit their own money into the platform through virtual currency or wire transfers to complete the job,” according to the FBI job scam alert.
Some of these scams trick you by promising high fees, which are never paid in the end.
You haven’t done any work yet. And all the money you could scrape together as part of your so-called “work” by tapping into savings, pulling out credit cards, and begging family and friends for loans is gone.
Contact personal finance columnist Susan Tompol: stompor@freepress.com. follow himr X @tompor.
