New BBB Employment Scams Study Reveals Soaring Numbers

ZANESVILLE, OH – The Better Business Bureau has released new findings from a recent employment scam study.

According to the BBB, over the past three years over 50,000 Ohioans have been scammed by job listings claiming to have great benefits or pay, by these scammers looking for a quick buck.

Judy Dollison, the President and CEO of the BBB of Central Ohio, says some of the new trends they’ve been seeing pop up are scammers beginning to ‘optimize’ their products and their online presence.

“Where the job offer is actually either just a click, or like, or respond to reviews, or videos online.” Dollison said. “So, it’s a really easy task, it’s like a task based job; the more tasks you complete, the higher earnings you receive and it’s a really simple request that they’re asking you to do. These small tasks and they’re promising great amounts of money.”

Dollison says some of the key results from the study found over 600 reports made by consumers were for these ‘task based’ scams and the amount of job scams that were conducted through text messages exploded in 2025, making up nearly half of the reports to the BBB.

She also noted, the study found the amount of employment scams is continuing to rise, even with the extensive information available about these types of scams.

“We say to be careful with unsolicited job offers, what we see with these employment scams, oftentimes, they are reaching out to you; a lot through text messages.” Dollison said. “Unsolicite, even phone calls can happen though, and they say; “You have this great match!”, they saw your resume online, you have a great match to this position that they’re hiring for. So unsolicited, they’re reaching out to you through text, email, or even phone calls.”

If you or someone you know has fallen victim to an employment scam, you can report it to the BBB Scam Tracker by heading to their website.