Hello there! We are recruiters with a charming daily newsletter looking for qualified readers to earn $700,000 per crossword puzzle you finish.

Job offer scams (likely more believable than this one) have exploded in the last few years, according to data from the Federal Trade Commission:

• In the first half of 2025, reports of online job scams jumped by 19% compared to the same period last year, costing hopeful job-seekers almost $300 million.
• Text scams have grown especially quickly in the last five years, with 20,673 reports last year compared with just 4,872 reports in 2020.

How do they work? You’ve probably received an unsolicited text from an unknown number—or from an email address that is just slightly off—with an “exciting” opportunity. Sometimes, scammers will pose as recruiters or post fake job offers on legit job sites like ZipRecruiter or LinkedIn, trying to get you to click on links that they promise lead to video interviews, but actually install malicious spyware on your device (or get you to reveal your Social Security number or bank info). One writer followed through on a scam job and worked for weeks without pay.

Big picture: While these kinds of scams exist in any kind of economy, they’re doubly pernicious in a weak labor market where so many Americans are desperately applying for work. Last month was the worst October for layoffs since 2003.—MM

If a young entrepreneur asks you for startup capital, in addition to performing the usual background checks, you might want to make sure they’re not on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, which has a reputation not only for highlighting future business titans but also, occasionally, future wearers of orange jumpsuits.

Here are some honorees who made the cut before things went south:

Scammer: Sam Bankman-Fried

• Year honored: 2021
• Company: FTX
• Crime: Convicted on seven counts of fraud for stealing customers’ money.
• In prison? Yes. He was sentenced to 25 years in March 2024.
• Final sentence: The crypto fraudster has been lobbying President Trump to receive a pardon.

Scammer: Charlie Javice

• Year honored: 2019
• Company: Frank
• Crime: She was convicted of three counts of fraud and one count of conspiracy for fabricating the number of users of her student financial aid app, Frank, in order to convince JPMorgan to buy it.
• In prison? No. She was sentenced to seven years and one month in September 2025, but remains out on bail while appealing her conviction.
• Final sentence: She won’t have to go into her own pockets for legal fees, as a clause in her contract required JP Morgan to foot the bill, which is north of $100 million.

Scammer: Martin Shkreli

• Year honored: 2013
• Companies: MSMB Capital, MSMB Healthcare, Retrophin
• Crime: Two counts of securities fraud and one count of conspiracy related to jacking up the price of HIV medication to the point it was considered anticompetitive price-gouging.
• In prison? No. He was sentenced to seven years in prison in 2018 and released early in May 2022.
• Final sentence: He is banned from working in the pharmaceutical industry for life, and a judge recently ruled that he can be sued for allegedly copying a one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang Clan album and playing it online.

Dishonorable mention

Elizabeth Holmes received lots of positive press for blood-testing company Theranos in her heyday, but she never actually made a Forbes 30 Under 30 list. That did not keep her from being convicted on four counts of fraud for lying to investors in 2022 (upheld on appeal in 2025).

Credit where it’s due: Forbes released a Hall of Shame for “Under 30 picks we wish we could take back” in November 2023, including the above three rogues. While unveiling its 10 inductees, the outlet said it had vetted over 100,000 candidates and most of its picks turned out great, noting, “our process correctly weeded out folks like Fyre Festival impresario Billy McFarland and, yes, even Elizabeth Holmes.”—DL

You may have never been to Massachusetts, but you have an unpaid toll there. At least that’s what the text message you got from an unknown number says. Or the message might have something to do with unpaid postal fees (or something similar). But there is no toll and there are no postal fees. There’s only a scam that has netted criminal organizations in China more than $1 billion in three years, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

Something phishy going on

The link in the scam message often takes you to a fake government website, where criminals steal any personal information you put in, like credit card or driver’s license numbers. It’s a simple idea, but it’s no simple operation to set up. According to the Wall Street Journal:

• China-based gangs hire gig workers in the US to set up rooms filled with networking devices and SIM cards so they can send as many messages as possible.
• If the scam works, more people are hired in the US to buy things with the stolen money and ship them to China, so it’s harder to track. Those items are then sold on the black market to fund the crime operations.

It’s becoming a lot more common, too: Spam-filtering company Proofpoint says the monthly volume of toll-scam messages has more than tripled since January 2024. In a lawsuit filed this past week, Google accused one group of stealing between 12.7 million and 115 million credit card numbers, just in the US.

How do I know it’s a scam? Your Spidey sense should start tingling if you see the message is from an international number or has multiple other recipients. Also, be wary of urgent calls to action, which scammers use to get people to rush and make mistakes. The actual government will never ask you to pay via wire transfer or gift card.

If it’s a scam message, just treat it like it’s from an ex: Don’t click any links, don’t reply, and consider blocking the number.—BC

Every once in a while, a wolf in sheep’s Gucci infiltrates the top tax bracket’s flock, and, eventually, somebody makes a true-crime documentary about it.

These are some of the scammers who managed to con a fortune out of the economic and cultural elite:

Bernie Madoff: The guy who’s synonymous with “Ponzi scheme” (besides Charles Ponzi) is responsible for the biggest one in history, having defrauded his wealthy clients of ~$65 billion over 17 years. Before the 2008 market crash unraveled his operation, Madoff was a highly respected financier—he even served as chairman of the Nasdaq in the 1990s. He died in prison in 2021.

Zach Horwitz: It’s a plot you couldn’t make up: The biggest Ponzi schemer of Hollywood was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2022. Prosecutors claimed Horwitz robbed $650 million from film investors who thought he was buying and selling movie distribution rights to platforms like HBO and Netflix. To make his success seem authentic, he included a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue Label with his company’s 2015 annual report when he sent it to some investors.

Rudy Kurniawan: The California wine connoisseur was arrested in 2012 for putting counterfeit labels on homemade wine blends and passing them off as rare bottles costing tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, prosecutors said. He sold $35 million worth of fraudulent wine, including 219 bottles for $2.1 million to Bill Koch, brother of Charles and David. Kurniawan got out of prison in 2020 and is reportedly making a comeback in Asia as an outlaw icon who gets paid to make his impostor blends.

Lawrence Salander: An art dealer whose clients entrusted him with Picassos, Monets, and other valuable works, Salander was sentenced to 18 years in prison in 2010 after being convicted for secretly selling other people’s collections without their approval. He was accused of stealing 12 paintings and sculptures from artist Robert De Niro Sr., though his famous son, De Niro Jr., later recovered at least six of them.

Anna Sorokin: Sorokin, who went by the surname Delvey, was born in Russia and grew up middle-class but ingratiated herself with New York City socialites in the 2010s by posing as a German heiress. Her exploits were later chronicled in competing streaming series. She stole an estimated ~$275,000 from friends, hotels, and banks, served almost four years in prison…and then competed on Dancing with the Stars last year, wearing an ankle monitor.—ML

A decoy grandma who pretends she can’t grasp instructions for how to wire her life savings to someone keeping her grandson hostage is a powerful anti-fraud tool—and a thriving YouTube genre. A crop of anti-fraud enthusiasts and experts are using a mix of improv chops and technology to waste scammers’ time, while getting some viral content out of it.

The king of anti-scammer trickery, called scambaiting, is the YouTuber Kitboga, who has spent years driving scam callers into rages through meandering conversations using an altered voice, delivering schadenfreude to his 3.8 million subscribers.

But it’s not just for clicks

Some scambaiters steal scammers’ information and report it to the authorities in the country in which they operate.

Meanwhile, companies are automating the task of making fraudsters wish they had gotten an accounting degree instead:

• British Telecom giant O2 created Daisy the AI granny, who wasted hours of scammers’ time across 1,000 calls as part of a campaign to promote a reporting hotline, with one peeved scammer fuming to “Daisy” that she’s a pro at “bothering people.”
• An Australian startup, Apate.ai, creates AI bots imitating clueless victims to waste scammers’ time and collect valuable information about their methods. The company recently raised $2.5 million in seed funding. It says it diverted 280,000 scam calls and prevented $7.6 million in potential losses.

It’s a battle of the AIs…as fraudsters are also automating their calls using voice bots, which are becoming more realistic.—SK