Scammed by a fake job offer? Capture the proof before the scammer deletes it.

In the US, report to FBI IC3 at ic3.gov and the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov, and use IdentityTheft.gov if your identity data was exposed. File a police report so you receive a crime reference number, which your bank will ask for, then contact your bank or card issuer immediately to attempt a freeze or chargeback. In the UK use Action Fraud, in Australia Scamwatch, in Canada the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, and in India the cybercrime portal or the 1930 helpline. Investigators prioritize reports that include screenshots of the conversation, wallet addresses and time-stamped records, which is exactly what a ProofSnap package provides.

Move fast and preserve what still exists. Even if the recruiter side is gone, capture your own records: your bank or exchange history showing the outgoing payment, any email you received, the wallet instructions, and any fake recovery contact that reaches out again. If you captured the profile, the chat or the fake dashboard while they were live with ProofSnap, those captures carry a blockchain timestamp and a SHA-256 hash, so they remain verifiable even after the originals are deleted. The most useful thing tonight is to capture everything before it disappears, then report and request a bank freeze.

A task scam is a fake online job that starts with an unsolicited WhatsApp, Telegram or SMS message offering flexible remote work, often 100 to 800 dollars a day for simple tasks such as liking videos or rating products. You create an account, complete a few tasks and receive small real payouts, which builds trust. Then combo tasks appear that require a deposit, usually in crypto, to unlock the next set or to withdraw. The dashboard shows a growing fake balance to pull you deeper, then the account is frozen, a final tax or withdrawal fee is demanded, and the operators vanish. Task scams made up roughly 40 percent of job scam reports.

A plain screenshot has no provable date and is trivial to edit, so a bank, a platform or a court can dismiss it as unverifiable. A ProofSnap capture is different: each file is SHA-256 hashed and anchored to the Bitcoin blockchain through OpenTimestamps at the moment of capture, with a chain-of-custody log and the full page HTML preserved, not just an image. The content and the time it existed can be independently verified by anyone, for free, even after the scammer deletes the original.

Yes. ProofSnap is a Chrome and Edge extension that captures whatever is open in your browser, including WhatsApp Web, Telegram Web, LinkedIn messages and profiles, Instagram, email threads, the fake company website, the job posting and the task app dashboard. It captures the full page, the HTML, the metadata and a screenshot together, then hashes and timestamps them. For phone-only apps, open the web version on your computer, or capture the payment records, emails and any web links you were sent.

Do three things in order. First, stop paying: no legitimate employer asks you to deposit funds to unlock wages, and a demand for a final tax or withdrawal fee is the scam, not a fee. Second, capture everything while it still exists: the chat, the profile, the dashboard, the wallet address and your own payment record, so the evidence survives the scammer deleting the accounts. Third, report and freeze: contact your bank or card issuer immediately to try to stop or reverse the transfer, file with IC3 and the FTC, and file a police report for the crime reference number your bank will need. Be aware of recovery scams: anyone who contacts you promising to get your money back for an upfront fee is a second scam.

The strongest red flags are: an offer that arrives unsolicited by text, WhatsApp, Telegram or LinkedIn DM; a salary that is far too high for little work; a job offer with no real interview; a recruiter using a Gmail or free email address instead of the company domain; any request to pay upfront for equipment, training or a starter task set; any request to deposit a check and send part of it back; being asked for your Social Security number, ID or bank details very early; and pressure to act immediately. In 2026, watch for AI deepfake interviews where a real-time face swap impersonates an executive on Zoom or Teams, and for scammers impersonating trusted brands such as Amazon or the postal service.

Reports to the FTC about job scams roughly tripled from 2020 to 2024, and reported losses jumped from 90 million to 501 million US dollars, an increase of about 457 percent in four years. In the last quarter of 2025 alone, job opportunity scams caused 150.4 million US dollars in losses across about 25,002 reports, with a median loss of around 2,000 US dollars per victim. Globally, an estimated 14 million people are exposed to employment scams every year with around 2 billion US dollars in direct losses. Most losses are never recovered, which is why preserving evidence early to support a bank freeze and a police report matters.