WESLEY CHAPEL, Fla. — Cynthia Luckey Davis was a military contractor in Kuwait until last May, but when the pandemic shut down travel, it meant she couldn't leave her new home in Wesley Chapel to return to Kuwait.

That's when she found herself looking for a new job, but Unfortunately, that search also exposed her to job scammers.

"My ideal job is anything being and administrative assistant," Cynthia said, "I was an administrative executive assistant overseas for the program manager on our contract." 

Better Business Bureau spokesman Bryan Oglesby said that with more people going online to look for work, scammers are flocking to job sites with fake postings.

"(Scammers are) pretending to offer these jobs that do not exist," he said. "They’re stealing peoples identities through filing applications online. People working for 30 days and never get paid."

According to the BBB, job scams are the riskiest scams they've tracked in the last three years, constituting a 27% jump from 2018 to 2020. According to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center, that translates to an estimated 14 million victims in 2020 alone.

Davis said she almost became a victim of a job scam herself, until she started seeing red flags.

"The pay was gonna be $50 an hour," she said. "So of course, you know, I’m like wow that seems kind of a lot, you know? it started ringing red flags to me. (Then they) wanted me to go to a Walgreens to purchase a Visa card, deposit it into this account and then order the equipment through there one of their providers."

Instead she reported the posting to the BBB, which is offering her and everyone else some helpful tips.

"If you’re offered a job immediately on the spot without going through some sort of process, that’s going to be a red flag," Oglesby said.

In addition, he said to be alert to job offers that come from Gmail accounts and to check any company's legitimacy by searching its name along with the word "scam".

"It's important to note, that not only are consumers being victimized by these job scams, but even local legitimate companies, because these scammers are pretending to be these legitimate companies that are advertising legitimately looking for work," Oglesby said.

As for Davis, she is being more cautious, but is still just as determined to find full-time work.

"I’m confident," she said. "I just don’t know when, but I’m confident. I’m positive."