Americans lost record $68m to job and business opportunities scams in 2022 Q1

Data analyzed by Atlas VPN shows that US citizens lost over $68.3 million to various job and business offer scams in the first quarter of 2022.

The business and job opportunities fraud category includes offers for work-at-home jobs, like stuffing envelopes or processing medical claims, multi-level marketing schemes, job scams, job listings, employment services, inventions or idea promotions, and business opportunities.

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The figures were extracted from a public database of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). US Citizens can submit fraud reports to the FTC for further investigation. The FTC shares this data to inform the nation about the state of the cybercrime landscape in the US.

All in all, US citizens have lost $701.4 million to bogus job and business opportunities since 2018. We will dissect the data into smaller increments to better understand this fraud type.

To start, criminals swindled $17.7 million from unsuspecting victims in 2018 Q1, which comes out to around $197 thousand lost daily. These damages were a result of 1,969 scams with a median loss of $1,036.

In contrast, Americans lost $68.3 million or nearly $759 thousand daily throughout the first quarter of 2022, which represents a growth of 285% over 2018 Q1. The FTC received 5,999 reports indicating a loss, with the median loss standing at $1,950.

Yet the significant upsurge in business and job opportunities scams started in 2021 Q4, where total losses amounted to $62.5 million, or an average of $680 thousand per day, a growth of 29% over 2021 Q3. The median loss was $2,000, while the number of reports totaled 6,353.