Job scams are getting more sophisticated, and they’re costing Americans millions

We’ve all received them. A misspelled message from a nameless, so-called recruiter, likely from a sketchy i Cloud or Outlook email address, telling you they have the perfect job opportunity for you. An obvious scam. But the days of weak attempts to siphon your information are over. In the AI era, scams are getting more sophisticated and persistent (and unavoidable). Take Mary Ann Morrison, an instructional design manager based in Fayetteville, Arkansas. After applying for a position at the University of Arkansas in Little Rock, she received an email asking to set up an interview. “They were asking me to meet up with them. They asked the time and everything. It sounded very professional,” Morrison told Fortune. The recruiter sent over a link for a Microsoft Teams meeting. “When I went and looked at the link, I realized this doesn’t look quite right. It doesn’t look like Teams.” The link told her she needed to update Teams, but she checked her own Teams App on her computer and didn’t see any notification to update. Courtesy of Mary Ann Morrison Courtesy of Mary Ann Morrison Courtesy of Mary Ann Morrison “I know better than to click on random links,” she said. “I looked back at the sender. The email looked great, great grammar, very professional, a little bit colder than what I would expect from a recruiter. It wasn’t as personal, it was more generic.” She looked up the recruiter in the University of Arkansas’s directory and couldn’t find anyone with her name. She looked up the university HR email domain and found that the emails didn’t match either. Morrison reported the scam to the university, and they told her they will warn others about potential scams. “It’s scary how realistic these scams are getting, because just their mannerisms is a lot less of the idea where people used to just send out a very blanket email with a lot of grammar mistakes and a very obvious email address,” she said. “Everything just sounds wonderful, and then it’s