Summer 2025 Tour of Scams: Job Scams, Sextortion, and Threats

Scammers are still at it, happy to ruin our lives in search of a quick buck. Let's look at job scams that attempt to steal personal information, sextortion scams preying on teenage boys, and a really nasty threatening email I personally received. Know your scams, so you can keep yourself safe.

Resources:

• These teenage boys were blackmailed online – and it cost them their lives
• 'You might as well end it now': Terrorized by sextortion plot, a 17-year-old takes his life
• How To Identify Fake Job Postings: 10 Warning Signs

Transcript

Summer 2025 Tour of Scams

Hey y’all, I’ve been getting so many scam texts and emails, I thought it might be time to share some of them with you. Because I’m sure it ain’t just me, no sirree. These scammers send out thousands of these messages, so maybe, probably, you’ve gotten one, too. 

This is Michele Bousquet from How Hacks Happen, and in this episode, I’ll be opening up my emails and text messages to you. Opening up that little black box of goodies in the name of keeping you safe from scams.

Little warning here: Later in this episode is some darker stuff, like scams involving threats of violence and even some stories of self-harm. If that’s not something you’re up for right now, or you’ve got kids listening with you, you might want to skip this episode or come back later.

The fact that I had to say that at the front of an episode about scams should tell you something: that scams overall are getting scarier and darker. 

Now if you’re still here, let’s get into it, starting with one that’s not so much scary as it is just plain rampant.

This first one is the ever-popular job scam, where you’re offered a job that does not exist. I’ve talked about this one before, but I still get at least three of these text messages a week, and that tells me people are still falling for it. I’m going to use an AI voice to represent the text message just so I can comment on it as we go. 

Text: Hi, good morning! I'm Selina, a recruitment representative from Indeed (USA). 

Michele: Okay, right here, Selina doesn’t even address me by name. That’s red flag number one. I mean, who is she hiring? She doesn’t know.

Text: Your resume has been recommended by many online recruitment companies. 

Michele: Oh, really? Which ones? Oh, you’re not going to tell me which ones? Okay.

Text: Therefore, our company has decided to provide you with a quota for this remote online job.
This is a great remote part-time/full-time online job to help (Costco) merchants update product data, improve product rankings and traffic, so as to increase visibility and product sales, and provide free one-on-one training for this purpose.

Michele: I should mention here that the company name Costco was in parentheses. I think this is so they can easily replace it with some other company name like Target or Walmart or Temu or whatever. I’ve gotten similar text messages with those company names, too.

Text: The hours are flexible (depending on your schedule), the more you work, the more you earn, and you can earn anywhere from $50 to $500 a day. The basic salary is $1,000 for every 4 consecutive days of work. 8-day paid probation period, after which you can sign an employment contract with the company.

The maximum monthly basic salary is $7,000, plus a performance bonus of $1,000-5,000. Legal paid vacation, health insurance, retirement planning, education subsidies, the longer you work, the more welfare policies you can enjoy. If you are over 25 years old and want to participate, please send a message to this number.

Michele: And then there’s a phone number. I did a reverse lookup on the phone number, and it was registered to someone named Nicole in Oklahoma, not Selina, the name given on the text message. 

Now, $7,000 a month is not a huge salary, but also not bad, and these scammers are smart to not offer a ridiculous amount of money. Some of the scam texts I’ve received in the past were offering $200 an hour, $500 an hour, and I guess they figured out that people knew that was fake, so they had to scale it back a little to be more convincing.

Also, let’s look at some of the wording here: “the more welfare policies you can enjoy.” I don’t think whoever wrote this understands what “welfare” means, at least in American English.

Besides the fact that Selina didn’t address me by name, or state any of the credentials that might qualify me for this job, then there’s this little line: “If you are over 25 years old and want to participate...” What do you mean, Selina? Do you not know that I’m over 25? If you know so much about me, how can you not know that?

So let’s get to what the scam is about. Selina, or whatever the scammer is calling their texting bot on any given day (I’ve gotten Rebecca recently, and a couple of other names), Selina wants me to text that phone number. After I do that, the scam begins. 

Now, make no mistake here. There is no job. What there is, is an attempt to part you with your personal information, or your money, or both. 

And there’s lots of different ways the scammer can try and do this.

One possibility is that I will be asked to fill out a form to start my employment, which involves entering my address, my social security number, maybe even a bank account that they’re going to supposedly deposit my pay to. Now, this is normal stuff when starting any real job, but usually this only happens after you’ve been interviewed in person, or at least by Zoom call, with real people, and the form is part of a secure onboarding process at the company’s website, and you go through it with real live HR person. 

In this case, I can be pretty sure the form won’t actually be associated with Costco’s website. It will be some crappy Google form at a random address, with the sole purpose of collecting my personal information so they can scam me later, or sell my information to a data broker who will sell it to someone else, who will try to scam me later.

They might also tell me that in order to start the job, I need to order some equipment, and they’ll send me a check to cover the costs. “Here’s a cashier’s check for $2000. Go ahead and order your laptop and monitor from our trusted provider.” It’s still a scam, but it can go a whole bunch of different ways at this point. 

Now, the check is always fake, but the bank might not figure that out right away. So you think you’ve got $2000, the bank thinks you have $2000, and you go spend the money, but the bank will eventually catch up with this, and you’ll be on the hook for all the money you spent.

Or the so-called trusted provider’s website, could be that that’s really the scammer, so you’re paying the scammer for a laptop, and it never arrives. 

Or, the company might send you this $2000 check to buy $1500 of equipment at the vendor of your choice, but they ask you to send that extra $500 back via Venmo or gift cards or whatever. And then you’re out $500 when the check inevitably bounces.

These people don’t care that you’re struggling, that you’re desperately looking for a job, that you don’t have $500 to spare. They want your personal information, or your money, or both.

So please talk to your friends and family about this scam, especially if they’re someone who’s been searching for a job for weeks or months—they’re the most susceptible because they’re starting to get desperate. These scams purposely make these jobs look so tempting, but if someone falls for it, they’ll ultimately get even more depressed after they find out that they got scammed.

Okay, this is the spot in the episode where things get kind of dark. This next one deals with teenage s-e-x. Specifically, this next story deals with teenagers messing up, and then applying a permanent and devastating solution to what should have been a temporary problem. Something none of us would want to have happen.

I belong to a bunch of subreddits about scams, and this one must come up at least once a week. It goes something like this. 

An attractive young woman messages a teenage boy online. The girl gets flirty, then she sends nude pictures of herself. 

For the boy, this feels like the best day of his life. The girls at school certainly aren’t taking off their clothes for him, but now, this girl likes him so much, she is sending nudes of herself. He’s hit the jackpot!

Then she asks the boy to send her some nudes in return. And he thinks, sure, why not? They’re really having fun here.

But right after the boy sends the pictures, things take a nasty turn. The girl’s father gets into the conversation and says she is a minor, and the boy is now guilty of trafficking in child porn. The father threatens to release the boy’s naked photos and get him arrested if he doesn’t send money for the daughter’s therapy or whatever.

Of course, there is no girl. The scammer on the other end is most likely a man, using nude pictures he got who knows where, OnlyFans or something.

This type of scam works particularly well on young men from cultures where family honor is everything, and having such pictures out there would bring unbearable shame. The idea of their mom seeing a photo of them touching their junk, it’s just too horrible to imagine. But it can happen even when parents are open about sex and protection and all of that, and have talked to their kids about it.

This scam is called sextortion, and it’s rampant. And it can be deadly.

The thing is, the scammer doesn’t care about the photos. They want money, pure and simple. But imagine being 17 or 18, or even 16, and worried that your entire world is about to come crashing down. Your future is ruined. Your family is about to disown you, you’ll get cut off and they’ll never speak to you again. 

Add to that all the angst and insecurity and complicated feelings about sex that teenagers already have, and this scam can be brutal.

But if the boy sends money, the scammers will just keep asking for money. It will never stop. They’ll promise that the next payment will keep the photos from being released, but then they’ll come back for more. And they will never, ever, ever stop demanding money.

And in their quest to get this money, they can be ruthless, playing on the emotions of these teenagers. And some teens, especially boys, have been driven to take their own lives over this.

According to the FBI, sextortion has been connected to at least 30 suicides of teenage boys since 2021. And these stories are just heartbreaking. Here is just one of them.

In 2022, high school senior James Woods of Streetsboro, Ohio was a relatively normal, even happy teenager. He ran track, he liked comics, he had lots of friends, and he was applying to go to college.

Three months into his senior year, out of nowhere, James killed himself. His parents were, of course, devastated beyond belief, but also confused. James had never had issues with depression or anything else that might lead to suicide. 

When the police looked through James’ phone though, they found that he had been the victim of a sextortion scam, just like the one I just described. 

The scammer wanted thousands of dollars, or he was going to release the pictures. James sent $100, pretty much all he had, but the scammer, of course, wanted more. And to get it, they turned to some really dirty tactics. They said that if they didn’t get more money they’d release James’s photos and James would be labeled a pedophile, and he wouldn’t be able to go to college or get a job. His life would be over. The scammer even threatened to physically hurt James’s parents. 

The scammers sent messages every few minutes for hours and hours.

Then the scammer said something that would change everything. He said, “You might as well end it now.” 

And sadly, that’s what James did. And all this took place over a matter of a few hours, really less than a day. One minute James’s mom was texting him about which colleges he was going to visit, and a few hours later, he was gone.

This is just so unnecessary and so heartbreaking. James’s parents are now very involved in spreading the word about these kinds of scams, so this same tragedy doesn’t happen to other families. 

So how can we prevent this type of thing from happening? I can add my own experience here. Somehow, somewhere in my childhood, my parents expressed to me that the death of one of their children would be the worst thing that could ever happen to them. If I somehow got pregnant while I was twelve, or became a heroin addict, or I got caught robbing a bank or something, yeah, there'd be some words for me, but none of this would come close to the devastation of losing me or one of my siblings forever. 

Now without going into detail, I can say that this little piece of information helped get me through some dark times in my teenage years.

Tamia Woods, James’s mother, said it pretty well. “We would have cussed him out and said, ‘How dare you?’ and then gone to police,” she said. But through all this, of course, she’d rather have her son alive than not. And I don’t know any parent who wouldn’t.

And in case you think this only affects white kids, or black kids, or Asian or Indian kids, or dorky introverted kids who have trouble talking to the opposite sex, think again. It can affect any boy who feels flattered by the attention and wants to see boobies. And that’s a really high percentage.

So to prevent this, I say, parents, please talk to your teenage kids about sexting, and about this scam. 

While sexting isn’t a great idea in general, lots of kids do do it, so let them know that if they get caught, it’s not the end of the world. We all did stupid things as teenagers. Even aunties and grandparents can get in on this. Yeah, maybe it’s barging in or being a busybody, but wouldn’t you rather have your nephew or grandson alive? Let them know that nothing like this is worth their life.

And you can do this without being heavy-handed. You can talk to them about cases that happened, just like telling a story. Something that caught your interest, you say. Very sad for the parents of these unfortunate teenagers. And be a safe space to talk to, without judgment. 

Share some stories of your own reckless youth, like that one time you let your friend take those X-rated Polaroids that probably ended up in some creepy guy’s underwear drawer. (I’m not speaking from experience here or anything, I just heard about that.)

And that’s the end of my Ted Talk. If it saves one young life, I’m glad I gave it.

Okay, this next one contains words about bringing serious harm to someone, namely me. Well, more specifically, my precious face. But it’s so clearly a scam.

I received this email about a week ago, and it’s the first time I’ve ever gotten something like this. It came from an email address that’s obviously spoofed, from ssctv.net, which is the domain for the Seattle College Cable Television website. I’m pretty sure they had nothing to do with this email.

So here is how it goes. I’m going to use an AI voice again to read the email, so you can distinguish between the email and my commentary.

Email: Good day.

Michele: Okay, they haven’t even addressed me by name. That’s red flag number one again. This is obviously an email spammed out to thousands of people.
 
Email: I have a website in the darkweb, I perform all kinds of services - basically it is destruction to property and injury. Basically, all but the shooting. Often main reasons are rejected love or competition at workplace. 

Michele: Ooh, are you offering me some services? Do go on.

Email: This week she contacted me and set me the mission of splashing acid in your face. 

Michele: Wow, this got dark real quick. Who is this “she”? This is supposed to be related to rejected love or competition in the workplace, which, if you knew my workplace, would be hilarious. Like, the only one that might be feeling something like that, would be my cat. But you know, you never know! Let’s read on.

Email: Default practice—quickly, painfully, for life. Without too much fuss. I get receive only after finishing the order. 

Michele: What, you “get receive” only after finishing the order? Dude, you could have at least run this through Grammarly or something.
 
Email: Thus, now I propose you to compensate me to be inactive, I propose this to nearly all the victims. If I do not receive money from you, then my person will fulfill the mission. 

Michele: Oh my goodness, I’m so scared of this random person who threatens to disfigure me, who doesn’t even know my name. And all told to me by someone whose grammar is so colossally bad.

Email: If you give me money, besides to my inactivity, I will provide you the info that I have about the client. 

Michele: Oh yeah, right. If I give you money, you’ll tell me who ordered the hit. Wait, it was my cat, wasn’t it? I know it! Hmm, no, I think if I send you money, I won’t find out anything. You’ll just ask for more money.

Email: After finishing the mission, I always lose the performer, so I have a selection, 

Michele: What the heck is this even talking about?

Email: So I have a selection, to get $2000 from you for info about the customer and my inaction, or to receive $ 4000 from the customer, but with a big probability of spending the performer. 

Michele: Oh boy, this is kind of—I’m not really sure what they’re talking about. “Lose the performer”? “Spending the performer”? I wasn’t planning on having to wade through this awful grammar trying to figure out what they’re saying.
 
Email: I’m getting paid in LTC, 

Michele: LTC refers to Litecoin, which isn’t the greatest cryptocurrency. It’s lost a lot of value in the past few years. And this is a first! I’ve never got a scam email that asked for Litecoin.

Email: The amount I indicated above. If you do not understand how, look online how to buy LTC.

Michele: But if I send Litecoin, how are you going to know it’s me who sent it, because cryptocurrency transactions are anonymous, right? How can you know to email me the information about who ordered the hit? I’m very confused.

Email: Do not try reply to this email, i sent it from a disposable email. You have 24 hours to decide after you open this email.

Michele: Oh no! This email went straight to my spam a week ago, and I didn’t read it until four days later. Whatever shall I do? Because I cannot “try reply to this email.”

Spoiler alert: I didn’t pay, and no one showed up to disfigure me, despite my missing the 24-hour deadline. 

If your kid ever wonders, “Why do I need to learn spelling and grammar?” There's a good reason right there: so you can spot scam emails like this one a mile away.

And that’s my mid-year update for 2025. Scammers are still at it, pulling the same tricks that have worked for years, sometimes refining things a bit, but still the same at their core. They want your personal information, they want your money, and they’re not going to give you anything in return.

How many of these scams have you gotten in your text or email? You can let me know through the “Send us a text” link at the end of the description.

This is Michele Bousquet from How Hacks Happen, hoping you and your loved ones never fall for any of these scams. Or if they do, that you’re kind and understanding about it, and help them extricate themselves before they do something drastic. 

Stay safe out there, folks!