Abstract Employment scams, where victims are defrauded by applying to fake or deceptive job advertisements, have become a growing concern since Covid-19. Many jurisdictions, especially financial centres such as the United States, Hong Kong and Singapore, have reported year-on-year increases in employment-related deception. Economic pressures from the pandemic, as well as the growth of industrialised scam compounds in Southeast Asia that rely on labour trafficking, have accelerated this growing crime problem. Academic research on this trend, particularly its detection through algorithmic pattern detection, has existed for some time but remains scattered across different disciplines. A holistic structured analysis of existing research, and our current scholarly understanding of this issue and its detection, is therefore necessary to inform future approaches and priorities. This study has two complementary aims: first, it conducts an exploratory PRISMA-ScR-compliant scoping review that analyses 16 research articles relating to the commission and detection of employment scams. Second, the insights gained are used to construct a crime script, which provides a holistic understanding of how employment scams occur and possible points of intervention. Using the findings from both the review and the script, the paper analyses key findings in contemporary employment scam research, key scam typologies, prevailing research limitations, available datasets/methods and useful avenues for future study. The aim of this paper is to provide a unified overview of the current state of the art of both employment scams and current research, while defining the next best steps to support the prevention of this worsening crime trend.
Sun et al. (Tue,) studied this question.