01/07/2025

Scammers Meet Their Match: Student Fraud Investigators Spot Rising Threat

Robert H. Smith School of Business

When suspicious text messages started popping up on the phones of students working for the University of Maryland's Justice for Fraud Victims project, they knew something wasn't right. These weren't your typical spam texts. They were sophisticated job offers, supposedly based on "recommended resumes" that none of the students had ever submitted.

But these weren't typical students either. As volunteer fraud investigators working with real victims, they'd developed a keen eye for deception.

"The timing was almost uncanny," says Samuel Handwerger, CPA, accounting lecturer and faculty advisor for the project at Maryland's Robert Smith School of Business. "Our students were receiving these suspicious job offers right as the Federal Trade Commission was uncovering a massive surge in similar scams nationwide."

The students’ instincts “proved spot-on,” he adds. Their quick research revealed they'd spotted the leading edge of what the FTC now calls "task scams"—a fraud scheme that has exploded from zero reported cases in 2020 to 20,000 reports in just the first half of 2024, with victims losing over $220 million.