The Lee County, Florida Sheriff Warned About Job Text Scams. Our Data Found Who They Targeted.

In May, the Lee County, Florida Sheriff's Office put out a fraud alert about job offer texts. The office flagged three patterns. Unsolicited texts and messaging app contacts. Fake check refund schemes. Task scams that pay people to post fake reviews. The advice was sound. What the alert didn't have was the people on the other end of those messages, so we went into Scam Detective's complaint data and found them.

The alert cited a Federal Trade Commission figure. Floridians lost more than $9 million to job scams over the past year, which puts the state second in the country. Our records show all three patterns the alert named running in Florida right now, plus a fourth it left out, where the scammer wraps the whole thing in the name of a real company.

A Driver Job in Fort Myers, and a Check for $4,890

A Fort Myers resident inside Lee County's 33912 ZIP code answered an email looking for a part time driver. The work was to chauffeur an elderly woman in her Mercedes for $150 a day. Two days later a Priority Mail envelope showed up with a $4,890 cashier's check inside. The instructions were to deposit it, then write a personal check back to the car delivery crew once the Mercedes arrived.

The applicant didn't. They picked up the phone and called the bank printed on the check.

"I called the issuer State Savings Bank in Iowa, who confirmed that Davis Handyman and Construction had not issued such a check and that police were looking in to it."

The return address on the envelope was fake. State Savings Bank in Iowa had never issued the check. Davis Handyman and Construction, named as the company that wrote it, had never written it. Once the check was in play, the scammer dropped the email and moved to a text only number, 209-340-3275, posing as a "Dr Crysti Long."

That one phone call is the reason this story has a happy ending. The deposit would have looked fine for a few days. The personal check the applicant wrote back would have cleared long before the bank discovered the cashier's check was forged. By then the real money would have been gone.

Two Emails From "Lisa Smith" in Palatka

A Florida resident in Palatka, up in ZIP 32177, got two emails from a "Lisa Smith" about a remote quality control agent role paying $3,200 a month with a 30 percent raise promised after three months. The pitch arrived right after the resident started applying for jobs on careerbuilder.com, so the timing felt natural.

What made it work wasn't the salary. It was the small talk. The first email closed with a note claiming Lisa shared the recipient's last name. The second claimed Lisa's parents had met in the recipient's hometown. Little hooks designed to feel like coincidence and lower your guard before any money came up.

"She left no company name, no phone number, and no logos or websites, which was very suspicious. All this happened after I started applying on careerbuilder.com."

No company. No website. No phone. A real recruiter gives you all three without being asked. This one gave warmth instead, and warmth costs nothing to fake.

A Real Hospital's Name on a Fake Job

The fourth pattern, the one the alert didn't mention, is the impersonated employer. A scammer registered banyanhealthcareers.org and emailed candidates about a Remote Cloud Support Engineer position paying $70 an hour. The role was attributed to Banyan Health Systems, a legitimate healthcare organization in South Florida that had nothing to do with any of it.

There was no interview. The pay didn't match the job. And right on cue, a check was coming to cover office equipment before training began.

"They stated they would send me a check to purchase office equipment and software before training begins. This is a well-known fake check scam tactic where the check eventually bounces after the victim has already spent their own money."

Borrowing a real employer's name does two things at once. It survives the quick search a cautious applicant runs, because Banyan Health Systems is real, and it lends the fake check an air of corporate routine. People question a stranger asking for money. They hesitate to question what looks like an HR department.

The Phone Calls the Alert Didn't Mention

The alert stayed on texts and messaging apps, which is where most of this lives now. The phone channel is still open too. Scam Detective's data shows 36 Florida area code phone numbers logged in federal complaint records under the work from home category. Across 510 such numbers nationwide, the FTC has recorded 1,580 complaints and the Federal Communications Commission another 419.

The most reported Florida work from home number, (954) 325-8304 in the Broward County area code, drew its most recent complaint on May 24, 2026. If you get a recorded pitch about easy money from home, the number that called you very likely has a complaint history you can read before you call back.

The One Move That Ties Them Together

Strip away the chauffeur job, the friendly recruiter, and the hospital logo, and three of these cases run the same play. A check arrives for more than you're owed. You deposit it. Before it clears, the scammer gives you a reason to send part of the money somewhere else, to a car delivery crew, an equipment vendor, a third party of some kind. Your bank releases the funds in a day or two, so the wire goes out looking real. A week later the original check bounces as a forgery and the bank pulls that amount back out of your account. The money you sent is already gone, and you're on the hook for it.

The tell is simple. No legitimate employer sends you a check and then asks you to send money back. If a job offer involves depositing a check and forwarding any part of it, the job is the bait and the check is the trap.

How to Check Before You Deposit Anything

The Sheriff's Office got the warning out at the right time, and the patterns it named are exactly the ones hitting Florida inboxes. The cases above are what those patterns look like up close, pulled straight from what people reported.

If a recruiter texts or emails you out of the blue, you can verify the pieces before you act. Look up the phone number, the website, or the company name at isitspamchecker.com to see reported scam types, complaint history, and risk scoring. The original Lee County, Florida Sheriff's Office fraud alert is worth a read, and the overpayment refund pattern behind all of this is the same one showing up in job scams across the country.