Scammers pose as recruiters and staffing firms because job seekers expect to hear from them. This guide shows how to check that a LockLeed job posting, email or call is genuine. It walks through the job scam patterns the FTC and FBI warn about, gives the FTC's 2025 figures for service members and veterans, and explains where to report a scam.
This is general information, not legal or financial advice. It describes common patterns, and a message can be a scam without matching any of them.
LockLeed's contact details, job board and application fields are described as published on lockleed.com in September 2026. If anything here differs from what lockleed.com shows today, go by the site and call 763-355-5789 to confirm.
FTC and FBI figures come from reports people chose to file. Most fraud is never reported, the FTC did not collect reports during the 2025 government shutdown, and the FTC's Business and Job Opportunities category also counts business opportunity, work-at-home and multi-level marketing schemes, so the numbers are indicators rather than a full count.
As of September 2026 the FTC has not published a Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book for 2025, so the 2025 figures for military consumers come from the FTC's Consumer Sentinel dashboards at ftc.gov/exploredata, which the FTC updates quarterly. The dashboards also revise earlier years as reports come in, so their numbers can differ slightly from a published Data Book. The other figures come from FTC Data Spotlights, FTC testimony to Congress and the FBI's 2025 IC3 annual report, each dated in the text.
Every figure and date in this guide was checked against its official source in September 2026. Agencies update their data and advice; check the source before relying on a specific number.
Four checks before you trust a message that uses LockLeed's name
Start with the job board. LockLeed publishes its open roles on its own site at lockleed.com/careers, and the careers page states that positions are pulled live from LockLeed's Bullhorn applicant system. If someone presents a role as a LockLeed opening, look for the same title and location there before you reply with anything personal.
LockLeed openings can legitimately turn up on other sites as well. Its partner page offers county veterans service officers, veterans service organizations, workforce boards and transition offices a free widget and job feeds, plus a standard feed for job boards and aggregators. The widget links each role to its full posting, and the partner page states that filled positions drop out of the feed automatically, usually within the hour. Wherever you find a LockLeed opening through these feeds or the widget, the same role should be on lockleed.com/careers while it is open.
Next, read the sender's full email address, not just the display name, which anyone can set to say anything. Every LockLeed email address published on lockleed.com ends in @lockleed.com, and the main one is [email protected]. A message that says it comes from LockLeed but arrives from a free webmail account or a look-alike domain is a reason to stop and check. The FBI lists contact through non-company email domains as one indicator of a fake hiring scheme.
Then verify through a channel you look up yourself, never one supplied in the message. LockLeed's published phone number is 763-355-5789, its office hours are Monday to Friday, 8:30 AM to 4:30 PM Central, and its office is at 10235 University Ave NE, Minneapolis, MN 55434. The FTC gives the same advice about unexpected texts: if you think one might be legitimate, contact the company using a phone number or website you know is real, and do not use the information in the text.
Finally, remember that a role you cannot find on the board is not automatically fake. Openings fill and close, and LockLeed's executive search page describes dedicated, confidential searches for senior roles. The answer is the same either way: call or email LockLeed and confirm before you send documents or personal details.
- The role is on lockleed.com/careers, or LockLeed confirms it when you call 763-355-5789.
- The email comes from an address ending in @lockleed.com, and you have checked the full address, not the display name.
- Nobody asks you to pay for anything. LockLeed states that candidates never pay for placement, coaching, introductions or any part of the process.
- You reached LockLeed through contact details you found on lockleed.com yourself, not ones given to you in the message.
What LockLeed asks of candidates, and what it does not
LockLeed places people in direct-hire roles only, and its site states that working with LockLeed is always free for candidates. The employer pays LockLeed's fee, and candidates never pay for placement, coaching, introductions or any part of the process. A request for money made in LockLeed's name, whether it is called a registration fee, a résumé fee, a training cost or a charge for equipment, contradicts that and should be treated as a scam.
LockLeed's online application asks for your name, email, phone and location, your service background (branch, MOS, rating or AFSC, clearance and transition status), the kind of role you want, your earliest start date, desired pay, U.S. work authorization and a résumé. It has no field for a Social Security number or bank details. LockLeed's privacy policy asks people not to enter sensitive identifiers such as a Social Security number into its website chat or résumé fields, or send them through its contact form.
Genuine recruiters do reach out. LockLeed's careers page says a recruiter calls within 48 hours of an application to learn your background, goals and timeline, so a call like that is normal. What should worry you is pressure to decide in a hurry, a hiring process that skips references and any real interview, or a request for money or financial details before you have been hired by an actual employer. Those are the warning signs the FTC and FBI describe in the next section.
Job scam patterns the FTC and FBI warn about
None of these patterns is unique to the military community, but each appears in the warnings the FTC and FBI publish, and each is easy to miss in the middle of a transition job search.
Recruiter and staffing firm impersonation. The FBI warned on June 4, 2024 that scammers offering fake work-from-home jobs pose as a legitimate business, such as a staffing or recruiting agency, and may make contact through an unsolicited call or message. An earlier FBI warning, dated February 1, 2022, described scammers copying real job postings, changing the contact information, and using the identities of actual company employees to look authentic. A familiar company name in a message proves nothing on its own.
Task scams. The FTC reported on December 12, 2024 that gamified job scams, often called task scams, were driving record losses. They usually start with an unexpected text or WhatsApp message offering online work with no specifics. The work is simple and repetitive, such as rating products or liking videos, inside an app that shows earnings that are not real. At some point you are told to deposit money to unlock the next set of tasks or withdraw what you have supposedly earned. The FTC says cryptocurrency is the currency of choice for these scams, and its advice is blunt: never pay anyone to get paid.
Fake checks and equipment purchases. In a fake check scam, someone posing as a new employer sends you a check and tells you to deposit it and send part of the money on, for example to buy supplies for the job. The FTC explains that fake checks can take weeks to be discovered, and by then you owe the bank the money while the scammer keeps what you sent. The FBI has also warned that fake employers tell people to pay upfront for background checks, job training, start-up equipment or supplies, often promising reimbursement in the first paycheck. VSAFE.gov, the fraud site maintained by the Department of Veterans Affairs, lists upfront payment requests for training or equipment among its employment scam warnings.
Placement fee scams. The FTC says honest placement firms do not typically charge job candidates a fee, because the hiring company pays them to find qualified candidates, and that if a placement firm asks you for a fee, especially one paid in advance, you should walk away. The FTC's MilitaryConsumer.gov site puts it more directly: no legitimate company will ever charge you money to get a job or guarantee you a job only if you pay.
Identity theft dressed up as onboarding. Some fake employers want your identity rather than your money. The FBI has described fake hiring processes that end with requests for a copy of your driver's license, your Social Security number, direct deposit details and credit card information. Its advice is that legitimate companies ask for personal and bank account information for payroll purposes after they hire you, that you should never give credit card information to an employer, and that you should never give bank account information to an employer without verifying who they are.
Reshipping jobs. The FTC describes postings for roles such as quality control manager or virtual personal assistant where the real work is receiving packages at home, repackaging the contents and sending them on, often goods bought with stolen credit cards. The FTC says reshipping goods is never a real job, and personal information handed over for what you thought was payroll can leave you with an identity theft problem.
Fake federal job offers. The FTC notes that information about federal and postal job openings is free, that it is always free to apply for a federal or postal job, and that you should never pay a fee to get one. Federal openings are posted on USAJobs.gov.
- An unexpected text or WhatsApp message offering work with no specifics (FTC).
- Any request to pay to get a job, unlock earnings, or cover training, background checks or equipment (FTC, FBI).
- A check to deposit, with part of the money to be sent on or spent on supplies (FTC).
- Contact from a non-company email domain, or interviews that never happen in person or over a secure video call (FBI).
- Requests for your Social Security number, bank or credit card details before you are hired (FBI).
- A hiring process that asks for no references (FBI), or pressure to decide in a hurry (FTC).
- Pressure to pay by cryptocurrency, gift card, payment app or wire transfer (FTC).
What the FTC and FBI numbers show
The FTC tracks fraud reports from military consumers: active duty service members, members of the Guard and Reserve, military retirees and veterans, and spouses and dependents of active duty service members. Its Consumer Sentinel dashboards, published July 28, 2026 with data as of June 30, 2026, show 117,422 fraud reports from military consumers in 2025. Of those, 35,213 (30%) reported losing money, for a total of $684 million and a median loss of $650. Military retirees and veterans alone filed 92,128 fraud reports and reported $522 million in losses.
Business and job opportunity scams were the third most reported fraud category among military consumers in 2025, with 5,519 reports, up from fourth place in 2024. Of those, 31% reported losing money, for a total of $43.6 million and a median loss of $3,091, nearly five times the $650 median across all fraud reports from military consumers. Across all consumers in 2025, the category's $2,002 median loss was the second highest of the ten most reported fraud categories, behind investment scams. The FTC's category is broader than job scams alone: it also covers business and franchise opportunities, work-at-home plans and multi-level marketing schemes.
Job scam losses have been climbing for years. In its December 12, 2024 Data Spotlight, the FTC reported that losses on reports classified as job scams and employment agencies grew from $90 million in 2020 to $286 million in 2023, and reached $223 million in the first half of 2024 alone. It estimated that task scam reports rose from about 5,000 in all of 2023 to about 20,000 in the first half of 2024, and that cryptocurrency losses to job scams were about $41 million in the first half of 2024, against about $21 million in all of 2023.
Social media and text messages are common starting points. The FTC reported on April 27, 2026 that one in three people who reported losing money to a job or business opportunity scam in 2025 said it started on social media. In its April 14, 2025 Data Spotlight, the FTC listed phony job opportunities among the top five text scams of 2024, noting that scammers posing as recruiters to take people's money is not new.
The FBI's figures point the same way. Its Internet Crime Complaint Center recorded 24,688 employment fraud complaints with reported losses of $362,934,762 in 2025, up from 20,044 complaints and $264,223,271 in 2024, according to its 2025 annual report. Across all fraud types, the FTC told Congress on March 25, 2026 that consumers submitted 3 million fraud reports and reported $15.9 billion in losses in 2025.
All of these figures come from reports people chose to file, so they understate the problem. The FTC cites research finding that only 4.8% of people who experienced mass-market consumer fraud complained to a Better Business Bureau or a government entity, and it notes that it did not collect reports during the 2025 government shutdown.
If you think a job offer is a scam
Stop replying, and do not send money, documents or personal numbers. If the message used a real company's name, contact that company through a phone number or website you find yourself. For LockLeed, that means 763-355-5789 or [email protected], the contact details published on lockleed.com.
If you already paid, act fast. The FTC's advice is to contact the company you used to send the money, whether that was a debit or credit card, a payment app, a wire transfer service, a gift card company or a cryptocurrency platform, report the fraud and ask to have the transaction reversed if possible. The FBI adds a warning: do not pay for services that claim they can recover lost cryptocurrency.
If you handed over your Social Security number, bank details or a copy of your ID, go to IdentityTheft.gov, the FTC's site for reporting identity theft and taking steps to recover.
Where to report a job scam
Report even if you did not lose money. The FTC says it uses reports from the public to investigate and stop fraud, for consumer education and outreach, and for its data analyses.
Watch for a second scam after you report. The FBI warned on July 20, 2026 that criminals are impersonating FBI personnel who handle IC3 complaints, including through fake social media profiles, to target people who have already lost money with offers to recover it. IC3 states that it will never directly contact you for information or money, and the FBI advises typing www.ic3.gov directly into your browser's address bar rather than using a search engine, and skipping any sponsored results if you do search.
- FTC: ReportFraud.ftc.gov. The FTC's job scam guidance also suggests reporting to your state attorney general.
- FBI: the Internet Crime Complaint Center at ic3.gov, the FBI's central hub for reporting cyber-enabled crime. The FBI asks victims to include any transaction information.
- Veterans and their families: VSAFE.gov, maintained by the Department of Veterans Affairs, and its fraud hotline at 833-38V-SAFE (833-388-7233).
- Stolen personal information: IdentityTheft.gov.
- A scam that used LockLeed's name: tell LockLeed at [email protected] or 763-355-5789.
Get the FTC's scam alerts for the military community
The FTC points service members to MilitaryConsumer.gov as their tool for financial readiness, and the site offers free scam alerts by email with the FTC's latest advice as new schemes appear. In its Military Consumer Month alert of July 1, 2026, the FTC suggested subscribing to the MilitaryConsumer.gov blog for the latest on scams, bookmarking VSAFE.gov, and ordering free printed materials at ftc.gov/bulkorder, which can help a veteran you know spot a scam long after a conversation about it.
Sources
Every figure above is drawn from these sources. Figures and rules change, so check the current source before you act.
- FTC Consumer Sentinel dashboard: Reports by Military Consumers, year 2025 (published July 28, 2026, data as of June 30, 2026)
- FTC Consumer Sentinel dashboard: Total Reports and Fraud Losses by Military Consumers, year 2025 (published July 28, 2026, data as of June 30, 2026)
- FTC Consumer Sentinel dashboard: Top Reports for all consumers, year 2025, all quarters (published July 28, 2026, data as of June 30, 2026)
- FTC: Explore Data, the Consumer Sentinel dashboards (ftc.gov/exploredata)
- FTC: Consumer Sentinel Network reports (lists each published Data Book)
- FTC: Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book 2024 report page
- FTC: Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book 2024 (published March 2025)
- FTC Data Spotlight: Paying to get paid: gamified job scams drive record losses (December 12, 2024)
- FTC Data Spotlight: Top text scams of 2024 (April 14, 2025)
- FTC Data Spotlight: Reported losses to scams on social media eight times higher than in 2020 (April 27, 2026)
- FTC prepared statement to the Joint Economic Committee: The Rising Scam Economy (March 25, 2026)
- FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center: 2025 IC3 Annual Report
- FBI IC3 PSA I-060424-PSA: Scammers Defraud Individuals via Work-From-Home Scams (June 4, 2024)
- FBI IC3 PSA I-020122-PSA: Scammers Exploit Security Weaknesses on Job Recruitment Websites to Impersonate Legitimate Businesses (February 1, 2022)
- FBI IC3 PSA I-012120-PSA: Cyber Criminals Use Fake Job Listings To Target Applicants' Personally Identifiable Information (January 21, 2020)
- FBI IC3 PSA I-072026-PSA: FBI Warns of Scammers Impersonating the IC3 (July 20, 2026)
- FTC Consumer Advice: Job Scams (March 2023)
- FTC Consumer Advice: How To Spot, Avoid, and Report Fake Check Scams (June 2025)
- FTC Consumer Advice: What To Do if You Were Scammed (June 2026)
- FTC Consumer Alert: Talk about scams during Military Consumer Month 2026 (July 1, 2026)
- MilitaryConsumer.gov (FTC): Avoiding Job Hunting Scams
- MilitaryConsumer.gov (FTC): Avoiding Scams
- MilitaryConsumer.gov blog and scam alert sign-up
- FTC: ReportFraud.ftc.gov
- FBI: Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3)
- FTC: IdentityTheft.gov
- VSAFE.gov (maintained by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs)
- LockLeed: Open roles (live job board)
- LockLeed: For candidates
- LockLeed: Partner with us (free job feeds and widget)
- LockLeed: Contact
- LockLeed: Candidate application
- LockLeed: Privacy policy
- LockLeed: Executive search