In 2020, millions of workers were barred from the office and sent home to weather the COVID-19 outbreak. Workers could continue to be productive in their jobs with high-speed internet, a laptop, and a Zoom account. The experiment in large-scale remote work proved successful, as not only was a recession avoided, but workers reported greater job satisfaction and higher effective wages due to not buying gasoline or maintaining their commuter vehicles, and companies reported good—or even better—productivity from those remote workers.

Remote work created new business models that many companies took advantage of. If their workforce was no longer bound by geography, then finding and retaining quality talent became a strategic advantage. Expenses related to office buildings could be reduced considerably. Companies could hire staff in time zones around the world to provide customer service and product development 24 hours a day, without the need for expensive shift differentials and recruiting constraints.

The advantages and opportunities of a remote workforce also provided opportunities for remote worker fraud. This fact is leveraged by savvy workers looking to earn extra pay for the same work hours to guard against layoffs, or to “test the waters” at another job to see if they like working there before quitting their current job. Nation-state actors use the same strategies for remote worker fraud to gain access to foreign currency, bypass economic sanctions, and steal company secrets for their intelligence collection efforts.

Remote worker fraud risks for trucking companies

Fraudulent remote workers can be identified in several personas:

• The hustler: This remote worker hires into multiple jobs simultaneously, called “overemployed” or simply “OE.” They balance the demands of each position with disciplined scheduling and judicious use of “heads down” blocks of time on their calendars to keep their availability for each job’s meeting demands. The hustler must be careful, organized, and maintain a keen attention to detail to keep this arrangement of multiple simultaneous jobs going as long as possible.
• The subcontractor: This fraudulent remote worker carefully analyzes the requirements of their job’s particular tasks and then hires a third party to fulfill those requirements. This frees up the remote workers’ time for other interests or additional jobs while enabling them to submit their deliverables on time. These arrangements may put company data into the hands of unknown and unvetted third parties.
• The face: A job candidate hires someone else to interview for a job on their behalf. The face is well-spoken, looks good on camera, and is technically astute enough to pass interviews. When the job offer arrives, the person who interviewed does not actually end up working the job. The person who hired the face does—perhaps offering a percentage of their salary, so the face is incentivized to negotiate higher pay.
• The ghost: This persona relies on the anonymity of the internet to attain a remote job despite legal or regulatory restrictions. The ghost leverages poor talent acquisition processes to apply, interview, and get a job without anyone questioning if they are legally authorized to work. The ghost provides fake documentation to meet hiring paperwork requirements and leverage weak verification processes.

Each persona’s strategy can work in combination with another. For example, a ghost looks for a second job and uses a face to get that job. Then they shift to the subcontractor persona and send out the deliverables of their new job for fulfillment by a third party. In all cases, remote worker fraud violates implied and even formal commitments to serve an employer faithfully.

How trucking companies can prevent remote worker fraud

Remote worker fraud is countered with solid policies and processes that integrate talent acquisition, human resources, information technology, and, most importantly, managers. The key is to establish clear conflict of interest and conflict of commitment policies that establish expectations for workers, requiring them to work faithfully and exclusively for an employer during agreed-to work hours. From that policy, several processes can be written or reviewed and revised to coordinate different departments in combating remote worker fraud.

• Talent acquisition: During the hiring process, review candidate applications and resumes against the claims that they make on social media. Compare work history with their LinkedIn profiles and see if their employment timelines agree. Review the companies that the candidates claim to have worked for to see if those companies actually existed.
  • Insist that interviews with talent acquisition, hiring managers, and others are performed on camera and recorded so that the images of the person interviewed can be matched between each round of interview and ultimately against a picture of the person who is hired.
• Human resources: Perform background checks for educational credentials and criminal records. Gather employment documentation and examine that documentation closely. Check identification documents live and on camera with the new worker, capture a screenshot of this identity verification, and compare the images with interview recordings to determine that the same person who interviewed for the job is in fact the one who is being hired.
  • Review benefits selections. A red flag for fraudulent employees is to decline any benefit that is not wholly paid for by the employer. See if the contact information that they provide for employment purposes matches the information in their job application. Examine the onboarding employee’s emergency contact information for vague references that simply list a relationship, such as "friend” or “spouse,” or that lack first names using only honorifics, such as “Ms.” or “Mrs.”
• Information technology: Ship computers only to the address on the hiring paperwork; do not honor requests to change the destination for the delivery otherwise. Use geofencing with deny-all rules save for authorized work locations to restrict where computers can connect to company networks. Create a standard desktop wallpaper and set of shortcuts that cannot be changed by a user so that if a manager requests that the remote worker share their desktop, it will be obvious that the remote worker is not using authorized equipment. Utilize mobile device management software to remotely disable a computer and suspend account access while a remote worker fraud investigation proceeds.
• Managers: Require on-camera meetings. Check the weather report for the location where the remote worker claimed to reside, and then ask casually about the weather there during a one-on-one meeting—it might be inexplicably different. Ask them to wave a hand across their face, which might reveal defects in AI-generated imagery.

Remote work gives companies a strategic edge in talent acquisition and retention, productivity improvements, and flexibility. The temptation to manage remote worker fraud risk might entice leaders to end remote work. To paraphrase an old saying, don’t throw the "remote worker baby” out with the bathwater. Review and implement solid policies and processes to manage the remote worker fraud risk effectively.