Upfront Training Fee Scam
A fake job or business opportunity that requires payment for mandatory training, certification, or onboarding before work begins — training that is worthless or that the legitimate employer would never charge for.
Also known as: fake onboarding fee, mandatory training scam, certification fee job fraud
Last reviewed: 10 June 2026
Legitimate employers do not charge new hires for training. Upfront training fee scams exploit job-seekers' willingness to invest in their employability by framing the fee as a professional development cost, background screening package, or mandatory certification that the company allegedly requires of all staff.
The training materials — if delivered at all — are typically low-quality, plagiarised, or irrelevant to any real job function. The scammer's goal is the training fee itself; no job follows. In more sophisticated variants the victim is enrolled in a real online course platform but the promised employment is fictional.
This scam is widespread in sectors such as security guarding, healthcare support roles, logistics, and remote customer service, where some genuine certification requirements exist and victims may not know whether such fees are normal. The key test is always to verify independently with the named employer that the fee is genuine before paying anything.
Examples
- A care-assistant job requires a $180 manual-handling certification paid to a third-party provider; neither the certification body nor the employer can be verified.
- A remote call-centre role demands $75 for 'mandatory compliance training' delivered as a YouTube-quality video with no employment following.