I wasn't one of these victims, but I do remember there were a lot of these scams going around take advantage of people looking for work on the side.

I almost got stung for some $2000 with a so-called hire that wanted me to use a company laptop. They would send out a company check to reimburse while you bought the laptop from their designated vendor up front. It almost worked on me as a "hire" until I insisted on not buying the computer until their check cleared my bank. Then things blew up. While they were insisting it would jeopardize my new hire, I could see on Google Maps their so-called business address was an empty commercial address. When I connected with the real company whose name was used, their management replied they were fully aware of the scam going on but could do nothing about it. Nice. And the icing on the cake was the bank treating me like a criminal because the check had been deposited, despite my calling their fraud unit the same day to say what happened and not to process the deposit. Three weeks of proving my innocence. Fortunately, I saved screenshots of most of the conversations in the so-called "hire."