Everybody is a scammer today -- even the .gov.
A couple of years ago I ran into a retired building inspector friend at an in-service training class. (Required in my state, and this guy needed the hours because he wanted to keep his license current.) He mentioned that his home town was looking for a part-time plan reviewer, and he sent me the ad. I applied, they invited me in for an interview, and a couple of days later I received an e-mail offering me the job.
BUT ... it wasn't a "job." They wanted to hire me as a consultant. Which would have meant that if I was sued for anything that arose out of doing the job, the municipality wouldn't cover me. I explained this to them, so they countered with, "Okay, we'll make you an employee but then we have to pay you $x less per hour. We hope this is acceptable, We're looking forward to having you work with us."
I informed them that this was NOT acceptable, and I never heard back from them. I have heard from other building inspector friends that a lot of towns seem to be switching to making their building inspectors into part-time, no benefits positions. Then they wonder why buildings fall down.