A Fake Job Offer Targeting Your Savings
A well crafted side hustle offer may turn your life upside down. While spending your time on a fake job, you may be few days away from dumping your savings to the wallets of scammers.
I want to thank you all for your interest and support after my first post. Other than encouraging comments and feedback, I have been contacted by many people who have encountered similar messages. These kinds of scams come in many different shapes and forms.
In case you have received any messages from scammers, do not hesitate to contact me to spread the word and knowledge to stop these scammers from harming anymore. All your details will be kept secret and with your consent, I can share your story with the rest of the world.
Here, I will be sharing another similar story that happened nearly a year ago with very limited screenshots available. The site has already been taken down and probably scammer team has already started another site with a similar approach. Therefore I will explain all the details by enhancing the original story with my extra knowledge about how these scam operations are proceeding.
Let’s dive in.
An Attractive Side Hustle
Again through a social media direct message or messaging application, you receive a message with a nice part-time work opportunity that you can adjust the time you want to work.
Some important elements of the above message have been erased to prevent any PII (Personally Identifiable Information) or business-related information from being exposed without written consent.
As you can notice, the message has been composed poorly. There are too many grammatical errors and unnecessary details to seem like a legit operation.
Let’s decompose the above message to make the offer more clear what we have.
This message is coming from a well-known recruitment agency.
They are looking for young and talented software developers in the Netherlands.
The job offer is related to improving 3rd party software applications and their rankings on an application store.
You are expected to work 5 days a week in flexible working hours between 60 and 90 minutes per day.
For this work, you can earn between 100 and 300 Euros per day on top of 800 Euros base salary.
The offer above is quite attractive, isn’t it? You will work 7,5 hours per week maximum and earn a minimum of 500 Euros. If you sustain working for a whole month, which is an extra 30 hours, you can earn 2800 Euros. This is the lowest earning with maximum work hours. On the highest end, which can blind everybody very easily, you can earn 1500 Euros per week and 6800 Euros per month.
Wow, even the lowest rate is more than an entry-level job salary. This is too good to be true. First red flag.
Having a New Job
Even though the offer sounds unbelievable, it attracts too much attention. You make a call with the recruiter and you are accepted immediately. No testing, no screening, or requesting your CV for your qualifications. This must be a dream.
You receive a website address. You create an account. Your recruiter starts your platform orientation. Explain to you how you can send some money to the system to start testing, how you can withdraw, and how you can get your earnings out of the system at the end of each day.
After this introduction, you may get curious about the platform and when you check their “About” page, you read a story there. They have tried to create legitimacy but not successfully.
During the orientation, you have been taken through all the steps of self-proclaimed application testing.
The First Day of The Work
On your first day, you repeat the initial steps you have learned during the orientation. For each day, to start application testing you need to add some credits to this system. Knowing that you will get back the money, you send the credit to the system, and your testing starts.
In our case, you need to send a minimum of 100 USDT (USD Token) cryptocurrency to the wallet address you need to get from their “Customer Support Team”. During the orientation, your introduction to cryptocurrency is already covered even if you do not have any clue.
You always get different wallet addresses to send your credit. After several rounds of fake application testing, you withdraw all the money with all your earnings. As the system has been created, you get small increments to your credits on every round of testing batches.
On every round of testing, you get small increments and you start enjoying this free money. As you can see in the screenshot below, you get varying amounts back from the system, this creates an unnecessary confidence in the system. You send some money and get more than what you have put in.
These small and fake transactions are creating a perception of legitimacy of the platform and the scammers are using this as bait to lure you to add more.
Some Platform Details
After you join the system, you get further information about the earning opportunities. There is a tiered earning potential.
The previously mentioned 800 Euros base salary is only if you work 5 days a month. If you work 15 days, your base salary becomes 1500 Euros. If you work the whole month, you can get 3800 Euros per month as a base salary. This is unbelievable.
Also if you increase the amount of your deposit, your rewards will increase on a tiered level.
By the way, while you perform these activities, you are constantly contacted by your recruiter or fake team members for some motivation and to establish a feeling of being part of a bigger group of people.
This group of people is chatting in the communication platform group about the limited-time reward campaign to earn more rewards. With the perception of being able to get the money out easily, you can deposit more to lose more.
Opportunity or Risk?
Your 5th day starts as usual. You deposit the minimum required amount for the first round of testing batch. You complete the task and withdraw the money. On your second deposit, after several applications, the system starts requesting you to deposit more.
You check with the team and the recruiter about this and they mention this as combined application testing for more returns.
You accept this because, for the last 4 days, you have already earned enough. You can afford it to earn more. But starting from this point, on every step system asks for more nearly doubling the deposit amount.
Here comes the most important question. Is this an “Opportunity” or “Risk”?
So far, you have already deposited all the previous 4 day’s earnings, and if you cannot complete this round, you will not be able to get back all the money you have put in. If you do not complete this step, you will not get your 800 Euros base salary also.
On each step, the money you will put is doubled. 200, 400, 800, 1600, and so on. If you can control yourself and make a calculation calmly, with this exponential money deposited to the system, you can easily reach hundreds of thousands in cumulative figures. Otherwise, if you follow the suggestion of the group you are communicating to ask for money from your friends and relatives, you will find yourself in the deeper shit.
If you stop here all your loss is the initial 100 USDT you have started. Because the money you have deposited to the platform is already gained from the platform. And this is not an actual loss.
Key Takeaways
All the scam operations target our vulnerabilities. Their offers often seem too good to be true. When we find ourselves in tough situations, these offers can appear to be quick solutions to our problems.
The two stories I shared are just a couple of examples of the scams happening all over the world every day. They entice their victims to make money and leave behind even bigger problems for their victims.
You can find all the details of many types of Cryptocurrency Scam Operations and Networks. How to detect, identify, and prevent falling into these attractive schemes in the following book.
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