I Specifically Responded to a Job Application Scam and Here’s What I Learned
I’m sure you’ve recently received a random message from a prospective recruiter – and we all have. These messages, as you can probably tell, are scams. No company is so desperate for workers that it sends messages to random numbers with job offers.
According to the Federal Trade Commission , you should not respond to these messages or click on any links to them—the smart thing to do is block these numbers and move on with your day. But I wanted to see what happens to people who follow through and actually try to get a job, so I responded to the scam message, and it led me down a surprisingly long path that included fictitious online piece work, discussions about the nature of the job itself, and repeated requests for $33.
Signs of a fake job vacancy text
There is a 99.9999% chance that any unsolicited job offer message will result in a scam, but some types of scams seem more realistic than others. This is especially easy to notice:
That’s $780,000 a year for working in your spare time , so that doesn’t happen on earth.
However, some fraudulent job offers are not so funny. They will often mention a company that you know and presumably trust, and if you are already looking for a job, you may be scammed. Here’s one, presumably from Home Depot:
That amounts to $45,600 per year to “evaluate and rate products and provide real IP addresses and device data for download.” If you squinted, these words could describe real work, so I took the next step. Of course, after checking first to see if it is a scam.
As you can see, scammers will not tell you that they are fake. They also usually provide a second phone number to fish that sniff their bait, and this is often done via WhatsApp. The original phone number will likely be disconnected because the vast majority of people the scammer sent it to report the number to their phone company. They only really care about those few people who bite anyway. They want to quickly redirect these people to WhatsApp, partly because it is encrypted, making it easier to cover your tracks, but mainly because it will take longer to disable the WhatsApp number.
Surprisingly complex digital scam
There are many ways an attacker can take advantage of someone who has accepted a job offer, from immediately asking for bank account information to obtaining your SSN and trying to get you to “invest” in a fake crypto scheme. But this scam went a little deeper.
This is what happened when I messaged my “coach” on WhatsApp:
I thought Maria was very nice, even though her profile says her name is Riley.
Maria/Riley asked me for some basic information, so I filled out the details of the character George Kennedy played in 1975’s Airport (I’m not revealing my real information) and we began preparing for my new job at Home Depot:
Maria/Riley asked me to create an account on the website gncojjhwd.com and not for some reason HomeDepot.com . The website is covered in the names and logos of companies like Amazon, Nike and Costco, but it is not actually affiliated with any of them. A WhoIs query reveals that the site was about a week old at the time, hosted by Cloudflare, and the owner’s name hidden. While that definitely doesn’t make it a scam, it is definitely a scam.
But I still have to go to work. According to Maria/Riley, my account was credited with $60 in tuition reimbursement and I could add to that amount by clicking “send” 30 times on photos like this:
I earned $0.30 per click! After a few clicks, I felt pretty prepared and began to wonder how scammers could keep up the charade that Home Depot was paying people to do this. Even in a fictional world created by scammers, it’s puzzling that anyone would think this job pays nearly $50,000 a year. What is “work” anyway? I wondered. So I asked my coach.
After lunch I clicked about five more items and then stopped. I tried to be a terrible employee to see if I could be “fired” but no matter what I told them or how long I avoided the “job” of hitting the submit button, my fake employers kept me around.
I decided to end my first day early. The next day I was greeted with concerned messages from my coach:
If this had been a real job offer, my rude tone, lazy attitude, and general brashness would have resulted in a quick dismissal. But scammers don’t care who you are or how you talk to them because there are no jobs. They try to get you to believe in the work long enough to send them money, but that’s it. So I played along a little more, put my nose to the grindstone again, and hit “send” enough times to meet my quota.
No matter how easy the “job” was, I didn’t find any point in it, so I made it clear to Maria/Riley that I was leaving:
She convinced me to try again, but when I tried to move to the next set of items to click on, I was greeted with this message:
I really wanted to “travel more often,” but to do this I had to send the company $33. This is where the scam comes in. Pro tip: If your job asks you to send them money, don’t do it. This is the opposite of how jobs work.
I decided to try and take the “money” I “earned” and move on. It would be funny if there was some way to withdraw cash, but it didn’t work – I tried. I even clicked on the customer service link on the site (props to these scammers for even having a fake customer service chat line) to claim a refund. Real companies that offer tuition fees usually have to pay you this money, even if you leave immediately after training. There are no fraudulent job offers.
As you can see above: customer service was no help so I went back to Maria/Riley but all she did was ask if I had sent $33 through Cash App too. Being an active beginner, I tried to make things easier for her:
Then things went in circles: the coach asked for $33. “Customer Service” asked for $33. I asked if I could pay the $33 after doing the extra work. They said, “Send $33.” I told them I could send them a check. “There has to be a Cash app. Send $33,” they said. I explained that I was writing a blog post about scam jobs and they were still asking for $33. So I left them to read.
What happens if you send money to a scammer doing fake work?
If I did send money, they would no doubt annoy me by forcing me to click the send button for the next round, telling me I was making even more money per click, and adding fake funds to my account. But they will end up asking for another payment, possibly in excess of $33. This cycle repeated until I stopped sending them money or their website disappeared. I will never be able to withdraw this money because the money is not real.
So what have we learned?
The overall lesson from this venture is that nothing good will happen to you if you respond to a random job offer message. Even if it seems legit, there is a website with a customer service element, and you really like your trainer, they will eventually ask you for money.
You should delete these messages immediately, but if you can’t wrap your head around the possibility that they’re from a real recruiter, ask for a phone number to call them. They probably won’t give it to you, but if they do, check to see if it’s actually a legitimate company number. This is not true, but you can check.
I was really surprised that I was able to waste so much of these scammers’ time. The (initial) salary of $33 seems pretty low considering the hours I spent pretending I didn’t know how things worked. Even though I was outwardly rude from the beginning and told them I knew they were a scammer , they still text me, four days later, asking when I was going to send them $33.