Job scams and task scams: paying to get paid

It starts with a text you did not expect.

Hi, we found your profile. We are hiring for remote part-time work, $150–$400 daily, flexible hours, no experience needed. Interested? Reply on WhatsApp.

No company name, no role, no specifics. If you reply, you enter one of the fastest-growing frauds there is.

The numbers

Reported job scam losses by year, from FTC Consumer Sentinel data: $90 million (2020), $131 million (2021), $179 million (2022), $286 million (2023), and $223 million in the first half of 2024 alone.

And since research cited by the FTC found only about 4.8% of mass-market fraud victims report it at all, the real figures are considerably larger.

How a task scam runs

1. The unexpected message. Text or WhatsApp, generic, well-paid, no specifics. Real employers do not recruit this way.

2. Onboarding. You are added to a group chat or directed to an app. There may be a "trainer" or "supervisor" assigned to you personally.

3. The tasks. Simple, repetitive work — liking videos, rating product images, "product boosting", "app optimisation". Usually assigned in sets of around forty, with the promise of levelling up on completion.

4. The first payout. Small and real. This is the pivotal step. It proves the system works, and it converts scepticism into investment.

5. The deposit. To complete the next set, or to withdraw your accumulated earnings, you must "charge up" your account. It is framed as temporary — you will get it back along with your commission.

6. Escalation. Each deposit unlocks the next barrier. A larger balance demands a larger deposit. Then a tax, then a fee, then a compliance charge.

Why intelligent people keep depositing

The design targets sunk cost, deliberately and effectively.

By the time the first deposit is requested, the app shows a balance you believe you earned through hours of genuine work. Refusing to deposit does not feel like avoiding a loss — it feels like forfeiting something you already own.

Each subsequent deposit increases that apparent balance, which increases what walking away appears to cost. The trap tightens with every step, and the victim supplies the momentum.

The FTC observed the supporting technique too: if you hesitate, you are invited into a group chat where apparently experienced workers share success stories. They are part of the operation.

The payment method

Cryptocurrency, overwhelmingly. The FTC found crypto losses to job scams rose to about $41 million in the first half of 2024, against roughly $21 million in all of 2023, and that people now report losing far more money to job scams via cryptocurrency than by any other method.

It is chosen for irreversibility. A bank transfer can occasionally be recalled; a crypto payment cannot.

The other job scam variants

The fake cheque. You are hired, sent a cheque for equipment, and asked to forward part of it to a supplier. The cheque bounces days later, after your transfer has cleared. You owe the full amount.

Reshipping. You "process packages" at home. The goods were bought with stolen cards, and you are the one whose address is on the shipping records.

The data harvest. A convincing hiring process that ends in an onboarding form requesting your national insurance or social security number, bank details and a copy of your passport. There was no job — the application was the scam.

The upfront fee. Training, certification, a background check, equipment. Any payment required to start work.

The rules that identify all of them

Additional checks worth running:

• Was contact unexpected and generic? No company name, no role, no reference to anything specific about you.
• Did it move to WhatsApp or Telegram immediately? Real hiring uses company email and scheduled interviews.
• Was there an interview? A real one, with a named person, at a company you can look up.
• Does the pay match the work? $200 a day to rate images is not a market rate for anything.
• Search the company name plus "scam". It takes ten seconds.

If you are already in one

Stop depositing. Do not add more to release what you believe you have earned — that escalation is precisely the design.

Report it: ReportFraud.ftc.gov and ic3.gov in the US, Action Fraud in the UK. Contact your bank. If you paid in cryptocurrency, keep the wallet addresses and report them.

And expect a follow-up offering to recover your money for a fee. Victims of the first scam are the target market for the second.