This scam might be around for a while now, but I thought that I would just sink in and be part of the victim pool just to experience how this works. As they all say, fun times is short lived. For me, this lasted only around 2 days. It always start with a whatsapp chat on job opportunity.

Earning around 1,500 a day? That’s so good to be true, it means I will earn 33,000 a month. Who won’t be excited? Of course I am, but I need to stay calm. I accepted the offer, and did as requested.

So, to prove that they are legit, they paid after I completed my task. The task was simple enough. I created a TikTok account, search for the username they provided, follow and screenshot. Send it to the ‘auditor’ on Telegram who will check my work and pay me the ‘salary’

So, indeed I got my novice payment of $10 SGD on my first task. I was then introduced to the Telegram group where it was full of people posting salary crediting and how excited they are that they found the job. When I tried to DM a few of the members, they didn’t reply (didn’t even read the message). Even the ‘new’ members, some just read it and didn’t reply.

So the tasks inside the group chat, consist of 3 consecutive tasks that need to be completed. Each task has a time limit of 30 minutes. After all 3 task are completed, you get $15 paid to you. Every subsequent day of doing tasks, there is a bonus (i.e. on day 2, every 3 task is $18 instead of $15). If you complete all tasks (21 tasks in total), you get a bonus of $88 (I think) . Lucrative isn’t it?

After a while, I started to see what they call ‘advance task’ or ‘prepaid task’. This involves paying them a sum of money, and they will then refund you the money with a bonus.

This is the point where it gets all shady and questionable. Before this, all was good, it was easy money, search for the TikTok username, follow, send screenshot, repeat and get $15. Nice. I knew it was a scam, but how, since they have been giving me money up to now. So this was the trick, everyone (or bots) in the group will rush into the prepaid task, with some calling it investments as well, and transferring money over. After around 30 minutes, I saw screenshots of crediting back into the bank account with the bonus.

Everything was so legit. But something caught my eye. There was a missing ‘to’ in the above screenshot. “from xxx to your account via PayNow.” So i checked back at my PayNow email and confirmed it. DBS can’t be so sloppy that different PayNow emails are worded differently right? So now confirms my suspicion that these are largely bots. It is full of them in the channel. I confirmed another UOB PayNow alert with my friend, and he spotted differences with the actual PayNow alert from UOB.

But back to the work. Now that the ‘prepaid task’ appeared, I was introduced to the ‘Task Manager’. (Can I force kill the tasks tho? Like in Windows)

I tried to ask for more information but sadly, either my command of English is not good enough, or they just don’t know how to explain it properly. Oh well, it’s a low level scam, I guess. So in the end, I did some research and also stayed in the group to continue to be a diligent worker, completing tasks. I figured that they will try to earn your trust by giving the bonus back to you for the first few tiers. Once the trust is built and you are comfortable to part with $5000 or $8000, that is when they will strike. They will then not return you the money, disappear and kick you out of the group.

I tried to farm for more money by doing the tasks so that I can use the money to put it back to them for the prepaid task, but sadly, on day 2, my ‘auditor’ told me that I skip too many task (at first) and I need to complete the prepaid task (later) so that I can continue on.

But, I still persisted and continue on the non prepaid task. Eventually, my ‘auditor’ removed me from the group chat and told me, if I cannot complete the prepaid task, then I cannot continue.

I cant imagine how many have fallen for this simple trick, especially if one is in need of money and/or want to make a quick buck. But well, what can I say, since my few minutes of ‘work’ got me almost $50 SGD and paid for my Starbucks coffee while I was enjoying and capturing screenshots?