Msian woman exposes how Whatsapp job scams “grooms” you into paying them

You might have gotten one of these before – A message on Whatsapp offering easy freelance marketing jobs like adding Shopee items to cart or following an influencer on Instagram. Most people might just ignore or report the message, but if you were to actually perform the task… you’ll get paid. For real.

Emma (not her real name) was a potential victim who went pretty far down that path, and reached out to share her experience from recruitment to the point she was kicked out. What she told us was a story of a tangled web of fake managers, fake auditors, and fake job promotions – all designed to confuse you into a fake sense of security.

Essentially, you’d be gaslighted so much that you’ll wake up the next morning with a Petronas Carigali rig on your head.

It always starts with a “easy freelance online job” offer

Emma received a message from a representative from “Verizon” named yasmiN offering an online marketing job writing Google reviews. At this point, Emma had heard of Verizon, but wasn’t actually familiar with them. So, she did what everyone would do…

“I Googled them. It didn’t look like Verizon exists in Malaysia but I also didn’t find anything about Verizon NOT being in Malaysia. I thought maybe they had a small digital marketing venture here… who knows?

I heard some marketing companies pay to do reviews so I felt maybe this is legit.” – Emma, in interview with CILISOS.

These scammers would often use recognizable or at least Google-able names of real companies to appear legit. They don’t have to be a non-Malaysian company like Verizon, because we’ve also seen local companies like Magnes Marketing, Rev Media, and Media Prima Digital. Here’s the conversation this writer had with Magnes Marketing after receiving a similar message while writing this article:

Some of these companies have put up splash pages on their websites warning visitors that their name is being misused, but you can always call or message them just to be sure.

They will pay you for simple work… to get you used to the money

Work-wise, you could be asked to do anything from following accounts on IG, FB, or TikTok; or simply just adding specific Shopee items to your cart. In Emma’s specific case, she was asked to write positive 5-star reviews on Google Maps, and screenshot them as proof of work done.

But here’s where it starts to get complicated.

Only a small number of reviews (3 in Emma’s case) could be done a day, and within a specific time frame (20 minutes). They referred to these reviews as “sets” within a “task” – but don’t bother trying to understand this for now. Once Emma completed the task, yasmiN sent her a Telegram link to the “Auditor” to process the payment via a Touch n’ Go e-Wallet transfer. Oddly enough, the payments came from individual accounts or companies that we couldn’t find on Google. One thing was for sure though… none of them were named Verizon.

For the first task, she was paid RM57 – or RM19 per set.

Since she actually received the money, she went on with the second task and was paid another RM57.

But for the third task, something changed.

The third set in this particular task now involves a different job which requires Emma to transfer some money in advance for a “cr1pto investment client” in return for an instant payment. The payment depends on how much she transfers, which you can see in the table below:

Essentially, they’ve created a situation where you’d earn less money (since there are now only 2 review sets) and the only way to earn more is to take up the third set. And why not? They’ve paid you every time….right?

“They give you money just to sedap-sedap only lah. To make you feel safe”

They go VERY far to convince you that everything’s legit

Emma says that even if you were adamant about just doing the 2 review sets, the constant influx of messages from other people showing how much money they’ve earned will eventually erode your resolve… unless you notice that they all sound pretty similar.

“After some time [you notice that] their reaction is like “Wow how can I do that?”, “Wow I really earned RMxxxx”, Wow! The phrases are so common you don’t feel like it’s a natural thing anymore. You feel like they are scripted.”

Feeling cautious, Emma used the money she earned from the previous jobs to start on the RM60 tier, which came with an immediate repayment of RM72 (untung RM12). But even that was a privilege because there are apparently limited investment opportunities each day, so you’ll have to wait if the slots were taken up. Once you’re lucky enough to be given this opportunity, you’d be faced with a somewhat complicated process:

“You first inform the Auditor. They ask you to click another link to go to the Manager. Manager will ask if you willing to prepay for the task. If yes, then they will ask to go back to the Auditor to to bank in the money. After you bank in the money you go back to the Manager to do the task.”

From here, you’ll be given access to a trading page that looks like it was designed by someone leading the world and looking to the future of web design.

Emma says that there’s actually no reason to access that page since you’d supposedly get paid a fixed amount after sending in the money. However, they did go through the trouble of creating an account signup page as well as a privacy policy full of legal jargon and bad English.

A for Affort, but why go through all that trouble?

We don’t know for sure, but we suspect it’s mostly a psychological game to induce compliance. The layers of complication might be done because we have a tendency to find complex things more believable, aka a complexity bias. After that, it’s a series of small requests to prime you for the main con (Foot in the Door), create a fear of losing out (scarcity principle / FOMO) and get you to commit to sending them larger amounts of money (Lowball Technique).

Of course there might be a simpler reason for it but, hey, our complex explanation sounds more believable right? 🙃

You only need to make one large transaction to lose everything

You’ll be paid as promised if you start at a lower level. From here, it’ll only be a matter of time before greed takes over and you find yourself plonking in RM800 or more. And that’s when, instead of an immediate payment, you’ll find yourself removed and blocked. Emma says that, in some instances, the scammers may also ask you to top up your investment with the excuse that the cr1pto market has gone down.

After Emma sent over the RM60, she was told that she’d be temporarily muted from the group chat, which was weird since there were other people sharing how much they’ve made.

“I don’t know the purpose [of muting]. Some people can immediately share the transaction but I cannot. I cannot see anything logical about that.”

It’s likely that the muting was to prevent people from warning other members when they got scammed, but some messages still made it though – though these were swiftly deleted and the users removed. She managed to contact one of them, who invited her to join a support group.

“The support group was started by someone who wanted to save the people in the chat. So far, everyone in the support group invested RM60 to test waters. We think people who lost a lot of money were immediately kicked out of the chat but we couldn’t track them down.”

The outcome of this story is pretty anticlimatic. Emma was kicked out of the chat when she started asking too many questions… but not before being accused of being a scammer since she took their money 🤷‍♀️

Emma actually made RM300, but at what cost?

Despite how we think scams usually turn out, Emma not only avoided being a victim, but also walked away with a profit. However, she admits that the RM300 comes with heavy weight.

“All this is so surreal to me. If I say it’s blessing in disguise pun tak. If I say this is rezeki pun tak. I don’t know how to feel about this. Maybe I can say I’m lucky.”

While it might seem tempting to take on these jobs to get free money, we have to warn you that you won’t really know what they’re going to take away from you. Some scams might involve fake reviews, but others involve your social media or online shopping accounts. In other words, you might be inadvertently giving your personal information away.

Emma has since deleted all her reviews since she doesn’t want people conned into going somewhere based on a fake review. She’s also unsure how much of her personal information has been compromised, and has transferred all her funds out of the bank account she used for the RM60 “investment”. But above all, she now has the burden of knowing that the money she got likely came from people who had everything to lose.

“Many people can just say it’s a scam. But desperate people will do anything to get money. Those who lost jobs, berhutang… now they have nothing.”