The Police would like to alert the public to a new variant of job scams, where scammers would offer fake online job offers requiring victims to complete easy tasks such as liking social media posts to boost viewership.
In these cases, victims would receive unsolicited text messages, WhatsApp messages or come across advertisements online, promoting highly paid part-time affiliate marketing related jobs. The scammers would claim that victims would be given a commission to boost social media posts and videos by liking these posts.
In order to perform the job and earn commissions, victims were directed to sign up for accounts on websites provided by the scammers. These websites also offered mobile application downloads for ease of utilising its services. The websites purportedly offered packages for the jobs with varying amounts of commission paid per task, depending on the packages that the victims signed up for. The victims would need to sign up for these packages by making upfront payments to bank accounts belonging to unknown individuals before they could start performing the job to earn commissions. Most of the time, victims would be convinced that they were asked to do legitimate work as they would receive commissions and profit at the onset, i.e., did not incur any losses. However, victims eventually discovered that they had been scammed when they did not receive further commissions.
Members of the public should be wary of the following red flags when encountering such situations:
- Easy jobs that offer lucrative commissions that are simply too good to be true;
- Unsolicited messages advertising job offers from unknown numbers or unknown foreign numbers; and
- Requests to transfer funds to bank accounts belonging to individuals they had not met in person.
The Police would like to advise the members of public to adopt the following precautionary measures:
- Do not accept dubious job offers that offer lucrative returns for minimal effort;
- Never download applications from unverified sources; and
- Never send money to anyone whom you do not know or have not met in person before.
If you have information related to such crimes or if you are in doubt, please call the Police hotline at 1800-255-0000, or submit it online at www.police.gov.sg/iwitness. Please dial ‘999’ if you require urgent Police assistance.
For more information on scams, members of the public can visit www.scamalert.sg or call the Anti-Scam Hotline at 1800-722-6688. Join the ‘Spot the Signs. Stop the Crimes’ campaign at www.scamalert.sg/fight by signing up as an advocate to receive up-to-date messages and share them with your family and friends. Together, we can help stop scams and prevent our loved ones from becoming the next victim.
SINGAPORE POLICE FORCE
05 October 2021 @ 5:00 PM