Overview
The victim expects an unskilled, remote, or lucrative gigworker employment opportunity.
How It Works
The scammer contacts the victim offering employment.
Sometimes the work offered includes work-at-home, low skill tasks such as:
Clicking "like" on social media posts, envelope stuffing, mystery shopping;
Re-shipping, where the victim is asked to receive packages and reship them;
"Money transfer" jobs which consist of moving money into and out of the victim's own bank account.
Other pretexts the scammer may use include promises of placing victims into government jobs or promises of other lucrative job placement, after the victim pays various "application fees" or "training fees".
The scam is that the job opportunity is actually a front for data theft, advance fee schemes, money laundering, overpayment schemes, pyramid schemes, parcel muling schemes, or cryptocurrency leveling schemes.
The scam typically starts from a spray-and-pray general solicitation message sent through SMS, but may also target specific job seekers on platforms such as LinkedIn.
Related Articles
NorCal software rep loses $176K after accepting remote job she thought to be with Facebook, ABC-7 Chicago, 2026-01-23
Work at Home Scams, North Carolina Department of Justice
Job Scams Report – 2,670 Social Media Posts Reveal Scammers’ Top Tactics, Heimdal Security
Synthetic Examples
3.1 Sample Data 1 - count: 600. With fake phone numbers and urls
3.1 Sample Data 2 - count: 311. With fake phone numbers and urls
3.1 Sample Data 3 - count: 311. Same as Sample Data 2 but with [url] and [phone] and [reply]
Related Scams
3.4 Fake Recruiter Scam: Usually the jobs classified as 3.4 Fake Recruiter Scams have a higher skill threshold than 3.1 Remote/Gigworker scams and a more in-depth "interview" process. The end goal might also be different (e.g. leveling scheme vs data theft).
Related Crime Schemes
A particular instance of this scam may embed one or more of these related schemes.
Advance Fee Scheme: In an advance fee scheme, the scammer asks for a small upfront fee in advance of providing a larger payout later. In reality, the larger payout never arrives.
Data Loss or Theft: Any scheme that results in victim losing data/scammer stealing data. Data in this context can mean login credentials, credit card details, or other personal or corporate information.
Fraudulent Platform: Any scheme that relies on custom built software that assists the crime. Includes fraudulent trading platforms, fraudulent clickworking platforms, and the like.
Leveling: Any scheme that requires the victim to pay cryptocurrency into a system and then 'level up' to higher paying rewards by paying more money into the system.
Money Laundering: Any scheme in which the victim is asked to move money from one account to another for the scammer as part of the scam. Can include money 'muling'.
Overpayment scheme: In an overpayment scheme, victims are told they have been given a large amount of money as part of the scam and are asked to refund a smaller amount back to the scammer. In reality, the initial overpayment does not exist.
Parcel Muling: Any scheme in which where the victim is asked to move parcels for the scammer as part of the scam.
Pyramid scheme: A pyramid scheme describes a scam or fraud in which participants only make money by recruiting new participants into the program.
Victim Targeting Context
The scammer may use one or more of the following techniques to reach the victim.
Advertising Approach: The scammer uses advertising to passively reach the victim.
Targeted Conversational Approach: The scammer approaches the victim through targeted, topical online conversation.
Spray and Pray / Scattered: The scammer approaches many victims at once such as through bulk email or SMS.
Social Engineering: Psychological Manipulations
The scammer may use one or more of these psychological techniques to accomplish the scam.
Abuse of authority position: The scammer employs an abuse of a position of authority to convince the victim to go along with the scam.
Boost of Trust: The scammer employs an initial boost of trust technique to increase trust with the victim. An example is letting the victim withdraw some of their earnings in order to show that the scheme is legitimate.
Flattery: The scammer uses praise or flattery to increase the likelihood that the victim will go along with the scam.
Peer involvement: The scammer uses the victim's peers to encourage the victim to engage in the scam, claiming that "others are doing it" or suggesting that the victim will miss out. Often the peers are also scammers.
Sunk cost fallacy: The scammer concocts a scenario where the victim will lose everything they've earned so far if they don't keep going with the scam, claims "you've already invested and you'll lose it all".
Urgency: The scammer employs urgency to increase the likelihood that the victim will take action.
Social Engineering: Impersonation Techniques
The scammer may impersonate one or more of the following groups as part of the scam.
Business or NonProfit: The scammer impersonates a business or nonprofit.