I Answered a Job Scam Text on Purpose, and Here’s What I Learned

Credit: René Ramos; ARAMYAN / Adobe Stock; Samsung / Emojipedia

I'm sure you've received a random text from a supposed employment recruiter recently—we all have. These texts, you likely realize, are scams. No company is so desperate for workers that they’d message random numbers with job offers.

According to the Federal Trade Commission, you shouldn't respond to these texts or click on any links on them—the smart thing to do is to block these numbers and get on with your day. But I wanted to see what happens to people who follow through and actually try to get the job, so I answered a scam text, and it led me down a surprisingly long road that included bogus online piecework, a discussion of the nature of labor itself, and repeated requests for $33.

The signs of a fake job text

There's a 99.9999% chance that any unsolicited text offering you a job leads to a scam, but some scams seem more realistic than others. This one is particularly easy to spot:

That's $780,000 a year for working in your spare time, so not something that really happens on earth.

Some scam job offers aren’t so patently ridiculous though. They often mention a company you know and presumably trust, and if you're already looking for work, you might be fooled. Like this one, supposedly from Home Depot:

That works out to $45,600 a year for “evaluating and rating products and providing real IP and device data for uploading.” If you squint, those words could be describing an actual job, so I took the next step. After checking whether it was a scam first, of course.

As you can see, scammers won't tell you they're fake. They also usually provide a second phone number to the fish who sniff their bait, and it's often on WhatsApp. The initial phone number is likely to be disabled when the vast majority of people the scammer sent it to report the number to their phone company. They’re only really concerned about the few people who bite anyway. They want to get these people over to WhatsApp quick, partly because it's encrypted, which makes it easier to hide your tracks, but mostly because the WhatsApp Number will take longer to be disabled.

A surprisingly elaborate digital scam

There's any number of ways a bad actor can take advantage of someone who responds to a job offer, from asking for bank account information immediately to taking your SSN to trying to get you to "invest" in a fake crypto scheme. But this scam was a little deeper.

Here’s what happened when I messaged my “trainer” on WhatsApp:

Maria seemed super nice, even if her profile says her name is Riley.

Maria/Riley asked me for some basic information, so I filled in the details of the character George Kennedy played in 1975’s Airport (I'm not giving my real info out) and we started training for my new job at Home Depot:

Maria/Riley had me make an account on a website called gncojjhwd.com, not, for some reason, HomeDepot.com. The website is plastered with the names and logos of companies like Amazon, Nike, and Costco, but it's not actually affiliated with any of them. A WhoIs request reveals that the site was about a week old at the time, hosted by Cloudflare, and the owner’s name is being hidden. While that doesn’t definitely make it a scam, it’s definitely a scam.

But I got to work anyway. According to Maria/Riley, $60 was deposited in my account to compensate me for my training, and I could add to that by clicking “submit" 30 times on pictures like this:

I earned $.30 for a click! After a few clicks, I felt sufficiently trained, and I started to wonder about how scammers could keep up the charade that Home Depot pays people to do this. Even in the fictional world the scammers set up, it's puzzling that anyone would think this was a job that paid nearly $50,000 a year. What is "work" anyway? I wondered. So I asked my coach.

After lunch, I clicked about five more items, then stopped. I was trying to be a terrible employee to see if it's possible to get "fired," but no matter what I said to them, or how long I shirked the "job"of clicking "submit," my fake employers kept me around.

I decided to knock off early for my first day. The next day I was met with concerned messages from my coach:

If this were a real job offer, my rude tone, lazy attitude, and overall jerkiness would result in a swift pink-slip. But scammers don't care who you are or how you talk to them, because there is no job. They're trying to make you believe in a job long enough to send them money, but that's all. So I played along some more, put my nose back to the grindstone, and hit "submit" enough times to make my quota.

As easy as the "job" was, I wasn't finding meaning in my work, so I let Maria/Riley know I was leaving:

She convinced me to give it another shot, but I was met with this message when I tried to go on to my next set of things to click:

I really wanted to "go for more journeys," but in order to do that, I had to send the company $33. This is where the scam part comes in. Pro tip: If a job asks you to send them money, don't. That's the opposite of how jobs work.

I decided to try to take the "money" I'd "earned" and move on. It would have been hilarious if it was somehow possible to actually withdraw the cash, but it wasn't—I tried. I even clicked the site's customer service link (props to these scammers for even having a fake customer service chatline) to demand my compensation. Real companies that offer pay for training generally have to give you that money, even if you leave right after the training. Scam job offers do not.

As you can see above: Customer service was not helpful, so I went back to Maria/Riley, but all she did was ask about whether I'd sent $33 through Cash App too. Being a proactive new hire, I tried to make it easier for her:

Things started going in circles from here: The trainer asked for $33. "Customer service" asked for $33. I asked if I could pay the $33 after I completed more work. They said, "send $33." I told them I could send them a check. "Has to be Cash App. Send $33," they said. I explained that I was writing a blog post about scam jobs, and they still asked for $33. So I left 'em on read.

What happens if you send money to a fake job scammer?

Had I actually sent the money, they would no doubt have strung me along by having me click submit for another round, telling me I was making even more money per click, and adding fake funds to my account. But they would eventually ask for another payment, probably higher than $33. This cycle would repeat until I stopped sending them cash or their website disappeared. There would never be a way for me to withdraw this money, because the money isn't real.

So what did we learn?

The overall lesson from this enterprise is that nothing good will happen to you if you answer a random text offering you a job. Even if it seems legitimate, and there's a website with a customer service element, and you really like your trainer, they're going to eventually ask you for money.

You should just delete these texts immediately, but if you can't quite bring yourself to because of the possibility that they're from an actual recruiter, ask for a phone number to call them. They probably won't give you one, but if they do, check whether it's an actual number of a legitimate company. It won't be, but you can check.

I was actually surprised that I was able to waste so much of these scammers' time. The (initial) payday of $33 seems pretty small, given the hours of time I took up pretending I didn't know how things worked. Even though I was outwardly rude from the very beginning, and I told them I knew they were scammers, they're still texting me, four days later, and asking when I'm going to send them $33.