Scammed with a dream job: recruitment fraud is on the rise

Ping. An app from a foreign number appears on the phone. The sender introduces himself in English as a Randstad recruiter. “Our company has several vacancies open. Are you interested?”

The offer is very lucrative. A weekly salary of 650-950 euros, for which you only have to work half an hour every day. Training is not necessary, you can start immediately and even combine it with your current job. It almost sounds too good to be true. But what exactly do you have to do for it? That remains in the chat conversation that NRC performed vaguely.

Recruitment fraud, or job fraud, is popular with scammers. The Fraudehelpdesk, an organization that keeps track of which forms of fraud are circulating, received 120 reports from victims between January and August, compared to 70 in the whole of 2022. The financial damage suffered is also much higher than in previous years. This already amounts to almost 90,000 euros, where it previously remained at a few thousand euros per year. The actual number of victims and damage amount is probably much higher, because not everyone reports to the helpdesk.

16 dollars in bitcoin

Temporary employment agencies such as Randstad, Octagon Professionals and Young Capital have also warned against this form of fraud in recent months. They received phone calls and e-mails from victims and people who did not trust the so-called recruiter’s app. For example, Randstad says it has received around fifty reports, and that is at the head office alone. The police do not keep figures of how many people report this specific form of fraud, but they say they are familiar with the methods of the scammers.

In the chat conversation, the scammers continue to take advantage. A colleague from the ‘Randstad recruiter’ talks about the generous bonuses that can be earned if you do more work. The task appears to consist of posting reviews for mobile apps. Via a fake site, the link of which is a corruption of marketing platform Funnel, you log in and you see a screen with app icons and click tasks – which stand for ‘reviewing’ apps. But before you can supposedly start earning, you first have to transfer $ 16 in bitcoin. That amount can increase later, when the fraudsters ask for ever larger amounts, for example to get your ‘salary’ paid.

This makes the method different from what job fraud used to look like. In the past, victims were often actually put to work. “Unintentionally, they mainly cooperated in money laundering, trading victim data and forwarding packages,” says a spokesperson. The scammers are now also approaching people themselves, by sending an app to random telephone numbers. Previously, victims responded more often to online advertisements themselves.

Remarkable trend

“Fraudsters are inventive,” says Marianne Junger. In recent years, as a professor, she has conducted research on behalf of the University of Twente into the various forms of fraud in the Netherlands. “At a certain point, everyone is warned about one form of scam, after which they switch to another method.”

Junger particularly knows examples of job fraud from English-speaking countries, where the scammers have no language barrier. The UK Fraud Helpdesk reported to Sky News in April that the number of cases of recruitment fraud in the United Kingdom has almost tripled since the corona pandemic. In the Netherlands, it was still a relatively uncommon form of fraud in 2020, according to Jungers research. She does not have more recent figures at her disposal. She did see a clear pattern of victims: usually they had a low income.

Jorij Abraham, director of the Global Anti-Scam Alliance (GASA), also sees that scammers target vulnerable groups. “In developing countries, job fraud is even greater than here. That’s because people don’t have the knowledge, or see the salary offer as a great opportunity.”

Yet recruitment fraud is currently one of the most common forms of online scams in the Netherlands, according to preliminary results of a GASA survey that Abraham has. “For the Dutch it is often a conscious gamble with a small amount, because people can afford it.” He points to a remarkable trend: although there is more information about online fraud, the number of victims is not declining. “People who are more scam aware often take more risks. This is based on the idea that they will not be scammed.”

Detection

Employment agencies are struggling with the scamharming their good name. “Especially if the scam is so credible and visually professional that people believe it really comes from us,” says a spokesman for Randstad. “The victims often contact our employees and this can be accompanied by emotions. That is also very frustrating for our people.” The company also feels a responsibility to take action to warn people about scams, which takes “a lot of time and effort”. “We have the means to have 06 numbers, Facebook pages and sites taken off the air if they are demonstrably part of a fraud attempt. But that is always afterwards.” In addition, the broadcaster notices that the scammers have new phone numbers and sites up and running just as quickly.

In the past, Randstad filed a report, but according to the spokesperson, that had no result. A police spokesperson acknowledges that it is often difficult to tackle this form of online fraud. Only if a pattern emerges in reports, for example because the same account number is used each time or the victims come from the same region, can the investigation take action. Otherwise it will remain with taking phone numbers and sites off the air.

The police also see that people are not easily inclined to report fraud involving small amounts. “They often think: stupid, I shouldn’t have done that, and move on.” According to researcher Junger, this has consequences for the investigation by the police. “We need a lot more manpower in this area. Perpetrators now have the feeling that they can persevere for a long time, without the risk of being arrested.”

“It is an international problem,” says GASA director Abraham. “The chance of getting caught is now 0.05 percent. That can only be increased if parties start working together internationally.” He thinks that the number of online fraud cases will only increase further. “Take the better translation tools alone, which means that a scam can be translated into 120 languages. It’s easy business, you can mass-produce a scam.”

The scammer in the inbox turns out to be persistent. Even after the conversation has been cut off with an excuse, the messages keep coming. “Have a nice day!”, “Are you still interested in the job? Please tell me!”. Only after more than a week does it stop. A new victim has been found.