…. Thankfully not, but others may not be so lucky.
You know when you get that feeling? You know the one, something is immediately not right but you just can put your finger on what the angle is? This was my world last night, allow me to explain.
I’m registered with various freelancer sites for photo editing and general photography gigs, well, you know what Tesco used to say, ‘every little helps’ eh?. Anyhow, yesterday I get a strange message from one of the freelancing sites asking for me to bid for a gig which on the face of it, required no more than 10-12 minutes work and while the payment (around $10) was pitiful, for the proposed effort it seemed realistic, but it immediately set my spidy-senses tingling; why would they contact me? How is this aligned to my skillset? And of course, I’m sure it’s a scam, but how does it work?
So with all these questions buzzing around my head, I decide to play along for a while until I can work out the angle and ask the ‘recruiter’ ‘Abhajiit’ from London (via Pakistan according to the flag on his location profile) for more details. Abhajiit pings over the ‘job spec’ for a “Virtual assistant required in UK”, as follows: ‘It wont be a video, it will be a cell phone through which will record your voice. VIOP calls are not allowed. Make sure you have your local phone number of United Kingdom’ (how does that relate to a virtual assistant? you may well ask, I did!), and invites two more people into the conversation, let’s call them Mammood also from London (but his profile says Bangladesh) and ‘Arthur’ (I kid you not) from Turkey.
“Hello gentlemen” I type into the chat, “what roles are you guys playing in the gig?”
“We are all joint recruiters for this role” responds Mammood. Again, the spidy-senses kick off big time here, but my curiosity gets the better of me, I need to work out the angle here for my own peace of mind, have I been unfair and misjudged or is this really the scam it feels like?
“OK” I continue, “I don’t really see how this relates to a virtual assistant role, but what needs to be done?” I’ve already decided that, because they have specifically excluded VOIP calls, it’s a premium rate telephone scam and they will keep the unwitting responder on the line for up to 10 minutes at a horrific rate. My message box pings and Arthur has sent a pdf with the following instructions:
Locale number: +44 800 xxx xxxx
Requirements:
● You will complete 2 calls with each call lasting 5-7 minutes on average. ● Speech time should be at least 3-5 minutes per call. ● 2 calls should cover 2 microphone types (Speaker phone/ Internal Mic/ Earphone/ Wireless Headset). ● You need to use 1 call sources: Mobile phone (NO VoIP calls are allowed, You can NOT use Skype, Viber or any other online app) ● One call one script. 2 calls must cover 2 different topics. ● Only 2 qualified calls will be paid.
OK, so it’s an 0800 number (toll free in the UK), so the first thing I do is check that out and it seems legit and is a BT provided number, so it’s not a premium rate scam then. While I’m digesting this, Abhajiit leaves the conversation room and Mammood asks “how quickly can you make the calls?, we have authorised the payment”. Interesting, why the urgency I wonder?
“I can do it tomorrow around 8am UK time” I respond, wanting to give myself some more time to work out the angle here, to which I get a simple “OK” back and off I toddle to cook dinner and think on other things.
Sometime early this morning I suddenly felt that I’d worked it out, the “Only 2 qualified calls will be paid” had been bugging me but I needed to be sure so I checked my payment account on the gig website – no payment there in escrow, just as I expected. I head over to the message room and type “Hi, before I do this, can you ensure that the fee is transferred to the <gig site> escrow please?” Within moments, Mammood responds, “Sure, to make the payment I need your full name, address, birth city, and telephone number” and I’m now certain I know what the scam is.
“Urm, you don’t need any of those details to pay into the escrow account” I type, “the gig site takes care of payments by ensuring they are safe for both of us” and that’s the last I hear from Mammood, Abhajiit or Arthur.
‘But what is the scam?’ I can already hear you asking, ‘they did not ask for any financial details’. And the simple fact is, they don’t need them, and that is why this will almost certainly be a success for the less skeptical people who just want to earn a few bucks. It’s an A.I. scam where they will harvest a person’s entire details, including their voice, and use this to build a virtual you. But why do they only pay for two calls? Well, that’s the gig, two calls. After that they don’t need you again because they have your details and have captured your voice, so to pay you again would be a wasted expense for them.
Almost certainly, if I had completed the gig they would have paid me. Let’s be honest, $10 is a small price to pay to have access to ‘me’ whenever they want, and it helps them look more credible on the gig site; they have offered hundreds of gigs, paid out on them to hundreds of freelancers and each side gives the other a great review (‘did the gig super quick, 5*’ / ‘paid immediately, great party to work with’ – you get the idea).
But by completing the gig the scammers would now have around 12-15 minutes of me speaking extensively on random subjects to train an A.I. bot with (time yourself speaking one day, you’ll be amazed how much you say in just 5 minutes, let alone 12-15!); I trained an A.I. bot to speak the intro on my Youtube channel with just 30 seconds of me speaking randomly and it’s pretty darn convincing – imagine what I could have done with 15 minutes of my voice for the bot to sample!
So the scammers would now have all my details, except financial ones, and they have a digital ‘me’ that can ‘speak’ to anyone that they need it to, they are free to set up accounts in my name, rent properties, apply for documents such as driving licences not just in the UK but anywhere they need to. They have a digital ‘me’ to field any questions that may arise via telephone and indeed. If they happened to get exceptionally lucky and actually work out any of my banking details, they could use ‘me’ to speak to the bank and if I ever queried it, I’d be hard-pushed to deny that the recording the bank has of ‘me’ requesting <whatever> wasn’t me. I’m begrudgingly admiring the simplicity of the whole scam if I’m honest and I have no doubt that these scumbags will convince hundreds of people to unwittingly become part of their scam, ruining perhaps hundreds of lives and enriching these people enormously.
So, what’s the summary here? Well, the old adage that ‘if something is too good to be true, it usually is’, doesn’t really apply here, these scammers have worked that one out – the rate they offered wasn’t crazy enough to set off any real alarm bells and, whilst nobody is going to get rich on that, it probably equates to around $40/hr which isn’t unreasonable for an unskilled job. So if anything, my takeaway here is to say “be wary“, the first thing that set me on edge was that the proposal had nothing at all to do with my advertised skillset, an immediate error on the scammer’s part there – better luck next time chaps. Next, if it passes your initial ‘why me?’ check, do your research; ask the ‘recruiter’ LOTS of questions – you can never ask too many; video chat with someone, get a feel for them because if something is a scam, it’s very unlikely that the people perpetrating it will be willing to chat on video about it. Finally, NEVER, EVER hand over any personal details to anyone, let alone a stranger or strangers who contact you unexpectedly – the gig sites charge a healthy commission to both advertisers and freelancers to use their platforms and will manage the payment via escrow for both parties so there is never a need to share this information, ever. If in doubt, just walk away, there is always the next job.