Don't Take the Side Gig - A Look at Task Scams

The branding of an existing zeroShadow TORCH client has recently been impersonated resulting in a financial loss to a US based victim in a tactic dubbed the “Task scam”. This new trend creates an illusion that there is genuine, and potentially lucrative, work available to remote workers for a small investment, usually in the form of cryptocurrency, which sadly ends up being laundered by those behind the enterprise.

After becoming suspicious, the victim had reached out to the genuine brand to seek clarification on the work he assumed he had been doing for them, only to discover the truth. He had been scammed, losing over $50K USD which he falsely believed was an investment he’d made that would be returned to him, with increased financial rewards, for completing the work tasks. zeroShadow made contact with the victim to glean further details and began an investigation to trace the flow of funds and assist with support for them, including advice on reporting to law enforcement. This engagement is crucial to ensure that any frozen funds can be retrieved and returned to the victim in time.

The website that the victim was directed to to "complete tasks" for his commission.

The victim described how he was approached on WhatsApp, by someone who appeared to be a legitimate recruiter, and offered a remote job opportunity that consisted of simple online work for two to three hours per day. The victim advised that he felt pressured into accepting the offer, and due to fear of missing out on this opportunity he agreed to do the work which he had hoped would supplement his retirement income. 

Unfortunately there was no “job,” it was simply a lure to engage potential victims looking for opportunities to earn money. It is commonly known as the “Task Scam” which started in South East Asia and in 2024 has started to target citizens in the US and UK, among other countries. There are a growing number of law enforcement agencies warning the public about the rise of these types of scams. 

The victim was guided to the fake job website which had an address that was extremely similar to that of the brand the victim presumed had made the approach. Here he was provided login credentials which were assigned to him by those engineering the scam. This login gave him access to the scam page, without login credentials, website visitors cannot progress beyond the login screen. This enables the scammers to better engineer each victim individually and also adds an element of authenticity to the enterprise.

The website essentially allows potential victims to bid for “jobs”, for which they are required to send a small amount of cryptocurrency to a wallet controlled by the scammers. The victims then believe they are allocated that particular work task and begin working on it, with the aim of earning the financial reward or payment for its successful completion.

WhatsApp conversation with scammer about paying a deposit for a task.

The more they are able to get, the better

A further tactic to accrue more money from the victim is to increase the apparent value of the task in line with funds the victim would need to part with. Once he completed the work task, his account would log his initial investment as well as his commission. This was designed to give the impression that the victim was in credit and had made money. Over time the victim was encouraged to work on bigger and bigger “packages” to increase his returns, but this required ever increasing investment from him. 

The victim primarily used popular crypto on-ramp platforms to send his assets to the scammers and provided a series of screenshots to zeroShadow, which helped our team to identify the scammer wallets. Whilst the victim believed that his assets were locked up on the work platform, the reality was that they were immediately transferred to other larger consolidation wallets and laundered through services such as Huione Pay, which is a Cambodian service linked to Chinese organised crime and scams. Other victim funds were sent through Tornado Cash. 

These services are commonly used by money launderers to obfuscate the movement funds by mixing them with transfers from other wallets from all across the globe.

In 2024, there was a notable increase in "task scams," also referred to as "gamified job scams," with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) documenting over 20,000 incidents in just the first half of the year.

The financial repercussions of these scams have been significant. In the initial six months of 2024, reported losses from job-related scams surpassed $220M USD, with nearly 40% of these losses linked to task scams. Notably, losses associated with cryptocurrency transactions reached $41M USD during this timeframe, nearly doubling the total losses for the entirety of 2023.

How to stay safe

To safeguard against task scams, the FTC recommends the following:

• Disregard unsolicited job offers received through text or messaging applications. Reputable employers typically do not utilize these methods for recruitment.

• Do not make any upfront payments to secure employment or to receive compensation. Requests for advance payments are a clear indication of potential scams.

• Exercise caution regarding offers that promise payment for liking or rating online content. Such schemes are frequently illegal and exploited by scammers.

By remaining vigilant and adhering to these recommendations, individuals can better protect themselves from becoming victims of task scams.

Original article by the zeroShadow team