One woman lost over £16,000 after fraudsters tricked her into starting a scam job online. Alice – whose name has been changed – was tricked out of her cash through a recruitment scam earlier this year, This is Money reports. Recruitment scams are when fraudsters create fake job opportunities that trick applicants into revealing personal information, sending money, and thinking they have a job. Alice was struggling financially and started looking for a part-time job to do alongside her full-time one. Not too long after starting her search, Alice was contacted on WhatsApp by a person called “Mandy” who claimed to work for the UK’s biggest recruitment agency Robert Half. Alice told This is Money that she conducted routine checks to see if the person was legitimate and to her, everything seemed to checkout. Alice was passed onto someone called “Lucy” who claimed to work for an app development company called Indiespring, another legitimate company which has well-known clients such as Nokia and Highways England. Again, they were only linked through WhatsApp. Even though Alice was “sceptical” she agreed to start work and was guided through a practice run. She was shown 30 tasks and for each one completed, money would be put into her balance which she could then withdraw from. She said: “I didn’t have to put any money in at that point, I think people would be very sceptical. Lucy said I could practice on her account.” Alice continued to complete the tasks and saw her balance going up every time. She was able to withdraw £106 which went into her bank account. Although she wanted to stop the work, she was “convinced” by Lucy to take on three more tasks. At this point, her balance went into negative and she was told she’d need to add more money in before she could withdraw again. The money also needed to be added through the cryptocurrency USDT. Alice explained: “You’re supposed to contact customer service and they give you a crypto address. The tasks then show on the platform. But every time I did the tasks, my balance kept going negative. So I kept on adding more money.” Over the course of five days, Lucy, alongside other people claiming to be from Indiespring, would contact Alice encouraging her to do more tasks and make more money. Alice was convinced it wasn’t a scam because Lucy would top up the account on her behalf in order for her to get the cash. Alice added: “She’d help and then go cold. I’d doubt it and then she’d help me again.” Alice soon had a negative balance of around £4,000 and at that point, had ploughed about £16,000 in the platform’s balance. This was when Alice started to really worry and told Lucy she could not add any more money to the account. She said: “I was already maxed out. I’d borrowed from friends and family and maxed out my credit cards. I usually get paid on the 25th and put my whole month’s salary in. I had nothing left for the month.” Alice said her balance went into negative a few times but with each top up, she got “more stuck and desperate”. This was because the company would change their statement at the point of withdrawal – which meant Alice needed more money to access the money. Alice carried on as she was invited to another WhatsApp group with other apparent “workers”. These workers often shared how much they had been able to earn and how they had gotten stuck initially too. However, as Alice still couldn’t access the funds, she started to twig that she had been scammed. She said: “By the end, I was left with no money and I refused to top up and asked to let me withdraw without paying any more. That’s when everything [descended into] chaos.” Alice threatened to contact the company and she was told the company “wouldn’t recognise the department” and threatened to freeze her account as she’d be “breaking the confidentiality agreement.” Eventually, Alice was blocked from her account and she could not withdraw the funds. Alice contacted her council for help and they advised her to find a no win no fee lawyer to take on the case. Her case was also raised with both of her banks Revolut and Wise, although as Alice approved the “untraceable, cryptocurrency” their hands were reportedly tied. A spokesman for Revolut told This is Money: “We are very sorry to hear about [Alice’s] case, or any instance where our customers are targeted by ruthless and highly sophisticated criminals. Revolut warned [Alice] on multiple occasions about the suspicious transactions she was attempting to authorise.’ A spokesperson for Wise said: “We are sorry that Alice has fallen victim to such an unpleasant and exploitative scam. Scammers will often pose as recruitment agents and create situations where they can target and exploit people to demand fees, whether that be for training fees, legal costs or more elaborate schemes like this. “At Wise, we are invested in the continual fight against scams. This ranges from new technology, such as AI modelling, to features, such as warnings to customers when we spot that they might be at risk of a scam.” Alice is now facing bankruptcy and is currently in an individual voluntary arrangement (IVA). She added: “Any money I had, I maxed out on everything. Even if I tried to make minimum payments, my incoming salary is £2,000 and my outgoings would be £3,000. I’m screwed for the next six years. I haven’t talked to anyone about my financial issues. It’s got to the point where I feel like I’m having a mental breakdown. I can’t blame anyone for it but myself.” Robert Half and Indiespring were contacted by This is Money for comment, due to their company name being used in the scam. A spokesman for Robert Half said: “We are aware of fraudulent actors impersonating recruitment consultants with fake online profiles on social networking sites. We provide information to recognise scams to the extent that we can, and proactively draw attention to the risk of job posting fraud through alerts and FAQs on our website. Importantly, we want to emphasise that no Robert Half professional will ever request payment of any kind from a candidate.” An Indiespring spokesperson said: “It’s so sad for those who have been victims of the scam; they were sophisticated in their use of our branding. We have reported the scammers and the look-alike websites to the relevant bodies and tried to advise those who have contacted us as best we can.” Alice shared her story in the hope it could help save others from falling victim. She also reported the scam to Action Fraud – although the case has not been passed on for further investigation at this time. A spokesperson for Action Fraud said: “With more than 850,000 reports coming into the NFIB each year, not all cases can be passed on for further investigation. Reports are assessed against a number of criteria which include the vulnerability of the victim. “However, the reports most likely to present an investigative opportunity for local police forces, those where a crime is ongoing and those that present the greatest threat and harm to the victim or victims concerned, are the ones that are prioritised.”
Woman issues warning after losing £16,000 in WhatsApp ‘recruitment scam
