Security company R-Vision discovered a sharp fraudulent activity in February, during which criminals offer victims jobs on marketplaces, including Wildberries and Ozon. The number of messages from scammers in messengers, including Telegram and WhatsApp, has doubled compared to January. About this with reference to the data of the company R-Vision (is engaged in the development of cybersecurity systems) write “News”.

This scam scheme was used as early as the summer of 2022 – criminals lured victims to AliExpress. And in the fall, Ozon and Wildberries were added. Users, ostensibly to promote the product, were asked to buy an inexpensive product (300-500 rubles), promising to return the money with a small commission. After the first payment, the buyer was offered to purchase the goods at a higher price – 5,000-10,000 rubles, and sometimes even 100,000 rubles. The scammers did not return these amounts to the victim.

R-Vision’s Endpoint Product Manager Petr Kutsenko noted that the growth of fraudulent schemes with vacancies is associated with the most active period of job search – February and March.

In addition, people were actively looking for work during the long weekend of February 23–26. During this period, the Izvestia correspondent received several offers of “employment” at once. They came from numbers from Nigeria and Malaysia.

Their authors claimed that the marketplaces are looking for hundreds of employees “to perform tasks in social networks.” Experience is not important, the main requirement is age from 23 to 60 years, earnings – up to 600 thousand rubles. per month.

One of the “employers” explained that in this way they help sellers on Wildberries increase the number of page views, the number of orders and their visibility. It is for helping to increase the page views of the goods of specific sellers that a reward is awarded. You can earn from 300 to 7,000 rubles. in a day.

The press service of Ozon confirmed that the number of scam attempts on online platforms has indeed increased. The telecommuting messaging scheme involves fairly standard tricks to direct users to phishing sites.

Also, representatives of Wildberries said that scammers often pretend to be employers of large companies in order to fraudulently receive money. Wildberries recommended that in case of any suspicious activity, contact the support service and interact with company representatives only through official communication channels.