Amazon job, invest in New York stocks: Online scammers' newest trap

Rezaul Karim, a 43-year-old farmer in a remote village who uses a feature phone, did not know that a WhatsApp account was opened with his Grameenphone number to lure jobseekers into a fraudulent online scheme. 

Infographic: TBS

The scammers offer high-paying jobs or easy money that require the victims to pay upfront. After taking enough, they vanish. 

Such scams are on the rise in Bangladesh with schemes using apps and chatbots to defraud thousands through fake job postings and Ponzi schemes in the guise of financial market trading and affiliated marketing or anything people may find lucrative.  

For example, you may see a sponsored ad claiming you can work for Amazon 2-4 hours a day online and earn Tk16,000 daily. 

No need for any education or work experience – only a smartphone and a few hours on it every day are enough to have such a handsome income and a rich life, promises that sound too good to be true but hard to resist.

One of these reporters clicking the "contact us" on the job posting was redirected to the WhatsApp account, opened against Rezaul Karim's mobile number.

Someone called Louise, pretending to be a customer support manager from Dhaka, welcomed the reporter and said they help major e-commerce platforms – like Walmart, WPP, Flipkart, IndiaMart, Snapdeal and Paymall – recruit part-time or full-time employees.

"The daily salary is about Tk1,800-30,000; this is an online job, you can easily complete it at home and receive the salary. Our job is to help merchants complete their product sales and generate good reviews. When you finish, the merchants will pay you a commission.

This is the same as online shopping, but this is not real online shopping. This is virtual shopping. The purpose is to increase the popularity and sales of mall merchants." 

The job is simple. 

"You only need to help the system to grab the order and complete the order, it only takes a few minutes to complete, and you can get Tk200-1500 after completing a task. The more tasks you complete, the higher the value, the more rewards you get." 
Then the link to amznol.com is provided for registration. 

Having the account opened with amznol.com, the reporter supposedly received Tk100 in the "virtual wallet" of the website as a "welcome bonus" and was asked to deposit Tk200 through any of the top two mobile financial services for "account activation" so that the job unlocks. 

The reporter deposited Tk200 after choosing a Bkash number and Louise transferred him to a "task mentor" named Aaliyah who contacts through a telegram account registered against a cell number starting with the dialling code for Hong Kong. 

Aaliyah asked him to click a button on the site to order a product in simulation, and in a minute his virtual wallet value went up to Tk390. 

For the next task, Aaliyah instructed him to place a withdrawal request and he got Tk332 against a withdrawal request for Tk350 in an hour — still Tk132 profit while more might be waiting. 

Then he asked for the second task, Aaliyah asked for the next deposit to recharge the virtual account with at least Tk500 and up to Tk10,000 as the balance would be "used for the next virtual online orders" that generates the income for bigger encashment again. 

A Tk500 deposit would help earn about Tk1,108 and the entire amount could be withdrawn, Aaliyah wrote. 

After depositing Tk500, only two products could be ordered that generated Tk101 in commission and Aaliyah now asked for more deposits as this level needed five orders and the remaining balance was not sufficient to complete the task.

The reporter did not proceed further while Aaliyah kept nagging him every day to deposit more money.

According to Louise, the so-called customer service manager, millions of people including an increasing number of Bangladeshis were doing the "job". 

"Actually Louise is a bot who continues conversation based on artificial intelligence," said machine learning expert Muhammad Asif Atick, CEO of Head Blocks. 

When checked last night amznol.com was still accessible. 

But amzn8a.com, another similar scam site went offline this week after several weeks of rapidly rising turnover, forcing its victims to regret the loss. 

This site too was using a Bangladeshi mobile number to run a WhatsApp account for customer support where the bot's name was Lisa.

Hundreds of such sites have popped up in recent years scamming unsuspecting people in the name of e-commerce, movie promotion, online betting or trading of cryptocurrencies, forex pairs, commodities, derivatives or stocks.   

Mohammad Tarek Bin Rashid, deputy commissioner of Dhaka Metropolitan Police's Cyber and Special Crime Division told TBS, "We encounter cyber scam related frauds almost every other day. Most of the complaints are related to job offers with high salary, lucrative benefits or return." 

"If someone lodge any complaints, we try to nab the scammers," he added. 

Seeing the so-called "Amazon job offer" on the reporter's smartphone, an additional deputy commissioner said, "They are just using the world-renowned brand name to lure people and con them. We will look into the matter." 

He also said that the persons behind the scam might be based in remote areas or from abroad.  "Scammers not only defraud people, sometimes they also take control over the social media Ids and blackmail them later," the official added. 

The Cyber and Special Crime Division recorded 406 cyber-related cases as of May this year. Of them, 98 cases are related to online scamming or lucrative offers, and the figure is skyrocketing.

MTFE Trading app: the biggest scam right now 

An app offering opportunity to trade crypto, forex, commodities, and even foreign stocks in its shadow platform has recently become unbelievably popular not because tens of thousands of Bangladeshi people suddenly became trading experts for the international markets. 

Instead, the platform pretending to earn and pay back from trading offers unbelievably easy money to users.  

The MTFE app available on the google play store, which reached people even in upazilas, asks customers to practise trading in the simulation platform and own the profit or loss in consequence. 

Predictably, almost everyone opts for the other offer called the robotic trading service MTFE provides as it has been showing more profitable days than losing ones. 

Several thousand people from Banaripara Upazila of Barisal have invested in MTFE at least Tk50 crore in total, said one of them who can earn around half a dollar a day against his investment of $26 dollars. 

He has to keep his app open for half an hour a day to let the system run the supposed trade. For a winning trade, he earns half a dollar and for losing, the penalty is equal.  

The catch is he earns more than $2 as soon as someone new joins the platform with his reference — the textbook way of how a Ponzi scheme works. 

Investing in foreign assets is prohibited in Bangladesh and that is why MTFE users have to buy cryptocurrency from a grey market first and then pay the platform. 

Again when they are paid back, the platform gives them crypto currency which the Bangladeshi MTFE users convert to dollars first and then into local currency. 

People barely needed the reverse process as they only kept pouring more into the platform at any cost, said more than a dozen MTFE users who dream to grow big and become salaried team leaders of the cyber company that no one can reach if the app stops. 

Almost all the users in Rajshahi, Sylhet, Comilla, Chattogram and of course in Dhaka the reporters talked to know it well that MTFE might be another app to get shut down any fine morning.  They still invite others as it helps them earn more. 

One such user in Barishal has over Tk2 crore invested through the app. 

The MTFE users in the district's Banaripara often meet to celebrate their "success". A Facebook page of MTFE users has nearly fifty thousand members.  

Major scams in recent years

Several dozen villagers in Bogra in 2021 filed police complaints that they invested over Tk30 lakh in a Bitcoin trading app "NZ Robo Trade" introduced to them by a man named Ruhul Amin. 

Starting with paying Tk15 thousand profit in a month out of Tk90 thousand invested, Amin kept drawing more funds from people and fled taking it all, and the app stopped functioning. 

Doing something as innocuous as clicking a few movies or product links in a few minutes a day, only after paying the entry fees calculated in US dollars, and keep earning also became popular. 

Robin Miah, a 26-year-old grocery shop owner in the capital, in July-August of 2021 poured Tk17 lakh into an app named Tolike. 

He was earning around Tk90 thousand a day and an even bigger profit came after eight-nine friends joined him with Tk10-20 lakh each. In 25 days, his virtual account grew to over Tk30 lakh and the app shut down suddenly. 

None of them found a single individual to blame for. 

These are actually Ponzi schemes that depend on fresh money collected from new entrants responding to unusually lucrative offers to pay the previous entrants. At some point, the scheme is bound to collapse leaving the majority holding the bag.

Bdlikeapps, Goldrush, and Goldenline were among the dozens of app-based scams that took away several hundred crore taka from over 2 lakh people, as claimed by some of the victims then. 

Founded and operated by a non-resident Bangladeshi, ringID embezzled over Tk300 crore from people before shutting in 2021. 

Earlier this year, in Rajshahi city around 30 individuals filed a police complaint that an app called Ultima Wallet shut off taking away their Tk1 crore. They blamed one Munayem who convinced them to inject money there. 

Another app called eMmovie in March closed down leaving thousands of young students who were borrowing and inviting others to earn from this.

Why do these scams keep coming?  

US Association of Certified Fraud Examiners fellow Major Mohammad Shamsuzzoha (Retd) said it is unfortunate that despite numerous negative, highly discussed nationwide examples of Ponzi schemes like the Destiny, Jubok of the analogue age, and Evaly, and other fraudulent e-commerce schemes of the digital era, people are still falling victim to Ponzi schemes. 

This time, these scams have taken a different form – AI-based online platforms with limited or no physical presence of representatives of the masterminds on the hunt for clients or customers. 

This continuation of the successful operation of Ponzi schemes is due to various reasons, such as the huge unemployment rate, the allure of quick and significant profits, lack of financial literacy, and the persuasive tactics used by fraudsters, he said. 

Echoing his view, Bijoy Basak, additional commissioner of Rajshahi Metropolitan Police told TBS that according to a court order, the police are doing what is necessary but public awareness is a must to stop such scams.