To wonder what happens if you reply to this?

[HotCrossBunplease]

Just received a scam text message from a chap called Donald telling me that my CV has been attracting a lot of interest in the job market, and offering me a lucrative WFH position.

Has anyone ever replied to one of these to see what happens next? I’m quite curious to know how the scam works.

(For the avoidance of doubt, I am a highly-paid senior professional and not planning on ditching my job to go and work with Donald in his oddly-named organisation…)

Usually these fake employment scams involve asking the potential employee for fees to purchase equipment / admin fees. Alternatively using their bank account details for money laundering (we send you money and you keep a percentage and send the rest on for equipment’ or something else equally bogus). It’s not worth engaging with honestly.

I guess that money laundering would fit with the “payments made daily” promise.

Does Donald have a kind of orange complexion and talk about making you great again? 😂

I’ve been retired for 5 years and get this stuff daily. Just report as spam and delete

I just block them, but the temptation to run with it is strong.

I would never risk it myself but there are quite a few online content creators who do, "Scambaiting" as a thing.

One of the best, who turns it almost into a comedic artform is Atomic Shrimp. They can turn into quite long and convoluted sagas.
Here's the latest one:

But it isn't a patch on the long running John Warosa/Basora fiasco of a few years ago. That was epic.

It sounds like the one that has lured a lot of people in lately where you do some non-work for a period of time (some people had to watch movies online, for example) and your "earnings" go up for some unexplained reason despite the fact you haven't really done anything to get paid for, then when you go to cash out your earnings, they ask you to pay the same amount into the account to "access your earnings". Then they keep your money and pay you nothing. There have been a couple of BBC articles on it this year, will see if I can dig one up.

I got the fake parcel delivery one yesterday on a text message. This time, instead of just ignoring it and deleting, I decided to be a public minded citizen and reported it to Mondial Relay.

Their response came a close second to the original scam.

They were sorry later and sent me a new email in French. We'd done a tour of all the major European languages at that point.

And yes, I had been in French all day with them but when they sent me Polish, I lost patience. And the ability to spell non existent in English because of being flustered.

I got 4 of these texts today from different numbers. I replied with a laughing face emoji to one and they immediately blocked me! I then blocked and reported the others as spam.

Donald’s friend has been in touch with me too. I’ve never sent my CV out ever. 20+ years self employed, work from home. Got a delivery one yesterday too. Where are they getting our mobile numbers from I’d like to know (so I can stop using whoever it is that’s forwarding this info on!)

I fell for the analogue version of this as a tween in the 90s 🤣 There was a WFH job advertised in the newspaper, you had to write in for more info. They then replied with a couple paragraphs about what the role entailed (stuffing envelopes IIRC! It didn't promise £800 a day, but enough to lure in a skint 11 year old). You then had to send off £30 or so - a fortune at that age - to guarantee that you'd get onto their books, after which the money would start rolling in. Against all my parents' advice, I sent off my £30.... and soon received a letter back thanking me for my fee, and assuring me that I was now on their books and they would be in touch again just as soon as there was work available in my locality 😂😭 Needless to say, they had the last laugh.

Yep, me too. I’ve had one. Donald has been busy!

@6millionthnamechange My mum's first husband, (not my dad) was a bit of a crook. The marriage lasted all of five minutes but he later was found to be living in Canada running some kind of vanity publishing scam.

Really nasty. Elderly ladies paying for their poems to be put into a poor quality book. The books did exist. I don't know how it worked exactly.

I got the same today - except I would be earning between £509-£1000 for 60-90 minutes work a day

Slightly different, but early last year I did spend a very enjoyable hour or so talking to the nice guy from Sky about my account and all the things I could spend money on if I provided him with my card details. It was a very quiet afternoon at work, I don't have a Sky account, and if I did I wouldn't have given then my works mobile number! He really was struggling to process the payments from my (entirely made up ) credit card details.

I had the CV one as a voice message the other day. I think they just dial numbers at random.

@PenCreed, have you seen https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/what_were_reading/5361215-georgette-heyer-give-me-your-top-five?page=1 ?

As a highly paid senior professional, I’d hope you’d be more switched on to not replying. It can cost you a shitload.

@EmpressaurusKitty i have, i just can’t choose!

OMG I remember a dodgy poetry one! It was where you sent a poem into a competition and everyone who sent a poem in was told they'd got into the semi-finals (but not won the cash prize) and that their poem would be put into a book making them a "published author". In 2003, when my poem was accepted, it was $70 to buy the book (plus international postage iirc) or you could buy a case of 6 books for $250, you could pay extra to have an extra page in the book with your biography. People who actually got the book reported the pages were really thin and the printing and binding was crap quality. Someone who didn't buy the book (but knew a friend who did) discovered their poem wasn't published if they didn't buy the book. Thankfully my mum did a load of digging (I was 16) and found out it was dodgy. IDK if it was the same one or if there were loads of them doing it.

@MeringueOutang Yes, that's what he was up to. I doubt he had the evil intelligence to come up with the scheme himself or where he was in the fake poetry book scammer hierachy of Canada but that was exactly the con.

I only found out about it because he tried to get back in touch with my mum when I was about eighteen and had the sheer brass neck to send her some of his poetry books to impress her.

They looked like church prayer books or Gideon's Bibles with really thin pages and were full of typos and things in the wrong order.

I always reply to scam texts - I had one the day about claiming the “heating allowance” and to reply with “Y” for “yes”. Clearly a scam and I replied “fuck off”. Scammer actually replied “N” 😂😂. First time I’d had one respond to me 😂

OP, I had that same text about my CV. I replied and said “no you haven’t”.

I got this one today too…they’ve been busy haven’t they, these scammers? 🤣

Spam you with messages and then try and sell you something.