Thousands of job seekers have been targeted by scammers on WhatsApp who impersonated staffing firms including Adecco, Hays, Reed, reports Euronews.   The scam has already squeezed an estimated €100 million from thousands of victims all over the globe, according to AI cybersecurity firm CloudSEK. One macroanalyst jobseekers based in London received a message on Whatsapp in December 2022 stating, “Hi, I’m Amelia from Adecco Ltd. Would you be interested in flexible roles, may I share more details?" He was looking to change jobs and the text piqued his interest, so he asked for more information. Amelia" was offering him "big projects" and a generous salary paid through an encrypted wallet.

In a statement, Adecco, the staffing giant impersonated in the text, said, "Please be aware that NO Adecco representative will ever request payment of any kind from a candidate.”

According to Keith Rosser, who is both a group director at Reed and co-director and chair of JobsAware, a non-profit looking out for the safety of the UK labour market, this scam began in November 2022. It became "huge" in the UK, he says, from March 2023. "We’re receiving dozens of reports a day, specifically about WhatsApp-based scams copying the names of legitimate recruitment firms, both job boards and recruitment agencies," Rosser told Euronews Next.

In Euronews Next’s investigation, it discovered that the fraud scheme perpetrated by the scammers is known as a ‘task scam’ which involves a website or mobile app that claims you can earn money by completing easy tasks, such as watching a video, liking a post, or creating an order. Scammers would then request the set up of a cryptocurrency wallet, however, money never circulates from crypto wallets to employee accounts, rather, it goes to the accounts of fraudsters.

The UK's communications regulator OFCOM recently found that nearly one in three Britons had encountered fake employment ads, and Rosser believes most of them were targeted by this specific WhatsApp scam.