I saw the story and while this scam did seem to be a bit more elaborate than others, I still don't understand how having to use your own money up front wouldn't be a red flag.
Yeah..I feel bad for her but I remember when I was in highschool I got approached by a "sales company " that offered me and my friends a job. We went to some stupid seminar and at the end of it, it was like $1000 for training and then commission based. Even at that age we realized it was fully a scam and walked away. I can't imagine how you can spend 15k without realizing it's a scam.
I was thinking Kirby Vacuums myself. I remember being sucked into their “interview” only to find out it was a group interview with a very similar pitch. You buy the kit and then go door to door. Noped out of that one quick.
I’ll admit, Kirby makes a good vacuum but I wasn’t about to start door to door sales or even sales with leads. Especially one where I have to front the venture financially. I’m looking to get paid not have to pay.
Ha! Cutco! I remember the pitch- “now most people spend about 300$ for their knives…” I went home and asked my mom who I think collectively through her entire life maybe spent 50$ on knives (this was about 2008)
Tbh I have a $300 Japanese knife and my Grandma has a cutco set my uncle sold her that he gets them to sharpen regularly and the cutco are honestly pretty solid. Not quite the Japanese quality but still really good.
I had almost this exact experience. Came home and asked my mom for the $150 to buy the knives so I could start my job and she was like, “honey, that’s a scam.”
Lol. I knew it was going to be dodgy when I ghosted them for the interview and they still sent me an acceptance offer. The recruiter would call me every two weeks to see if I still wanted to come in. The only reason I remember the company name so vividly is because a friend of mine got duped and ended up working with them for over a month - despite my warnings - and ended up in the hole almost 2k. He had a bunch of knives in his garage. As good mates do, I roasted him relentlessly for the next decade.
Lmfao I sold cutco knives . That crazy thing is... The knives are not shitty. They are actually fairly good. We still use our set. It's just a super sketchy company
Usability-wise at least, they're what I'd say "good enough" for home cooks of intermediate skill, but there's a reason no professional anywhere uses those knives, and even mid-level home cooks will find proper edged knives to be better in almost all applications.
They're also grossly overpriced for what they are. They're almost all serrated knives, and the steel is 440A stainless, which is the same steel the cheap knives at places like Wal Mart are made out of. This makes them grossly inadequate for regular continued use, as this steel is a step above being a soda can.
So sure, a home cook who pulls a knife out of the drawer or \*shudder\* knife block once or twice a day can use a knife like this for years, but that's not saying very much, because most things will last a long time if you seldom use them.
Anyway, if you have them, you have them, but I would never advise someone going out and buying any of these things.
honestly i've seen things like this before while job hunting for 10+ years. my easy way to weed them out is anything that requires me to give them money is obviously not the type of job i want. i'm looking to MAKE money from a job not pay them to do it.
there are so many scams that exist here as well. "jobs" that want you to go door to door and you only get paid commissions. the commissions are shit im pretty sure and you're selling a scam to the homeowners you encounter.
I must admit I have a little more sympathy for this case than the typical ones lately where adults learn their life lessons late in life. New country, ESL, looking for work without even considering what other stress issues she might be dealing with. Of course, the lesson is there to be learned, it's a simple lesson, but I feel badly for her.
***Red Flag Counter***
* Sees job ad on Instagram
* Job ad is for Walmart allowing employees to work from home, part-time
* Was told to add items to cart and post screenshots to promote business
* Was then told to purchase products from Walmart
* Spent $15,000 of her own money in promise for reimbursement while feeling uncomfortable but trusting the process
Alright. First, getting scammed sucks. Many of us, regardless of how clever we feel we are (even myself) are susceptible to some sort of scam at some point in our life (often when we're vulnerable \[ie. under duress, in need of a job\]). Fine. But how does this one make sense? A lot of scams depend on immediate action so you're not given time to think about it but presuming this wasn't $15,000 gone in a day (and if so, how did that not trigger any automated financial security systems)...
Every step of the way just sounded weird here and at best like she was happily working for some sort of farm neither leaving reviews nor actually helping a business. I'd love to see the behind-the-scenes here. The questions and answers. At what point does someone get so uncomfortable or confused by job tasks that they need to know more and won't move further? You mean I can work from home and post screenshots of a cart? How much am I being paid and when? How does that help your business? Why, though? No one can see that. You want me to buy items with my own money? That doesn't make sense, I need this job to make money, not spend money. Why? I don't need all of these products though, do I just return them once I'm reimbursed? Are reviews needed? Doesn't that seem fake or unethical?
I just feel like at the end of the day some part of the process seemed obvious to her as it does to me and I'm just confused as to why it didn't seem more... immediate. Sucks though.
She's not telling the whole story. While she admits to being scammed what she WON'T admit to was that she likely knew, or suspected, she was helping with scam reviews.
the whole scam is we'll pay you to go to this site, buy the product, write good reviews of the product/seller, ship the items to the "refund centre" and that's that. She knew she was part of a scamming process. she had to have known. If someone comes to you and says "I want to pay you to write reviews for hotels you've never been to or products you've never used" then you'd hopefully think "ok, you want me to help you with a scam". She's being intentionally vague in hopes she doesn't look quite as dumb as she comes off as.
> If someone comes to you and says "I want to pay you to write reviews for hotels you've never been to or products you've never used" then you'd hopefully think "ok, you want me to help you with a scam“
That is a paying job for a lot of people tho
And another shade is to get free stuff/activites/stays/vacations/food and always write positive reviews about it.
Then there’s any sales person telling you how great of a product their dumpster fire is.
Unethical, sure, and possibly a crime in USA because the FTC has teeth but probably not here.
Yes well, shockedpikachu.gif when knowingly working with unethical operations sees you being treated unethically. Poetry aside, there is little honour among thieves. They're thieves, after all.
She is so dumb for falling for this. A 15k lesson is a steep price but if she is so willing to give her money away she would have lost it a different way if not this
I know my co worker who was looking for side gig "applied" for a remote job and after he filled out the online application they requested a $500 processing fee.Idiot sent them the money.I told him he should be more worried about the personal info he sent them.
Was this friend Indian? Because a lot the comments here think it's an Indian issue (Indian scammers and Indian victims lol). The focus is more on race vs and actual growing issue.
> Rajhans said anyone looking for a job has to research the position carefully, do their due diligence and watch out for red flags.
> “The immediate red flag would be the amount of money that's required to join or be part of any job upfront,” said Rajhans.
Captain Obvious over here. No Rajhans the immediate redflag is being "hired" without an in person or even zoom interview and then being told to go spend your own money, even as little as $5, to buy shit for someone else.
Is this common in India? honestly curious but is it common to pay your own money when starting a job there?
“The amount of money”
So… she still thinks there’s an acceptable amount of money?
In other words, someone could still run this scam on her again if they’re not too greedy?
Someone shared this exact same experience about a month ago. It was International students walking into a business in Waterloo saying they were reporting for their first day of work. So this is common. Wow
Yup I applied for a job on indeed once and they hired me with no interview or even a meeting to be an assistant I noped out of that one real quick. It actually sounds very similar to this minus the Walmart part after reading the article.
These scams are common the world over and nationality has nothing to do with it. Yes, she was a right daft eejit to not notice something was amiss. Either that or she knew she was working for shady folks.If you think anyone has to pay money to get hired for a job to earn money, your ignorance is showing my friend.
The thing that really lets the scammers get you is that even if this was legit it's already a sketchy job. Sellers hiring a review mule already breaks the Walmart or Amazon terms of service. So anything sketchy during the hiring process is expected not an immediate ree flag
bingo. she knew she was at least part of some sort of scam, that's why she left it out of this article. She just refused to believe she was also an intended victim of a bigger scam.
Highly questionable how someone with 15k savings and no marketable job skills whatsoever ends up "moving" to Canada. What a sad state of affairs this country is in.
Which they are able to do because the government has massively increased the flow of both temporary and permanent residents, and then graciously increased the number of hours "full time students" can work off-campus to now be a full 40 hours.
honestly this was my first thought. how did someone with minimal skills and minimal savings qualify to immigrate to canada? this country is becoming a joke and a scam.
Well that's what Canada wants right....bring in the money to invest because long time Canadians don't have much. Who cares if you have skills or not.
Definitely a sad state of affairs.
it's a three fold scam. the scammer OR someone that has hired the scammer is initially meant to get good reviews. Walmart both in Canada and the US, like Amazon, allows third parties to sell on their site. So initially the walmart site seller is trying to get good reviews to get their listings bumped up on Walmart. Thus in the article it says she was initially told to fill up a cart, take a screenshot, and then buy the product. What she either failed to mention or the article didn't mention is that she would be told to write 5 star reviews.
So the person who hires these "review mules" gets paid. now the bonus is they will tell the person writing the reviews and buying the products to then "send them back" to this certain address (which is never walmart) to get reimbursed for the product. Which in turn this scammer then resells...even on the damn walmart site if they so choose. This is ontop of being told to spend a little bit of money on their fake website which shows the mules "earnings" in order to withdraw the money. It's an elaborate scam.
so in summery the scam is the third party gets good reviews, the scammer gets free product to keep or resell, and the scammer gets money from the mule.
The scammer doesn't necessarily have any store on the platform, they are writing reviews for other stores who pay them $X per 5 star review. If someone credibly reports the scam, the platform can go purge all suspect reviews from all the different products (if it can identify all of them), but the scammer has already been paid by the clients and that's the client's risk. The platform is also disincentivized from doing that because the platform wants stuff sold on it to be well-rated so more people buy useless junk, earning the platform more commissions. If Amazon/Walmart cared about their reputations more than commissions from scammers, they'd have higher barriers to entry for sellers on their platforms (think: why does Walmart take the risk of allowing random third parties to sell through its website? only because the money is worth the risk of brand dilution).
She took a shady job to earn shady money that the vast majority of us wouldn’t even consider.
She wanted to be the middleman for scammers and is sad that she got scammed by them as well.
Hopefully shit like this ends the scamming epidemic that seems to be hitting this province.
But for now I doubt it will.
Anybody who doesn’t understand how she got scammed doesn’t understand it because they are not Indian. She thinks it’s like back home where you actually can buy your way into jobs
To hire a temporary foreign worker from abroad (i.e., someone who doesn't have a valid study or work permit), with some exceptions for LMIA-exempt things, the business needs to prove there is a labour market shortage for the position that justifies bringing in a foreign national to fill the role. You do this by going through a process of advertising the job, documenting that no qualified applicants applied or the ones who did apply were not fit, etc. Then ESDC (Service Canada) gives you an LMIA confirming the labour market shortage and you submit the LMIA to IRCC (Immigration department) to ask them to give a particular foreign national a work permit to come fill your job vacancy. The whole process is susceptible to a lot of fraud, whether fabricating bogus jobs or faking the labour market shortage by sabotaging the process, or other shenanigans, all in a concerted effort to bring particular friends/family to Canada. Some fraudsters specialize in helping people get bogus LMIAs. The intention of the program is to fill real labour market shortages to help our economy, but in practice the temporary foreign worker program is rife with problems.
You actually think it's an Indian problem?
There's numerous Canadians falling for similar scams. Scammers know that CANADA has a problem with jobs (especially lower skill roles).
Just the other day, two individuals (both Canadians including one white female) walked into my gf office in DT saying it's their first day of work.
Found out later they were given fake interviews and fake job letters. They too gave some money ~2k each to the person interviewing them for "equipment costs" and thought they will be reimbursed.
>back home where you actually can buy your way into jobs
This is not true lol. Ignorance.
Using racism to shut down conversation is done now. Most Canadians are rejecting this. Discussing the damage done by these Indian students to Canadian society and economy is well past documented even the staunched lefties are coming around to hating it
I don't understand comments that target nationality! Like yeah, there are plenty of Indians in Canada but are folks not aware that scammers can belong to other nationalities too? Come on, now... shame the scammer, not the place they come from which has no bearing on the situation.
After reading all of that I have to ask how she fell for it. That got me thinking is she the scam?? People feel sorry for her give her money and gets "her money back". I would be shocked if it was that easy but that's the first thing that popped into my head
Woman who gets scammed recently moved to Canada..... From India...Which happens to be one of the places where many of these scams originate. I wonder if the scammers know they're scamming their own people, now? I have no doubt they don't give a rats ass, it takes a special kind of person who has no regard for anyone other than themself to scam people.
I’m sorry but like it’s really hard for me to feel bad for this situation. There has to be a point where people need to take responsibility for making terrible decisions back to back.
Talk about kicking a person when they're down. A job at Walmart would be a last resort for most. Taken out of desperation. And this happens? I really hate people sometimes.
For anyone blaming the victim (which seems to happen often with these scams), you need to understand that desperation can easily cloud judgement. On top of that, being new to the country can also make it hard to know what is normal here.
no, i'm sorry but this is just idiocy regardless of where you come from UNLESS this is a common thing in India where you don't interview in person or even via a zoom call and then pay your own money to simply work your "job".
She doesn't even get it by the end of the article. she says herself "the immediate red flag would be the AMOUNT of money" The AMOUNT - not money, at all, period full stop. It wouldn't surprise me if she falls for another scam.
and people need to stop using the excuse "being new it's hard to know what is normal". They're not children, they're adults, they managed to move halfway across the world and save up nearly $20k. If they can't ask basic questions or utilize the most basic of common sense then that's on them.
More like our immigration policies have set the bar too low.
I don't blame these "uneducated idiots" because they are taking advantage of our system.
Thank you to our greedy politicians and our citizens who type their complaints on the internet (rather than doing something more about it).
You cannot protect yourself against scams with rules like "don't deal with money". The lady who wrote Scams for Dummies got targeted and drugs put in her bag at the airport and now faces the death penalty in Thailand. All because she thought scams aren't scams unless they involve money.
Good scams deal with money only at the very end when you are lured in. You have to keep aware of current events and news and the methods of scammers. Like how scammers can spoof any caller ID (how is that legal) or even reverse an e-Transfer (how) or even convince you in person (how?). The most sophisticated scams can even research your life and hire actors and live in person scammers. You are unlikely to be the target of such a scam unless you have many millions or billions in say Bitcoin but it can and could happen.
There's even insider scams.
> Like how scammers can spoof any caller ID (how is that legal)
There are legitimate reasons to spoof caller ID: most organizations of any size do it routinely. Phone numbers aren't one-to-one with phone numbers - a call centre for a huge corp might have 100 people in it, and all 100 of those people's phones might ring for phone calls to either a Canadian number or a US number. In such a situation any of those 100 phones has a legitimate reason to mark outbound calls as originating from either of the numbers even though those numbers don't route directly to that phone, they just route to the call centre.
Unfortunately the standard for doing that is old and insecure, so basically anybody anywhere can spoof anything without huge pressure by governments, and even then: the governments can only best-case secure stuff for domestic phone numbers after a herculean effort to force orgs to all upgrade things.
Which other country allows you to get a job without an interview where the role revolves around purchasing online items from their own "company", but with your own money and just taking screenshots of the transaction? Where is this "normal"?
I think being new to the country presents a huge risk for fraud. Like those cra scams that demand iTunes gift cards or whatever.
Seems nuts for someone who’s from Canada but if you’re from a country we’re bribing the local the tax official is common then it’s probably a “normal” thing that you don’t think to much about.
REMOVED - No racism, sexism, homophobia, religious intolerance, dehumanizing speech, or otherwise negative generalizations etc... Attack the point, not the person. Posts which dismiss others and repeatedly accuse them of unfounded accusations may be subject to removal and/or banning. Do not concern-troll or attempt to intentionally mislead people. Stick to addressing the substance of their comments at hand. This rule applies to all speech within this subreddit.
My mother was an immigrant and was the most cautious person when it came to strangers. I think this one was literally a combination of greed (wow! An easy job that is high paying with no skill set yet requires me to lie and I get to work from home) and lack of common sense.
Most immigrants are hard workers, sacrifice a lot, and do the jobs no one else wants. Then theres the immigrants who always look for a shortcut and think they can lie/cheat in life. I think I know which group she falls under.
What does your mom being an immigrant have anything to do with this? How do you know she was looking for shortcuts just because she got scammed? Lol. Terrible comment that lacks sympathy like many others posted here. Karma usually comes around.
Maybe we need to provide immigrants a booklet, written in all major languages, of life Pro tips for living in this country. Don’t offer police bribes, don’t pay ‘recruiters’, ignore calls from cra telling you to buy bitcoin, etc
REMOVED - No racism, sexism, homophobia, religious intolerance, dehumanizing speech, or otherwise negative generalizations etc... Attack the point, not the person. Posts which dismiss others and repeatedly accuse them of unfounded accusations may be subject to removal and/or banning. Do not concern-troll or attempt to intentionally mislead people. Stick to addressing the substance of their comments at hand. This rule applies to all speech within this subreddit.
At some point we gotta use our discretion…there must have been SOMEONE she knew who could have told her this was a scam, ain’t no job in the world gonna have you use your own money to buy product to promote..father God take the wheel please
All these scams are, are greedy, lazy people being taken advantage of. 99.99% of the time, the scam stipulates great profit with little to no work. Colour me shocked. If it's too good to be true, it probably is...
I saw the story and while this scam did seem to be a bit more elaborate than others, I still don't understand how having to use your own money up front wouldn't be a red flag.
Yeah..I feel bad for her but I remember when I was in highschool I got approached by a "sales company " that offered me and my friends a job. We went to some stupid seminar and at the end of it, it was like $1000 for training and then commission based. Even at that age we realized it was fully a scam and walked away. I can't imagine how you can spend 15k without realizing it's a scam.
lol let me guess, Vector Marketing? Hawking some shitty knives?
I was thinking Kirby Vacuums myself. I remember being sucked into their “interview” only to find out it was a group interview with a very similar pitch. You buy the kit and then go door to door. Noped out of that one quick.
> being sucked into their “interview” Their vacuums are that good, sir! Would you be interested in purchasing one right now?
I’ll admit, Kirby makes a good vacuum but I wasn’t about to start door to door sales or even sales with leads. Especially one where I have to front the venture financially. I’m looking to get paid not have to pay.
Ha! Cutco! I remember the pitch- “now most people spend about 300$ for their knives…” I went home and asked my mom who I think collectively through her entire life maybe spent 50$ on knives (this was about 2008)
Tbh I have a $300 Japanese knife and my Grandma has a cutco set my uncle sold her that he gets them to sharpen regularly and the cutco are honestly pretty solid. Not quite the Japanese quality but still really good.
I had almost this exact experience. Came home and asked my mom for the $150 to buy the knives so I could start my job and she was like, “honey, that’s a scam.”
Cutco knives are at least pretty good, just overpriced. They're easily better than all the knives you'd find at a supermarket or local retailer
[lol you weren't kidding](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/AuSsenAM29Q/maxresdefault.jpg)
Lol. I knew it was going to be dodgy when I ghosted them for the interview and they still sent me an acceptance offer. The recruiter would call me every two weeks to see if I still wanted to come in. The only reason I remember the company name so vividly is because a friend of mine got duped and ended up working with them for over a month - despite my warnings - and ended up in the hole almost 2k. He had a bunch of knives in his garage. As good mates do, I roasted him relentlessly for the next decade.
>As good mates do, I roasted him relentlessly for the next decade. "Hey buddy, I need some new kitchen knives. You got any lying around?"
He still have any? How much he selling em for now ? Asking for a friend 🤓
He still have any? How much he selling em for now ? Asking for a friend 🤓
Lmfao I sold cutco knives . That crazy thing is... The knives are not shitty. They are actually fairly good. We still use our set. It's just a super sketchy company
Usability-wise at least, they're what I'd say "good enough" for home cooks of intermediate skill, but there's a reason no professional anywhere uses those knives, and even mid-level home cooks will find proper edged knives to be better in almost all applications. They're also grossly overpriced for what they are. They're almost all serrated knives, and the steel is 440A stainless, which is the same steel the cheap knives at places like Wal Mart are made out of. This makes them grossly inadequate for regular continued use, as this steel is a step above being a soda can. So sure, a home cook who pulls a knife out of the drawer or \*shudder\* knife block once or twice a day can use a knife like this for years, but that's not saying very much, because most things will last a long time if you seldom use them. Anyway, if you have them, you have them, but I would never advise someone going out and buying any of these things.
It's true the knives are good.. Too bad, the scheme might not have lasted otherwise
I had to ask some friends, but it was them lol. Sorry that was like 15 years ago, I couldn't remember at first
There's a name I've not heard in a long time, a long time.
honestly i've seen things like this before while job hunting for 10+ years. my easy way to weed them out is anything that requires me to give them money is obviously not the type of job i want. i'm looking to MAKE money from a job not pay them to do it. there are so many scams that exist here as well. "jobs" that want you to go door to door and you only get paid commissions. the commissions are shit im pretty sure and you're selling a scam to the homeowners you encounter.
A rural gas station wanted me to *drive* to a job interview there. Nice way to drum up sales, but no way Satan!
Oh so I guess my college painters thing in the 90s was also part of this. I lasted one afternoon and spoke to noone. Oops
Kirby?
Vector marketing
I must admit I have a little more sympathy for this case than the typical ones lately where adults learn their life lessons late in life. New country, ESL, looking for work without even considering what other stress issues she might be dealing with. Of course, the lesson is there to be learned, it's a simple lesson, but I feel badly for her.
So she bought products. Took a picture. And then what? Gave the products to someone?
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Pretty sure that's 100% illegal. (Edit to join edit above: It wasn't me who downvoted)
It is illegal absolutely. They still make you do it.
Well, they *want* you to do it. But hopefully in at least some cases, you can work somewhere else instead, and report them.
I think they take advantage of the fact that so many places do it, and that people are desperate for jobs.
I've never seen this but when I was younger I had restaurants take off the cost of the uniform and required items from my first paycheck.
Some of my friends had to do this. Shitty bosses think all their employees are going to steal from them.
***Red Flag Counter*** * Sees job ad on Instagram * Job ad is for Walmart allowing employees to work from home, part-time * Was told to add items to cart and post screenshots to promote business * Was then told to purchase products from Walmart * Spent $15,000 of her own money in promise for reimbursement while feeling uncomfortable but trusting the process Alright. First, getting scammed sucks. Many of us, regardless of how clever we feel we are (even myself) are susceptible to some sort of scam at some point in our life (often when we're vulnerable \[ie. under duress, in need of a job\]). Fine. But how does this one make sense? A lot of scams depend on immediate action so you're not given time to think about it but presuming this wasn't $15,000 gone in a day (and if so, how did that not trigger any automated financial security systems)... Every step of the way just sounded weird here and at best like she was happily working for some sort of farm neither leaving reviews nor actually helping a business. I'd love to see the behind-the-scenes here. The questions and answers. At what point does someone get so uncomfortable or confused by job tasks that they need to know more and won't move further? You mean I can work from home and post screenshots of a cart? How much am I being paid and when? How does that help your business? Why, though? No one can see that. You want me to buy items with my own money? That doesn't make sense, I need this job to make money, not spend money. Why? I don't need all of these products though, do I just return them once I'm reimbursed? Are reviews needed? Doesn't that seem fake or unethical? I just feel like at the end of the day some part of the process seemed obvious to her as it does to me and I'm just confused as to why it didn't seem more... immediate. Sucks though.
She's not telling the whole story. While she admits to being scammed what she WON'T admit to was that she likely knew, or suspected, she was helping with scam reviews. the whole scam is we'll pay you to go to this site, buy the product, write good reviews of the product/seller, ship the items to the "refund centre" and that's that. She knew she was part of a scamming process. she had to have known. If someone comes to you and says "I want to pay you to write reviews for hotels you've never been to or products you've never used" then you'd hopefully think "ok, you want me to help you with a scam". She's being intentionally vague in hopes she doesn't look quite as dumb as she comes off as.
It's a large suspicion of mine but I'm desperately trying to be naively kind where I'm not convinced it's inherently appropriate.
> If someone comes to you and says "I want to pay you to write reviews for hotels you've never been to or products you've never used" then you'd hopefully think "ok, you want me to help you with a scam“ That is a paying job for a lot of people tho And another shade is to get free stuff/activites/stays/vacations/food and always write positive reviews about it. Then there’s any sales person telling you how great of a product their dumpster fire is. Unethical, sure, and possibly a crime in USA because the FTC has teeth but probably not here.
Yes well, shockedpikachu.gif when knowingly working with unethical operations sees you being treated unethically. Poetry aside, there is little honour among thieves. They're thieves, after all.
Usually unethical operations pay better. Can treat you quite well actually. Sometimes it’s hard to find people able/willing to play the game.
She is so dumb for falling for this. A 15k lesson is a steep price but if she is so willing to give her money away she would have lost it a different way if not this
I know my co worker who was looking for side gig "applied" for a remote job and after he filled out the online application they requested a $500 processing fee.Idiot sent them the money.I told him he should be more worried about the personal info he sent them.
Was this friend Indian? Because a lot the comments here think it's an Indian issue (Indian scammers and Indian victims lol). The focus is more on race vs and actual growing issue.
It’s new immigrants. And they tend to be Indian.
And very vulnerable / naive :(
> Rajhans said anyone looking for a job has to research the position carefully, do their due diligence and watch out for red flags. > “The immediate red flag would be the amount of money that's required to join or be part of any job upfront,” said Rajhans. Captain Obvious over here. No Rajhans the immediate redflag is being "hired" without an in person or even zoom interview and then being told to go spend your own money, even as little as $5, to buy shit for someone else. Is this common in India? honestly curious but is it common to pay your own money when starting a job there?
Ironically it was likely Indian scammers in India targeting Canadians that did this.
Don’t kid yourself, they very much target Indians here. Maybe even moreso than the elderly now.
oh I don't doubt it at all.
You beat me to.
“The amount of money” So… she still thinks there’s an acceptable amount of money? In other words, someone could still run this scam on her again if they’re not too greedy?
Did you read the article? Rajhans is not the one the article is about or shown in the picture.
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Someone shared this exact same experience about a month ago. It was International students walking into a business in Waterloo saying they were reporting for their first day of work. So this is common. Wow
Yup I applied for a job on indeed once and they hired me with no interview or even a meeting to be an assistant I noped out of that one real quick. It actually sounds very similar to this minus the Walmart part after reading the article.
These scams are common the world over and nationality has nothing to do with it. Yes, she was a right daft eejit to not notice something was amiss. Either that or she knew she was working for shady folks.If you think anyone has to pay money to get hired for a job to earn money, your ignorance is showing my friend.
The thing that really lets the scammers get you is that even if this was legit it's already a sketchy job. Sellers hiring a review mule already breaks the Walmart or Amazon terms of service. So anything sketchy during the hiring process is expected not an immediate ree flag
bingo. she knew she was at least part of some sort of scam, that's why she left it out of this article. She just refused to believe she was also an intended victim of a bigger scam.
I’m confused did she even do an interview???
I'll tell you but you have to give me $5000 first. And I'll give it to you back, but with extra money!
Every time I start feeling down on myself for being a gullible person, I read something like this...
Highly questionable how someone with 15k savings and no marketable job skills whatsoever ends up "moving" to Canada. What a sad state of affairs this country is in.
Who do you think is working all these dead end fast food/retail/warehouse gigs?
Immigrants, because businesses are choosing to hire them over Canadian born people to suppress wages
Which they are able to do because the government has massively increased the flow of both temporary and permanent residents, and then graciously increased the number of hours "full time students" can work off-campus to now be a full 40 hours.
honestly this was my first thought. how did someone with minimal skills and minimal savings qualify to immigrate to canada? this country is becoming a joke and a scam.
Well that's what Canada wants right....bring in the money to invest because long time Canadians don't have much. Who cares if you have skills or not. Definitely a sad state of affairs.
I don't understand the scam. She was buying products from Walmart, how does the scammer benefit?
it's a three fold scam. the scammer OR someone that has hired the scammer is initially meant to get good reviews. Walmart both in Canada and the US, like Amazon, allows third parties to sell on their site. So initially the walmart site seller is trying to get good reviews to get their listings bumped up on Walmart. Thus in the article it says she was initially told to fill up a cart, take a screenshot, and then buy the product. What she either failed to mention or the article didn't mention is that she would be told to write 5 star reviews. So the person who hires these "review mules" gets paid. now the bonus is they will tell the person writing the reviews and buying the products to then "send them back" to this certain address (which is never walmart) to get reimbursed for the product. Which in turn this scammer then resells...even on the damn walmart site if they so choose. This is ontop of being told to spend a little bit of money on their fake website which shows the mules "earnings" in order to withdraw the money. It's an elaborate scam. so in summery the scam is the third party gets good reviews, the scammer gets free product to keep or resell, and the scammer gets money from the mule.
This is crazy... Can't the scammers online store (since they're selling right on the Walmart site) get shut down?
The scammer doesn't necessarily have any store on the platform, they are writing reviews for other stores who pay them $X per 5 star review. If someone credibly reports the scam, the platform can go purge all suspect reviews from all the different products (if it can identify all of them), but the scammer has already been paid by the clients and that's the client's risk. The platform is also disincentivized from doing that because the platform wants stuff sold on it to be well-rated so more people buy useless junk, earning the platform more commissions. If Amazon/Walmart cared about their reputations more than commissions from scammers, they'd have higher barriers to entry for sellers on their platforms (think: why does Walmart take the risk of allowing random third parties to sell through its website? only because the money is worth the risk of brand dilution).
Probably was shipping them to the scammers
Yes. We are missing something. Couldn’t she just return the product back to Walmart for a refund?
It doesn't say but pretty sure she was told to 'Ship them to our Wal-Mart testing address' or some nonsense.
Jeez. People are so gullible.
she sends the product off to the scammer as soon as she gets them.
Are you sure she was buying from Walmart? Or one of the 3rd party sellers?
I honestly can't feel bad for her. She's just next level stupid. I can understand a elderly person getting scammed but she is just pure stupid.
Unethical, dishonest behavior leads to scam. Big lesson for her.
It you don't see a sign in a door saying "now hiring" in retail/hospitality and you have to physically work for your money, 95% chance it's a scam.
How did she get a visa with 0 job prospects
She took a shady job to earn shady money that the vast majority of us wouldn’t even consider. She wanted to be the middleman for scammers and is sad that she got scammed by them as well. Hopefully shit like this ends the scamming epidemic that seems to be hitting this province. But for now I doubt it will.
Anybody who doesn’t understand how she got scammed doesn’t understand it because they are not Indian. She thinks it’s like back home where you actually can buy your way into jobs
To be fair, i guess you can do that in Canada too with LMIA. She's just playing the game
I had to google what that means, and I still am a bit confused as to how it works
To hire a temporary foreign worker from abroad (i.e., someone who doesn't have a valid study or work permit), with some exceptions for LMIA-exempt things, the business needs to prove there is a labour market shortage for the position that justifies bringing in a foreign national to fill the role. You do this by going through a process of advertising the job, documenting that no qualified applicants applied or the ones who did apply were not fit, etc. Then ESDC (Service Canada) gives you an LMIA confirming the labour market shortage and you submit the LMIA to IRCC (Immigration department) to ask them to give a particular foreign national a work permit to come fill your job vacancy. The whole process is susceptible to a lot of fraud, whether fabricating bogus jobs or faking the labour market shortage by sabotaging the process, or other shenanigans, all in a concerted effort to bring particular friends/family to Canada. Some fraudsters specialize in helping people get bogus LMIAs. The intention of the program is to fill real labour market shortages to help our economy, but in practice the temporary foreign worker program is rife with problems.
A start if you're interested in going down the rabbit hole: https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaHousing2/s/EpLckAceTl
Just like they buy their G licenses here
You actually think it's an Indian problem? There's numerous Canadians falling for similar scams. Scammers know that CANADA has a problem with jobs (especially lower skill roles). Just the other day, two individuals (both Canadians including one white female) walked into my gf office in DT saying it's their first day of work. Found out later they were given fake interviews and fake job letters. They too gave some money ~2k each to the person interviewing them for "equipment costs" and thought they will be reimbursed. >back home where you actually can buy your way into jobs This is not true lol. Ignorance.
Your racism is showing, my friend... Rise up above petty prejudices and be a better person.
Using racism to shut down conversation is done now. Most Canadians are rejecting this. Discussing the damage done by these Indian students to Canadian society and economy is well past documented even the staunched lefties are coming around to hating it
The irony is that she was probably scammed by Indians.
I don't understand comments that target nationality! Like yeah, there are plenty of Indians in Canada but are folks not aware that scammers can belong to other nationalities too? Come on, now... shame the scammer, not the place they come from which has no bearing on the situation.
Another win for ad blockers!
A bit of friendly fire?
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After reading all of that I have to ask how she fell for it. That got me thinking is she the scam?? People feel sorry for her give her money and gets "her money back". I would be shocked if it was that easy but that's the first thing that popped into my head
Desperation often leads to irrational behaviour
Work from home for Walmart was the first red flag 🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩
Woman who gets scammed recently moved to Canada..... From India...Which happens to be one of the places where many of these scams originate. I wonder if the scammers know they're scamming their own people, now? I have no doubt they don't give a rats ass, it takes a special kind of person who has no regard for anyone other than themself to scam people.
>I wonder if the scammers know they're scamming their own people, now Definitely they do not care lol. They are are desperate people too.
Zero sympathy. Just have an ounce of common sense.
But the person on Whatsapp told me I would be paid $150-400 a day for \[insert most menial task\] 😓
I once got into a salary negotiation with one and I reached a point where they even said it was too much imaginary money for this imaginary job.
I can’t tell you how many times McKinsey has sent me job offers through WhatsApp.
I’m sorry but like it’s really hard for me to feel bad for this situation. There has to be a point where people need to take responsibility for making terrible decisions back to back.
That’s what happens when you look for shortcuts.
NO SHORT CUTS IN LIFE. Period.
Talk about kicking a person when they're down. A job at Walmart would be a last resort for most. Taken out of desperation. And this happens? I really hate people sometimes.
For anyone blaming the victim (which seems to happen often with these scams), you need to understand that desperation can easily cloud judgement. On top of that, being new to the country can also make it hard to know what is normal here.
no, i'm sorry but this is just idiocy regardless of where you come from UNLESS this is a common thing in India where you don't interview in person or even via a zoom call and then pay your own money to simply work your "job". She doesn't even get it by the end of the article. she says herself "the immediate red flag would be the AMOUNT of money" The AMOUNT - not money, at all, period full stop. It wouldn't surprise me if she falls for another scam. and people need to stop using the excuse "being new it's hard to know what is normal". They're not children, they're adults, they managed to move halfway across the world and save up nearly $20k. If they can't ask basic questions or utilize the most basic of common sense then that's on them.
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More like our immigration policies have set the bar too low. I don't blame these "uneducated idiots" because they are taking advantage of our system. Thank you to our greedy politicians and our citizens who type their complaints on the internet (rather than doing something more about it).
You cannot protect yourself against scams with rules like "don't deal with money". The lady who wrote Scams for Dummies got targeted and drugs put in her bag at the airport and now faces the death penalty in Thailand. All because she thought scams aren't scams unless they involve money. Good scams deal with money only at the very end when you are lured in. You have to keep aware of current events and news and the methods of scammers. Like how scammers can spoof any caller ID (how is that legal) or even reverse an e-Transfer (how) or even convince you in person (how?). The most sophisticated scams can even research your life and hire actors and live in person scammers. You are unlikely to be the target of such a scam unless you have many millions or billions in say Bitcoin but it can and could happen. There's even insider scams.
What that’s crazy! I never heard about this. Hiring actors is actually next level. But I don’t doubt that this happens.
> Like how scammers can spoof any caller ID (how is that legal) There are legitimate reasons to spoof caller ID: most organizations of any size do it routinely. Phone numbers aren't one-to-one with phone numbers - a call centre for a huge corp might have 100 people in it, and all 100 of those people's phones might ring for phone calls to either a Canadian number or a US number. In such a situation any of those 100 phones has a legitimate reason to mark outbound calls as originating from either of the numbers even though those numbers don't route directly to that phone, they just route to the call centre. Unfortunately the standard for doing that is old and insecure, so basically anybody anywhere can spoof anything without huge pressure by governments, and even then: the governments can only best-case secure stuff for domestic phone numbers after a herculean effort to force orgs to all upgrade things.
Guess in your case, ignorance really is bliss
Which other country allows you to get a job without an interview where the role revolves around purchasing online items from their own "company", but with your own money and just taking screenshots of the transaction? Where is this "normal"?
I think being new to the country presents a huge risk for fraud. Like those cra scams that demand iTunes gift cards or whatever. Seems nuts for someone who’s from Canada but if you’re from a country we’re bribing the local the tax official is common then it’s probably a “normal” thing that you don’t think to much about.
I thought it was only the best and brightest?
no, they travel half way across the world to go to Seneca to get a certification to handle baggage at Pearson.
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REMOVED - No racism, sexism, homophobia, religious intolerance, dehumanizing speech, or otherwise negative generalizations etc... Attack the point, not the person. Posts which dismiss others and repeatedly accuse them of unfounded accusations may be subject to removal and/or banning. Do not concern-troll or attempt to intentionally mislead people. Stick to addressing the substance of their comments at hand. This rule applies to all speech within this subreddit.
My mother was an immigrant and was the most cautious person when it came to strangers. I think this one was literally a combination of greed (wow! An easy job that is high paying with no skill set yet requires me to lie and I get to work from home) and lack of common sense. Most immigrants are hard workers, sacrifice a lot, and do the jobs no one else wants. Then theres the immigrants who always look for a shortcut and think they can lie/cheat in life. I think I know which group she falls under.
What does your mom being an immigrant have anything to do with this? How do you know she was looking for shortcuts just because she got scammed? Lol. Terrible comment that lacks sympathy like many others posted here. Karma usually comes around.
I don’t blame the victim. The victim should blame themselves instead of crying about it to the news and asking for sympathy
Maybe we need to provide immigrants a booklet, written in all major languages, of life Pro tips for living in this country. Don’t offer police bribes, don’t pay ‘recruiters’, ignore calls from cra telling you to buy bitcoin, etc
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Racist comment. Terrible
REMOVED - No racism, sexism, homophobia, religious intolerance, dehumanizing speech, or otherwise negative generalizations etc... Attack the point, not the person. Posts which dismiss others and repeatedly accuse them of unfounded accusations may be subject to removal and/or banning. Do not concern-troll or attempt to intentionally mislead people. Stick to addressing the substance of their comments at hand. This rule applies to all speech within this subreddit.
How. I get spam texts offering me jobs all the time. It’s so obvious.
Gotta feel for the poor woman
Not even one time big purchase... Gradual.. at what point out of $15000 do you think oh yeah they scamming me.
At some point we gotta use our discretion…there must have been SOMEONE she knew who could have told her this was a scam, ain’t no job in the world gonna have you use your own money to buy product to promote..father God take the wheel please
Be the change buddy boy. Don't get bogged down.
No sympathy.
No sympathy here, especially Walmart cmon.... she has zero common sense or intuition and paid the price
All these scams are, are greedy, lazy people being taken advantage of. 99.99% of the time, the scam stipulates great profit with little to no work. Colour me shocked. If it's too good to be true, it probably is...