A part-time job you can do from home that pays $200 an hour sounds too good to be true. And yet, job “recruiters” are supposedly making these types of offers across social media.
Over the past few months, many Twitter users have reported being added to group DMs with dozens of strangers that advertise such a job with Amazon. Similarly, Facebook users have reported reading posts with the same offers or even receiving those offers directly over Facebook Messenger.
One example of the messages reads:
Hello, are you looking for a part-time job now? We provide sales growth services for Amazon, and you can get a stable income of $10-200 in just one hour a day. You do not need to pay any deposit or membership fee, regardless of gender, 25-70 years old, and the Commission is paid every day. If you are interested, please add my telegram.
THE QUESTION
Is Amazon recruiting for part-time, work-from-home jobs through unsolicited group messages on social media?
THE SOURCES
Melanie McGovern, director of public relations for the BBB
THE ANSWER
No, Amazon is not recruiting for part-time, work-from-home jobs through unsolicited group messages on social media. These offers are a scam.
WHAT WE FOUND
The reason the job offer sounds too good to be true is because it isn’t true at all.
“These messages are scams,” an Amazon spokesperson told VERIFY over email. “You can verify that you’re working with a real Amazon recruiter by ensuring they use an @amazon.com email address.”
In October 2021, an Amazon Twitter account responded to a reported scam by explaining that “Amazon doesn't approach customers regarding jobs via messages.”
Melanie McGovern, the BBB’s director of public relations and social media, told VERIFY that all of the reports it has received for this scam have been from the past three months. Based on the method the scammers are using to reach out to people, she believes they’re casting as wide of a net as possible to see who will bite, rather than trying to target specific people.
One of the BBB’s scam tracker reports recounts how a person lost nearly $13,000 from responding to a “sales growth services at Amazon” offer made through a Facebook post. They said their task was to “help marketplace sellers fulfill some virtual orders” to “generate sales data” for those sellers — basically buy products listed on Amazon so it shows people have bought the product. The person said they were promised a commission within minutes of completing a task, but the commissions never came while the tasks involved increasingly expensive products. The scammer communicated with them through Telegram.
In the case of the Twitter messages, McGovern said one of the biggest red flags is that the accounts making these job offers are brand new. In the screenshot above, “Joy Moore” created her account in October 2022. The account sent the group message that same month.
McGovern also said a legitimate company won’t message strangers with job offers out of the blue and hire them on the spot. She said that if a suspicious job offer is purportedly coming from a real company, you should find that company’s website and search the open jobs. If the job you’re being offered isn’t listed, then there’s a good chance it’s fake.
Amazon’s job board, for example, lists jobs related to “international seller growth,” but no jobs about “sales growth services.”
This particular job scam is a newer version of an older scam.
In April 2022, the Better Business Bureau (BBB) published an alert about a scam in which a “job recruiter” reaches out to people by email, text message or a social media platform. The scammer then tells their target that they have to download a messaging app like Telegram before they can get the job.
In that version of the scam, the scammer sends their victim a fake check with instructions to pay part of it back. The check bounces and the victim loses the money they “sent back” to the scammer. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) says that “no legit employer will send you a check, tell you to buy stuff with it, and then ask you to send money to cover the balance.”
Scams promoting purported work-from-home jobs are common, says the BBB and FTC. The AARP says most of these scams will ask the victim to “pay something upfront for supplies, certifications, coaching or client leads” or have them send “a check to cover such expenses, which turns out to be bogus.”
The Amazon spokesperson said the company will never ask job candidates for cash in any form or at any point in the application process. You can report scammers who are using Amazon’s name through the company’s reporting form.
More from VERIFY: 5 ways to protect yourself from a job scam
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