Internet fraudsters with numbers starting with +62 have spammed the WhatsApp accounts of many Nigerians in the last week with unsolicited mouthwatering job opportunities, asking them to follow certain pages on YouTube for money in return.

FIJ learned that this syndicate, whose members purport to represent entities like Ripmark Digital Media or Ocean Trends Digital, or even use fictitious names, began to reach out to Nigerians on Tuesday.

Typically, after a Nigerian responds to their initial message with a simple ‘hi’ or ‘hello,’ the scammers introduce themselves courteously and state their objective – to offer Nigerians money in exchange for following certain YouTube pages.

Playing along, FIJ found that after these scammers introduce themselves, they provide a link to a YouTube page and instruct the respondent to follow it, requesting a screenshot as proof.

“To show you how it works, we will give you a reward of N2,000 for the trial,” one of them told FIJ.

FIJ followed the link, which redirected us to a YouTube page, and we subscribed to the page. Once we sent a screenshot to the scammer as proof of our follow, they inquired about our reporter’s age and whether they had an active Telegram account.

The reporter answered in the affirmative, and the scammer asked the reporter to send a “hello” to a bot named Ifeoma on Telegram. On sending the message, they asked the reporter to provide a salary code.

FIJ took a screenshot of our chats with Ifeoma and sent them to the scammer. In response, the scammer sent a code with our phone number attached to it, and they asked us to forward the message to Ifeoma on Telegram. But the reporter deliberately tampered with the code before doing so.

The potential consequences of sending the code from WhatsApp to Instagram are unknown, but it was likely to result in something negative. This is a common tactic employed by fraudsters attempting to compromise the accounts of unsuspecting individuals.

In light of how these scammers tarnished the reputation of Ocean Trends Digital, a legitimate digital creative agency in Nigeria, the agency issued a statement on Friday asserting that they do not offer job opportunities.

When we searched the internet for some of the companies that the group of scammers claimed to work for, many of them had no social media presence.