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“You can earn up to 50,000 baht [$1,400] a week and more with this part-time job, working only 30 minutes per day.” – Any offer like that should immediately raise the red alarm. Yet people keep falling for these scams, because they tend to be blinded by those promises of fabulous earnings. When I was contacted on WhatsApp by an alleged recruiter “for a well-known international online retailer”, I immediately knew that I was being set up for a scam. But I played along. Sure enough, a “training session” was soon scheduled, again exclusively via WhatsApp. The red flags just kept coming. According to her WA pic, a pretty Chinese girl introduced herself to me a my coach. But I had a gut feeling that “she” probably was in fact a Chinese DUDE. No wonder “she” declined going on WA voice chat to make the “training” easier for both of us. Next red flag. I insisted on conducting the training on my desktop computer rather than my cellphone as “she” had suggested. “She” then directed me to a website URL, thaineimanmarcus.com, which at first glance looked pretty messy and primitive. How many red flags were there by now? I’d lost count. I set up a user account, but also took the time of reading through the terms and conditions – which were littered with grammar mistakes, misspellings, garbled English. You get the picture. Another red flag fluttered high up on the flagpole. After setting up the account, I was then directed by my coach to a training platform, using a different log-in that “she” gave me. The rather dull task was to click on a “starting” button straddling a random list of supposed luxury goods available on the Neiman Marcus website (which, by the way, is a legitimate U.S.-based online retailer). Coach explained to me that my valuable work would help “optimize” the SEO rankings of said goods, leading to higher sales and, hence, instant “commissions” for me. It was obvious at first glance that the supposed sales prices for these goods were grossly inflated. For instance, who in their right mind would shell out over $3,900 for a simple selfie stick? But never mind, I wanted to get rich, and quick! So I started clicking through a procession of 45 product pages, each comprising 5 different products. After each click, there was a very brief 1-second pop-up that informed me that I had “successfully purchased” one of these 5 products. The pop-up disappeared and I was immediately led to a new page, where I was required to click on the “rate” button, which wared me with a “SUCCES!” pop-up. Then, the next set of 5 products appeared. Wash, rinse, repeat. Once through with the 45 tasks, my commission balance already clocked in at around 2,374 Baht ($66). Not too shabby for barely 5 minutes of “work”, eh? And no university degree required either. Yay! So… with my greed now properly whetted, we continued the “training” with a second set of 45 tasks. About 15 product pages in, the system stopped responding. I got a pop-up saying “not enough balance in your account to continue”. Chinaman… oops, the pretty Chinese girl… congratulated me, saying that I was extraordinarily lucky indeed, because the “system” randomly would bring up very high-priced merchandise that would give me a much, much higher commission. Yippieh! However, that “lucky merchandise” also caused my account balance to suddenly drop into the RED by 26,000 baht ($722). How appropriate is that for the next red flag? But not to worry, texted my beautiful coach. Since this was only a training session, “she” would balance out the account so we could continue earning a lot of dough. And that we did. Upon concluding the second task group, my commission balance had recovered spectacularly to almost 6,000 baht ($167). In the black, mind you! “And now you can immediately withdraw that money,” hooted my coach. All I had to do was to go to another page and fill in my local banking details. I hesitated, telling “her” that I was not prepared to do that and would rather forego the once-in-a-lifetime chance for soon driving a Ferrari. “She” tried persuading me that everything was above board, claiming “she” herself had been earning truckloads of cash using that magnificent method “for years.” I am sure that wasn’t even a lie. I declined nevertheless as my mom’s wise words, “If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is” reverberated in my ears. But truth be told: If I had had a spare account with only a few measly bucks in it, I might have continued the charade just out of sheer curiosity. I think this scam could pan out in two ways: If the victim shares their banking details, the “successful purchases” that the victim had executed with every click during the supposed training session are immediately charged to the victim’s bank account as alleged online purchases. It would take the scammers only a few minutes to drain the entire account – and before the victim even realizes. The reason why the victim had to click through so many goods is that the scammers can thus generate a broad spread of various “sales prices” that they can then use to gauge out the targeted bank account. If a given “purchase order” is declined by the bank because the targeted account doesn’t have sufficient balance, the scammers will simply try the next, somewhat lower priced merchandise – until they finally succeed. And to make sure that the account can be drained of every penny, they’ll then proceed with other alleged purchase order amounts, each one of them lower than the previous one. Second possibility: If the victim has smelled blood and wants to earn “commissions” on their own accord, they will every so often encounter particularly high-priced goods (lucky! lucky!) that deplete the commission account and trigger the already mentioned “not enough balance in your account to continue” message. The victim will then be required to replenish the account, otherwise they cannot finish their task blocks. But without completing the entire block (= 45 product pages), the earned commissions cannot be withdrawn. That basically forces the victim to deposit more and more money whenever some “lucky! lucky!” merchandise has caused the account to drop into the red again and again. When the victim finally realizes that they’ve been had, it will be too late. Listen to your mothers, you people out there, and don’t fall for these easy-to-spot scams that can cost you your life savings in an instant. If it sounds too good to be true, it surely IS!