Did a Malaysian nurse lose RM380,000 after pressing the Instagram Like button?!
Take a look at the viral claim, and find out what the facts really are!
Claim : Nurse Lost RM380K After Pressing Instagram Like Button!
People are sharing an article which claims that a Malaysian nurse lost RM380,000 after pressing the Like button in Instagram for RM5 commissions! Here is an excerpt from the article:
M’sian Nurse Loses RM380K After Pressing Instagram ‘Like’ Button For RM5 Commission
Too late to unlike
Recommended : Scam Alert : How Fake Job Syndicates Operate!
Nurse Did Not Lose RM380K After Pressing Instagram Like Button!
First of all, I would like to applaud the website for writing about job scams, but that’s really a misleading title.
Unfortunately, many people don’t read beyond the headlines. People are even asking if they will get “hacked” like the nurse if they like Instagram posts!
The truth is – the Malaysian nurse did not lose RM380,000 because she pressed on the Like button in Instagram. In fact, Instagram and its Like button have nothing to do with the actual scam!
Social Media Jobs Are An Easy Lure
As I have earlier written on how fake job syndicates operate, the “job” and “platform” are not important. These scammers generally offer social media jobs, because that’s what most people already use, so it’s easy to hook victims.
These syndicates will offer quick and easy tasks to do on social media, for example – liking Instagram photos and Facebook posts. Other (non-social media) tasks include liking YouTube videos and/or subscribing to YouTube channels, or even making comments on businesses in Google Maps.
Whether the job is on Instagram / Facebook / YouTube / Google Maps, etc. is irrelevant. The first few “jobs” you are given are the bait. You will be paid for those simple tasks, like RM5 for liking an Instagram post, or RM10 for subscribing to a YouTube channel. Such an easy way to make money!
Paying For Jobs Is The Scam!
After you get the first payment, you will be asked to participate in a “prepaid job”. All you have to do is pay a “deposit” for the opportunity to make a lot of money in high-paying “jobs”.
At this point, you may feel that this is a genuine side job opportunity. After all, they paid you for the earlier jobs, didn’t they? Real scammers wouldn’t pay their victims, right? WRONG!
Once you make that first deposit, you are “hooked”. The scammers will not let you withdraw the money, but insist that you must continue with the next “prepaid job”, which would require another deposit. Then, you will be asked to pay again to participate in another “prepaid task”, and so on.
On paper, you appear to be earning a lot of money, but you won’t be able to withdraw any of that money. By the time you realise it’s a scam, you would have lost a LOT of money. That is the scam, not pressing on the Instagram Like button.
Recommended : How A University Student Lost RM22K In Online Job Scam!
Trying To Recover The Money Is The Scam!
In the nurse’s case, she fell for their trap to participate in the “prepaid assignment”. She ended up making 36 transactions worth RM387,000 to 21 different bank accounts over 13 days! She not only emptied her savings, she even loaned money from her friends and family members!
Why would any victim do that? Simple – the more money you invest in this fake job offer, the more desperate you will be to recover the money you “invested” and “earned”. To quit would mean losing everything, so you will feel that you have “no choice” but to continue.
To help you make that decision to “stick with the programme”, the syndicate have fake users in their Telegram group continuously posting bank deposit screenshots, while claiming that they just received their earnings.
The truth is – any money you send to their mule accounts will be quickly transferred to the scammers’ account. You will never see the money again.
As one student shared, he lost over RM22,000 in just two days, because he was so engrossed in trying to get back the money he “invested” earlier:
There’s one trick that this scammer is using. He let me start with a small investment, then proceed with stages.
They force me to continue because I want to rescue the money that I put in in the previous task. So it keeps getting bigger and bigger.
Just like that, two days, RM22300, gone.
Recommended : Must You Disable Facebook Auto-Fill To Block Scams?!
Again, I’m glad to see more publicity about fake job scams. But it is important that YOU understand that the scam does not involve the pressing of the Like button in Instagram, or Facebook, or YouTube, or any other online platform.
This is ultimately just another case of a fake job scam. In this nurse’s case, the scammers used the simple job of liking Instagram posts as the lure, but it will be different for other victims. These scammers will use any convenient platform to give you simple jobs to trick you into falling for their scam.
Just remember – there is no such thing as easy social media jobs. Even unscrupulous social media promoters do not need to pay anyone to like a post, or follow someone. They simply use bots (automated software)!
Don’t fall for such fake job scams. No matter how enticing the offer is – NEVER pay for any job.
Please SHARE this article out, and WARN your family and friends!
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Dr. Adrian Wong has been writing about tech and science since 1997, even publishing a book with Prentice Hall called Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier (ISBN 978-0131455368) while in medical school.
He continues to devote countless hours every day writing about tech, medicine and science, in his pursuit of facts in a post-truth world.
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