Beware! Cross-border job seekers encounter "scam" companies

Workers encounter scams when looking for jobs! Be wary of these tricks.

Cross-border e-commerce is a major gold mine, with all kinds of scams emerging one after another. Bosses are defrauded of large sums of money, while workers are defrauded of small amounts of money. "Scams" are omnipresent, so everyone should be careful.

Cross-border workers revealed: Encountered a "scam" company when looking for a job

In the past two years, a suspected new scam has been widely circulated in the cross-border circle. At that time, many people applied under the guise of "job hunting". Their resumes were perfect and their work experience was very rich. They mainly sought to work online. However, the job seeker might not be one person, but a whole sleazy company. The purpose of online work was to obtain all information on the sales of peer products in the shortest time and at the lowest cost.

In addition to using workers as a cover for fraud, it can be observed that there are many cases of fraud in the cross-border circle under the guise of "company recruitment".

Xiao Liu (pseudonym), a cross-border person, told the editor that from early November 2023 to now, he has encountered three bizarre experiences of recruitment fraud.

In a recent experience, a headhunter took the initiative to communicate with him. The other party claimed that the company mainly engaged in the consumer goods industry in the Lao market (business includes digital electronics and peripheral products, furniture and office supplies, etc.). The company was registered abroad, and the boss mainly worked hard in Laos to start a business. The employees there are basically overseas Chinese. Now they are recruiting employees responsible for procurement business.

If Xiao Liu agrees to join the company, he will need to travel to Laos because the company has no office in the country.

Xiao Liu searched from all sides but found no official or publicly available information about the company. Thinking about previous reports on Southeast Asia, he believed that he was very likely to have encountered a similar situation.

After much inquiry, the editor found that Xiao Liu was not the only one who encountered a similar situation. The basic recruitment fraud routines of related companies are as follows: the headhunter or company-related personnel first asks for the job seeker's mobile phone number, claiming that the company is short of people abroad and is recruiting, and then actively asks to add WeChat for detailed communication. During the chat, they will provide basic information about the company (which may be false) to show the job seeker that they are very formal. During the chat, they will inadvertently ask the job seeker what their psychological expected salary is. The salary offered then just meets the job seeker's requirements and is basically in line with the salary benefits of the cross-border e-commerce industry, rather than an abnormally high number, in order to further gain the job seeker's trust.

Xiao Liu said that in addition, there is another cross-border e-commerce company that also communicated with him under the guise of recruitment. The company posted job openings on major recruitment websites, but Xiao Liu found that this company had a lot of problems after searching for information. First, the registration period was low, which is understandable, but the registered capital of small and micro enterprises is not paid in full, and the company has been changed 16 times in less than 3 years, and there are as many as 9 risk warnings for changes. In Xiao Liu's opinion, normal companies will not have such problems.

In fact, cross-border workers will face various other tricks in the job search process. For example, some time ago, it was reported that many operators were asked by some cross-border e-commerce companies to download relevant software and register OA accounts while they were still in the job search stage. After one operator asked questions such as "Why do I have to do these operations before joining the company", the other party not only did not answer the question, but also cursed and blocked the operator.

In the opinion of industry insiders, these cross-border companies are likely to illegally collect job seekers' personal information under the pretext of downloading software, or the links they send may contain viruses, and job seekers can fall into the trap if they are not careful.

The eve of the Spring Festival is the time when some cross-border workers move, so everyone needs to be extra vigilant when looking for a job.

There are too many scammers! Cross-border bosses and novices are also being "ripped off"

In the cross-border e-commerce industry, where there are interests, there are disputes. In addition to the fact that the working group may face job fraud, it is not difficult to find that cross-border e-commerce bosses and newbies who want to enter the industry may also fall into various fraud schemes that are difficult to guard against.

In recent years, with the popularity of Tik Tok, scams surrounding the operation and sale of goods through Tik Tok short videos have continued to emerge. Recently, due to suspected fundraising fraud, the Nanshan Branch of the Shenzhen Public Security Bureau has filed a case against a cross-border company in accordance with the law, and has taken criminal coercive measures against criminal suspects such as Chen Mouda, Ye Mousheng, and Teng Mou, and has frozen the bank accounts of the company and individuals involved in accordance with the law.

Yienjun learned that this cross-border company positioned itself as a Tik Tok cross-border service provider. According to people familiar with the matter, the company mainly uses T-BOX to make profits, that is, it earns income by grabbing diamonds through the Tik Tok platform, which can be simply understood as grabbing red envelopes in WeChat groups.

The company implements a membership system. If a member invests 1 million, he can obtain a static income of 200,000. In addition, members can also develop downlines, and they can get different shares for each successful development of a member.

I believe everyone is familiar with this model. In order to make itself look more professional, the company continues to carry out brand packaging, such as holding a number of seemingly very formal activities across the country. A group of newbies who wanted to "make money without doing anything" unfortunately became leeks. Many people only realized that they had been cheated after being cheated of a lot of money, so they called the police.

The agency operation scam is also a long-standing scam in the cross-border industry. In March of this year, an agency operation scam with a "case value of more than 200 million yuan" was exposed. As many as 300 people were arrested, and more than 10 million yuan of criminal funds were initially seized, linking more than 800 fraud cases across the country.

According to the victim, two cross-border e-commerce operation platforms claimed that they could undertake the escrow business. As long as investors paid a sum of money, they could realize their wish of making money without doing anything. In order to gain the trust of investors, they often implemented the following routines:

The first is to lure people into opening stores. They place advertisements on multiple channels, claiming that they can easily make money at a "low cost" by just paying to buy stores of different grades.

When investors find that they are not making money, they will again use sweet words to claim that they need to pay extra money to buy traffic and other operations. At this time, the scammers will increase the transaction volume by means of false orders, empty packages, etc., and use the superficial prosperity to give investors confidence.

When investors finally realize that they have been deceived and want to get their original investment back, the scammers finally reveal their true colors and refuse to return the investment funds on the grounds that the investors have breached the contract.

In fact, the scams in the cross-border e-commerce industry are far more than what is mentioned above. From opening a store, selecting products, logistics and delivery, product promotion to job hunting and recruitment, any small link in the cross-border sales chain can be exploited by scammers. Everyone who crosses borders needs to be careful.