In a note published by the Attorney General's Office, the Public Prosecutor's Office warns that this type of fraudulent scheme has resulted in many victims in Portugal, “including young people at the beginning of their professional careers and unemployed people looking for work” and suggest that phone calls or text messages from unknown numbers claiming to offer a job vacancy that was not requested should be ignored.

According to the Public Prosecutor's Office, these criminal groups have a different approach: previously, advertisements on social networks were used to attract victims and now messages or calls are sent with job offers.

In some cases, the MP described, the criminal agents claim to be from the human resources department, although they never identify which company they work for, nor the location of the alleged company's headquarters. The content of the message is always the same: “work online, from home”.

When the victim accepts the alleged job offer, an employment contract is never drawn up; communications are made via messages and the criminal group always gives instructions in writing.

In the initial stage, small tasks are proposed, and the MP identified cases in which the victims were used for money laundering, since the function was to receive money from one account and forward the respective amounts to another account.

Also in the initial phase, the groups ask victims to write hotel reviews, “abusing the name of the platform “booking.com”, or ask to follow certain pages on social media.

These requests always come with the promise of payment and, in fact, the MP explained, these tasks end up being paid after the victim sends a photo of their screen as proof. These payments normally never exceed 10 euros.

The victim then moves on to a higher level, with the promise of receiving more money. However, at this stage, they will have to pay money in advance, “with the promise that it will be returned later, plus a generous commission”. Since they initially received the money, the victims believe that their money will be returned.

The amounts requested start to get higher and higher and, in some cases, the money requested is several thousand euros. “The criminal agents start to demand increasingly larger amounts, promising larger commissions, but which they never actually pay”, says the note published by the PGR.

When the victims realize that the amounts will not be paid, returned and ask for their money, the criminal groups cease to be contactable via 'WhatsApp' or 'Telegram' and disappear.