According to Infosecurity Magazine, a coordinated wave of over 1,500 fraudulent online job ads targeted the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region in 2025. The campaign, detailed by cybersecurity firm Group-IB, specifically exploits the region’s shift to remote work, where over 60% of workers now prefer full-time remote roles. The scams use professionally designed ads on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, impersonating well-known brands and government bodies to promise daily earnings between $10 and $170. Once users engage, conversations are moved to WhatsApp or Telegram, where victims are tricked into sharing personal data and depositing money for fake “tasks.” The operation is highly organized, reusing scripts and infrastructure across multiple countries, with Egypt, Gulf states, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Iraq, and Jordan being the most targeted.
The scale is the story
Here’s the thing that really gets me: this isn’t some guy in his basement running a sloppy phishing email campaign. This is industrial-scale fraud. We’re talking about over 1,500 ads, all localized with regional dialects and currencies, running across the biggest social platforms. That takes planning, resources, and a clear business model. They’ve basically built a malicious, distributed HR department. The move to private messaging apps like Telegram is a classic playbook move—it gets the conversation off platforms that might have some automated detection and into a less-monitored space where the pressure can be applied. It’s a reminder that for criminals, remote work trends aren’t just a cultural shift; they’re a market opportunity.
Exploiting trust and desperation
And that’s the cruel genius of it. They’re not just exploiting a trend; they’re exploiting hope and, often, financial desperation. Promising $170 a day for simple online tasks is a life-changing sum in many of these economies. The scam uses small initial payouts to build trust, which is a devastatingly effective psychological trick. You feel like you’ve finally found a legitimate opportunity, and that makes you more willing to “invest” later when they ask for a deposit. They’re impersonating trusted institutions—banks, e-commerce giants, government bodies—to short-circuit people’s natural skepticism. When you’re looking for work, your guard is down. These groups know that better than anyone.
What can actually be done?
So what’s the solution? Group-IB’s recommendations are solid on paper: users need to be more cautious, and platforms need stronger safeguards. But let’s be real. Telling financially vulnerable people to just “be more careful” when a perfect-looking ad pops up from a familiar brand has its limits. The onus has to fall much more heavily on the platforms. Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok are making money from these ads. Their ad verification for job listings, especially in multiple languages and regions, clearly isn’t good enough. They have the AI to detect coordinated inauthentic behavior for political campaigns; why can’t some of that firepower be directed at fraud networks destroying people’s livelihoods? Running awareness campaigns is a good step, but it’s reactive. Stopping the ads before they ever run is the proactive solution that’s needed.
A persistent threat
This report makes one thing painfully clear: online job fraud has evolved from a nuisance into a persistent, sophisticated threat. The shared infrastructure and scripts mean that taking down one ad or one Telegram channel doesn’t stop the operation. It just pivots. This is a business with low overhead (social media ads are cheap) and high potential returns. Until the cost of doing business gets too high—through relentless platform enforcement, cross-border legal action, and financial tracing—it’s just going to continue. For anyone looking for work online, the old rules apply more than ever: if it seems too good to be true, it almost certainly is. And never, ever pay money to get a job.
