Group DMs offering “sales growth services” on Amazon are a scam

A part-time job you can do from home that costs $200 an hour sounds too good to be true. Yet job “recruiters” are said to be making these types of offers through social media.

In recent months, many Twitter users have reported being added to group DMs with dozens of strangers posting such a job on Amazon. Similarly, Facebook users have reported reading posts with the same offers or even receiving those offers directly through Facebook Messenger.

An example of the messages is:

Hello, are you looking for a side job now? We provide sales increase services for Amazon and you can get stable income from $10-$200 in just one hour per day. You don’t have to pay any deposit or membership fee, regardless of gender, 25-70 years old, and the commission is paid every day. If you are interested, please attach my telegram.

Is Amazon recruiting for part-time work-from-home jobs via unsolicited group messages on social media?

No, Amazon does not recruit for part-time remote jobs via unsolicited group messages on social media. These offers are scams.

The job offer sounds too good to be true because it’s not true at all.

“These messages are scams,” an Amazon spokesperson told VERIFY via email. “You can verify that you’re working with a real Amazon recruiter by making sure they’re using an @amazon.com email address.”

In October 2021, a Amazon Twitter account responded to a reported scam by explaining that “Amazon does not target customers with messages related to jobs.”

Melanie McGovern, BBB’s director of public relations and social media, told VERIFY that all reports of this scam are from the past three months. Based on the method scammers use to reach people, she believes they cast as wide a net as possible to see who is biting, rather than trying to target specific individuals.

One of the BBB’s scam tracker reports tells how one person lost almost $13,000 for responding to an offer “sales growth services on Amazon” made through a Facebook post. They said their job is to “help marketplace sellers fulfill some virtual orders” to generate “sales data” for those sellers — basically, they’re buying products that are listed on Amazon so it shows that people bought the product. The person said they were promised a commission within minutes of completing a task, but the commissions never came as the tasks involved increasingly expensive products. The scammer communicated with them via Telegram.

In the case of the Twitter messages, McGovern said one of the biggest red flags is that the accounts making these job postings are brand new. In the screenshot above, “Joy Moore” created her account in October 2022. The account sent the group message in the same month.

McGovern also said that a reputable company doesn’t send job offers out of the blue to strangers and hire them immediately. She said that if a suspicious job vacancy claims to be from a real company, you should find that company’s website and browse the vacancies. If the job you’re being offered isn’t listed, there’s a good chance it’s fake.

Amazon job boardFor example, lists jobs related to “international salesperson growth” but not “sales growth services” jobs.

This particular jobs scam is a newer version of an older scam.

In April 2022 the Better Business Bureau (BBB) posted an alert about a scam where a “job recruiter” is contacting people via email, SMS, or a social media platform. The scammer then tells their target that they need to download a messaging app like Telegram before they can get the job.

In this version of the scam, the scammer sends the victim a bogus check with instructions to pay part of it back. The check bounces and the victim loses the money they “sent back” to the scammer. That Federal Trade Commission (FTC) says that “no reputable employer will send you a check, tell you to use it to buy stuff, and then ask you to send money to cover the balance.”

Scams promoting alleged home employment are rife, the says BBB and FTC. That AARP says that most of these scams ask the victim “to pay something upfront for supplies, certifications, coaching, or client contacts” or that they “send a check to cover such expenses, which turns out to be a fake.”

The Amazon spokesman said the company will never ask job candidates for cash in any form or at any point in the application process. You can report scammers using Amazon’s name over the company’s reporting form.

More from VERIFY: 5 ways to protect yourself from job scams