The work was performed through the site” OpenAi-etc”, and domestic meetings were held on Telegram. It was simple: Commit some bitcoin, total a few things, and earn regular profits based on what was invested.
Mentors kept urging this employee to put more money into the fund and attract more Bangladeshis to the team throughout the duration of her employment with the company. It all seemed very true when the employee persuaded over 150 people to join and the mentors created a pyramid based on seniority for the growing group of “brokers.” The entire crypto-investment account for their team was near$ 50, 000. After a disastrous cyclone struck Bangladesh in May, business leaders allegedly provided aid to those in need, more earning the trust of the employees.
All seemed well until the morning of August 29, 2024, when all woke up to find that the site, all of their income, Aiden, and the other false OpenAI workers had vanished immediately. The work, of course, was not with OpenAI at all, former employees say.
” I’ve seen similar scams where, at the beginning, you think you are making profit, and then generally you invest more and more”, says Shirin Nilizadeh, an associate professor at the University of Texas at Arlington who focuses on security and privacy. ” Then, suddenly, you lose everything” ..
Just one of the 11 complaints about OpenAi-etc that workers from Bangladesh submitted to the US Federal Trade Commission last year, seven of which mention” Aiden” are from the story of the conned” OpenAI” worker. A possible popular employment scam that supposedly conned low-wage employees out of their savings using OpenAI’s brand recognition is revealed by an examination of the problems obtained by WIRED through a public records request. Some people claim to first starting acting for OpenAi-etc in June or July, but some claim to have been there for about six months.
The second FTC complaint obtained by WIRED, lodged over two weeks before the August 29 blanket take, says the claimant was invited by OpenAi-etc to commit about$ 170 in bitcoin. The person mentions a physical office in Denver, confirms the business’s status with Colorado regulators, and mentions an American registration number for the company. The complaint also cites a legitimate-looking money service provider that is listed as having an office inside the New York City Empire State Building by the US Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.
The now-defunct OpenAi-etc website appears to have been hosted by a Chinese web hosting company, according to a WIRED review of the domain name system records for it.
Jay Mayfield, a senior public affairs specialist at the FTC, declined WIRED’s request to confirm whether the group is looking into OpenAi-etc, saying that investigations are nonpublic. Mayfield did not respond to additional inquiries regarding the steps the FTC is taking to stop similar frauds or provide better assistance to foreign victims.
” Regrettably, I found no available source online to know more about this organization except for those registrations”, wrote the complainant. They are securing significant amounts of funding from Asian third-world nations.
In one of the FTC complaints, it is claimed that over 6, 000 people in Bangladesh could have been impacted by the OpenAi-etc job scam. The ages listed in the FTC complaints range from teenagers to people in their fifties, and they are distributed throughout multiple Bangladesh cities, from Dhaka to Khulna.
” My next trading date was 29 August, 2024″, wrote another complainant. I made the trade in the evening with my entire sum. But, suddenly, the OpenAI company vanished. I didn’t take any money out, but I did lose both money and money. Now, I am in a great economic crisis, as I am a normal school teacher”.
Niko Felix, a spokesperson for OpenAI, declined to answer questions about whether the startup was previously aware of the” OpenAi-etc” scam, or if they planned to take action against the fraudsters. He did, however, mention that OpenAI is looking into the issue. The alleged scam website is no longer available online, and WIRED was not able to contact the people behind” OpenAi-etc” prior to publication.
Remi Vaughn, a Telegram spokesman by the name Remi Vaughn, claims the business keeps an eye on its platform for scams, including those allegedly committed by OpenAi-etc, which allegedly communicated with people who claimed to be employed by the business using the messaging app.
In a statement sent to WIRED through the messaging platform, Vaughn states that “actively moderates harmful content on its platform, including scams.” ” Moderators empowered with custom Al and machine learning tools actively monitor public areas of the platform and take reports from users and organizations to remove millions of pieces of harmful content every day.”
The typical goal of a crypto job scam is to deceive victims into entering a fake account that they believe they have control over before the perpetrator drains it without any notice. A crypto job scam can occur with the name of any company that has enough widespread recognition for criminals to capitalize on, even though this particular rug pull allegedly used OpenAI’s branding to allegedly dupe its victims.
According to Arun Vishwanath, a cybersecurity expert and author of The Weakest Link,” these social engineering scams are intended to lower our natural suspicion and make us complicit in our own deception.” ” For job scams, they try to turn our ambitions and inherent trust in brands into a vulnerability”. Similar to so-called “pig butchering investment scams,” direct messages sent over a long period of time are frequently a key component in order to develop a sense of trust with the target.
Although comparable job scams happen all over the world, Vishwanath believes that Asian cultural norms of so-called high power distance, where there’s more acceptance of interpersonal hierarchies, are a contributing factor. He claims that “authorities are expected to ask you things and make you do things.” ” And you just comply”. Scammers profit from this by imitating authority figures and leaning toward the sense of urgency that comes with job searching.
In recent years, job scammers have increasingly targeted Bangladeshi citizens who are trying to find reliable employment. At least three cases of kidney organ theft were reported by people lured to India with false promises of work, and lies about international job opportunities have left dozens of would-be workers stranded in Malaysia.
