As you have learned, AI has been in the spotlight in recent years. However, AI summoned so many scammers at the same time, and they are perhaps frauding by a variety of methods with AI in each country. That is not an exception for Japan; there is a case where organized scammers are pretending to be freelancers using AI power. This article discusses a Japanese freelance scam group targeting online jobs in English-speaking countries and its negative effects on the freelance marketplace.
What kind of Japanese scam group is it?
First, this scam group is labeled Joho-Shozai-ya (情報商材屋) in Japan. They have the features that pretend to be freelancers and sell poor-quality work or products. In English-speaking countries, Product and Service Scams may correspond to this. Furthermore, the biggest feature is that the scam group continues to expand through a pyramid scheme within a community, such as an online salon or course. Follows as their concrete method.
The scam group starts by spreading misinformation online to gather ignorant people first
They begin spreading misinformation on social media or search engines first, and then they approach inexperienced people who are unaware of the untrue information to expand the scam organization. It’s the simple reason that scammers target ignorant people because they are easily tricked, exploited, and manipulated. They are completely convenient and effective for scammers who intend to expand a freelance scam group. Now, let’s examine how scammers are actually misleading people online.
This one is the information product titled “Paid 23 ten thousand per week! Show you the reality of offshore side jobs to earn with AI! ” on a knowledge-selling platform. The bullet points in the lower part are written as follows:
・Prefer fully remote?
・Prefer flexible working time?
・Prefer to be paid in dollars?
・No skills but prefer to make a lot of money?
・Prefer to be paid per week?
・Cannot speak English but prefer to earn foreign currency?
In fact, you are definitely required to have strong English to earn dollars, and it’s considered a scam if you use AI power at work. Nevertheless, this fake producer pretends to be factual based on misinformation. The most surprising point is that the fraud producer is selling this complete nonsense for approximately 10,000 yen($150).
This post on social media is by a different person from the previous fake producer. However, this post is written content very similar to the previous one. It shows “even no skill if you use AI to earn easily at offshore jobs” at first, and the bottom part writes as follows:
・No experience OK!
・Not required skills!
・Be able to work as an English speaker by just using AI tools!
They always emphasize that everybody can easily make money, and gather ignorant people into their scam group.
These are web pages about a virtual assistant, but its content is filled with context that arouses ignorant people’s curiosity, like the following:
・Seeking easy work from home?
・Get paid 3000 yen($20) hourly with just one PC!
・Not any expertise required at all!
・Not English skills required!
・Just use ChatGPT for translation!
・No experience OK!
・Get paid in dollars!
The act of authorizing AI to translate at translation work is widely known as a translation scam. That means this page directly recommends fraud to you. The large number of such website pages has already been displayed on the search engine in Japan.
This one expresses the difference in unit price between Japanese yen and US dollars for a mysterious job that isn’t very unfamiliar-sounding, called prompt creation. (Of course, the latter unit price is intentionally manipulated to be attractive.) After that, it explains that you can just use ChatGPT for translation even if you lack knowledge of English. This contributor should do it themselves if they seriously consider it in that way, but ultimately try to lead others to do so with misleading information for some reason.
Apparently, this person is bragging about attending an interview using an AI voice. However, it has already become a major issue that there are fake applicants who cheat about their abilities with AI tools, including voice synthesis. I no longer realize whether this is exhibited fraudulently or ignorantly. By the way, this person was able to accept a job but seemed to receive only a part of the pay as a result. I expect the client was rather conscientious, and I don’t have any sympathy for this person.
Other, spreading misinformation similar to “Anybody makes money at offshore online jobs by using AI if you have no ability in English!” is still so widespread as follows.
As mentioned above, their spread of misinformation online is countless. Those may be made by different people or pretended to be someone else. Anyway, such scams exist organizationally and infinitely online in Japan, and they continue to contaminate it with convenient misinformation for their own profitsーtheir main purpose is selling useless and unreasonably expensive knowledge products to ignorant people. We need to exclude them when they appear a bit before increasing themselves, just like rat extermination.
Some of the scammers lead other scammers as a ghost contractor
As previously stated, scammers create a community, such as an online salon or course, and some of them become ghost contractors using it. A ghost contractor is someone who entrusts a third party with their contracted job and just skims off the brokerage fees. When Japanese scammers do it, they snatch up higher brokerage fees and outsource significantly lower-paid fake jobs to others on crowdsourcing platforms. So that clients will receive very low-quality achievements. If this wickedness is rampant, forthright clients and freelancers suffer unreasonable disadvantages; furthermore, the freelance marketplace has serious adverse effects. Actually, Japanese crowdsourcing platforms have already fallen into a dire situation due to scammers.
Incidentally, the horrible, low-paid jobs have already started to show up on Upwork from Japanese beggars. If this situation continues, Upwork will trail on the same path as Japanese crowdsourcing platforms.
The Scammers do impression farming together with other scammers to stand out on social media
The freelance scammers almost certainly have their own social media accounts. And they pretend to be strangers while hiding that they are part of the scam group, act in a chance encounter, make friends with, affirm each other, and behave as if they are becoming influencers. In that way, they wear pretentious power and try to attract more ignorant people or jobs. It’s really uncomfortable watching those ignorant people gather, resonating with fraudulent thoughts and propagating them to others with joy, which looks just like a cult religion. Naturally, they lurk on several social media platforms, not only one of them. However, their accounts have characteristics that vaunt abilities beyond their capabilities and enthusiasm to post frequently on social media as if that’s their main work.
The Japanese scammers pretending to be freelancers have characteristics
The following are common characteristics of Japanese freelance scammers on their social media accounts:
・Show off fake abilities.
・Extremely enthusiastic to update their own social media account.
・Have a tremendous expectation in AI.
・Provide misinformation from a lecturer’s perspective.
・Post for manipulating someone purchase their expensive misinformation products at all times.
・Harvest fake engagement and fake followers.
・Hold their community and encourage someone to join it.
・Sell unhelpful misinformation products at a price higher than their worth. (This is their final goal, and their online misinformation spread is all to lead someone there.)
The Japanese scam group could influence what negative effects?
The following is already occurring online in Japan, and these things are highly likely happen in other languages:
・Numberless fake freelancers appear, and then they will ruin the freelance marketplace. (The trust of all freelancers is damaged by the fraud of fake freelancers, leading to the loss of available jobs.)
・There will be an increase in extremely low-paid jobs instead. (It’s seen recently that jobs pay quite low instead of accepting workers to use AI power in Japan.)
・Unhelpful for anyone, rather possible to damage everything, plus paid misinformation contaminates social media, all platforms, and even internet browsing. (It’s still a few, but movement is seen that Japanese content translates to other languages with AI tools, especially in English. However, it certainly increases in the future.)
How can we prevent Japanese freelance scammers from infiltrating online job opportunities?
As previously mentioned, the characteristics of Japanese freelance scammers are most evident on their social media accounts; accordingly, it is the best way to confirm these accounts and eliminate them at the applicant stage. If they have no social media accounts, their abilities will need to be evaluated. However, it is easy to sift them even at that stage because they have no skills except AI power. This means we are sufficient to do that, excluding the possibility that they can use AI tools, and then conduct an assessment to test a specific ability or English level.
Conclusion
The introduced Japanese scam group targeting offshore online jobs is harming various industries in the domestic market. The reason for spreading this scam might be due to the increasing number of needy people, and the Japanese currency is in a weak state. It will increase the number of such scammers in Japan, which has no hope of economic improvement. Japanese crowdsourcing sites have already collapsed because of scammers, and internet websites have become untrustworthy as well. Nevertheless, many Japanese don’t notice it or pretend not to, and hesitate to speak out against scammers. They may be considering these things unrelated to themselves due to normalcy bias, but such individual irresponsibilities have been leading to this dire situation. From here, we can assert that we must not overlook scammers’ fraudulent behavior, as it’s too late when we witness a tragic sight.
Never forget that: if you see Japanese people who pretend to be experts using AI, offering or contracting low-paid jobs, providing significantly low-quality work, and spreading misinformation organizationally, those are the Japanese freelance scammers.
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