As you have learned, AI has been in the spotlight in recent years. However, AI has attracted numerous scammers who are potentially cheating others with various methods across different countries. That is not an exception in Japan; there is a case where organized scammers are impersonating freelancers using AI. This article discusses a Japanese online scam group targeting overseas online jobs and its negative effects on the freelance marketplace.
What kind of Japanese online scam group is it?
First, this scam group is labeled Joho-Shozai-ya (情報商材屋) in Japan. They have features that impersonate freelancers and sell poor-quality work and products. Also, another big feature is that the scam group continues to expand through a pyramid scheme within a community, such as an online salon and course. Follows as their concrete method.
Japanese online scam group starts by spreading disinformation on the internet to gather ignoramuses first
They first spread disinformation on social media and the internet, then target ignoramuses in an industry to expand the scam organization. The reason is simple because they are easily tricked, exploited, and manipulated. Approaching ignoramuses is completely convenient and effective for scammers who intend to expand their own scam group. Now, let’s examine how scammers are actually misleading people online.
This one is the information product titled “23 ten thousand yen paid 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?
・No 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 fraudulent seller pretends to be factual based on disinformation. The most surprising point is that the fraudulent seller is selling this complete nonsense for approximately 10,000 yen($150).
This one on social media is by a different person from the previous fake seller. However, this post is written content very similar to the previous one. It shows “if you use AI, you earn easily at overseas remote jobs even if you have no skills” at first, and the bottom part writes as follows:
・No experience OK!
・Not required skills!
・No English! Just use AI tools!
They always emphasize that anyone can easily make money and attempt to attract ignoramuses.
These are web pages about a virtual assistant, but its content is filled with context that arouses ignoramuses’ curiosity, like the following:
・Seeking easy work from home?
・Get paid 3000 yen($20) hourly with just one PC!
・No expertise required!
・No English skills required!
・Just use ChatGPT for translation!
・Get paid dollars instead of yen hourly!
The act of using 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 webpages has already been displayed on the search engine in Japan.
This one writes the difference in unit price between Japanese yen and US dollar for a mysterious, unfamiliar-sounding job called prompt creation. (Of course, the latter unit price is intentionally manipulated to be attractive.) After that, it explains that you can translate using ChatGPT even if you have no English skills. This contributor should do it himself if he seriously considers that way possible, but ultimately tries to lead others to do so by disinformation instead, for some reason.
Apparently, this person is bragging about attending an interview using an AI voice. However, it has already become a major problem as fake applicants deceive others to impersonate their abilities or identities using AI tools, including voice synthesis. I no longer realize whether this deed was done intently or ignorantly. By the way, it eventually seemed this person was able to accept a job but received only part of the pay. I expect the client was rather generous, and I wouldn’t have any sympathy for this person.
All the below disinformation, such as “anyone can make money at overseas online jobs by using AI if you have no expertise and no English skills!” is still being scattered on the Japanese internet.
As mentioned above, their spread of disinformation online is countless. Those may be made by other individuals or by impersonating someone. Anyway, such scammers exist organizationally and infinitely online in Japan, and they continue to contaminate it with convenient disinformation for their own profitsーtheir main purpose is selling useless and unreasonably expensive knowledge products to ignorant people. We need to exclude them if they even slightly appear before they increase, just like rat extermination.
Some of the Japanese online scammers lead freelancers as a ghost contractor
Scammers establish their own communities, such as online salons or courses, and some of them become ghost contractors through them. 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 freelancing 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 freelancing 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.
Japanese online Scammers commit 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 as a chance encounter, pretend to be friends, affirm each other, and eventually behave as if they are becoming influencers. In that way, they wear fake power and try to attract more ignoramuses or jobs. It’s really uncomfortable watching those ignoramuses gather, resonating with fraudulent thoughts and propagating them to others gleefully, which looks just like a cult religion. Naturally, they lurk on several social media platforms, not just one. However, their accounts have obvious characteristics: they are quite enthusiastic about updating them to lure ignoramuses.
Features of the Japanese online scammers impersonate freelancers
The following are common features of Japanese online scammers on their social media accounts:
・Showing off fake, exaggerated abilities.
・Extremely enthusiastic to update their own social media account.
・Updating posts to attract ignoramuses.
・Frequently using the term “side hustle (副業)”.
・Having a tremendous expectation in AI.
・Providing disinformation from a lecturer’s perspective.
・Updating posts with the intent to manipulate someone to purchase their expensive disinformation products.
・Harvesting fake engagement and fake followers.
・Having their own community and encouraging someone to join it.
・Selling unhelpful disinformation products at a price higher than their worth. (Basically, this is their final goal, and their online disinformation spread is all to lead someone there.)
What negative effects can the Japanese online scam group influence?
The following is already occurring online in Japan, and these things are highly likely to happen in other languages:
・Numberless fake freelancers and contractors appear, and then they’ll ruin the freelance marketplace. (The trust of all freelancers and companies is damaged by the fraud of fake them, leading to the loss of job opportunities.)
・There will be an increase in extremely low-paid jobs instead.
・Disinformation will contaminate social media, all platforms, and even internet browsing. (There’s already visible movement that Japanese content translates to other languages with AI tools, especially in English.)
How can we prevent Japanese online scammers from infiltrating job opportunities?
As previously mentioned, the features of Japanese online 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, but it would also be easy to assess them at that stage since they don’t have any skills beyond driving AI. Thus, it should easily eliminate them by considering the possibility that they use AI tools and conducting tests that measure abilities and English proficiency.
Conclusion
The introduced Japanese online scam group targeting overseas jobs is already harming various industries in the domestic market. The rise of these scams may be due to the increasing number of needy individuals, coupled with the weakness of the Japanese currency. It will increase the number of such scams in Japan, which has no hope of economic improvement. Japanese freelancing platforms have been destroyed by scammers, and other websites have become untrustworthy as well. Nevertheless, many Japanese don’t realize 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. Now, we can assert that we must not overlook scammers’ fraudulent behavior, as it’s too late when we witness a tragic sight.
Never forget: if you see Japanese people who pretend to be something experts using AI power, offer or contract low-paid jobs, provide significantly low-quality work, and spread disinformation organizationally (especially attempting to attract ignorants), those are the Japanese online scammers.
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