The job offer couldn’t have come at a better time for Theo.
He had been job hunting for a year, picking up part-time hours in events. He was homeless, crashing on friends’ couches.
“I took the first opportunity that came to me because I was like, I just need to get out of this situation,” Theo, whose real name is being withheld, told Sky News.
From the employer’s perspective, he was the perfect candidate: he was desperate, and he didn’t ask too many questions.
He knows that’s what they looked for because when he started, that’s who he was told to hire.
The ones who weren’t put off by the scant information on the company’s website. The ones who really needed the money.
Except they would never get paid for their work – and they would get scammed out of hundreds of pounds in the process.
The scammed becomes the scammer
The scam that got Theo was a multi-pronged attack.
First his new “employer” told him he’d need to pay for an HR qualification, with the promise of reimbursement as he completed the modules.
“They said, it’s only going to cost a few hundred pounds, but you’re going to have a job, you’re going to get monthly income – and, yeah, so I just took it.”
He paid £275 to what looked like an external training provider and logged in for his first day.
He was told he would be recruiting people. All he needed to do first was buy a burner phone and shell out £118 for a job board CV subscription.
The first person he called was “just some woman who was trying to find a job as well, just as desperately as I was”.
“When the roles were reversed and I read the script, and then I remembered the way I was interviewed I was like, okay, this is exactly the same,” Theo said.
“In my mind, I was like, this is not right. But at the same time, I spent a lot of money that I didn’t want to walk away without getting refunded.”
