The Mysterious Case Of The Craigslist Writing Gig Scam | Hacker News Reader

The Mysterious Case Of The Craigslist Writing Gig Scam

theawl.com

62 pointsantr26 comments

I do not think this is an advance fee scam. I think the pay-per-call commenter is closest.

Here's what I think is happening. A marketing firm has told some local businesses that it will do online marketing and other marketing activities to drive leads in the form of calls to the business. The marketing campaigns will focus on specific issues (like insurance coverage for weight loss).

It's not atypical for a marketing agency or demand generation company to guarantee a certain number of leads per campaign -- eg, if you spend $1,000 with us, we will guarantee you get 50 leads.

I think a call-based / real-world demand generation agency is stuffing the leads for their customers because the actual campaigns aren't delivering.

If it's a lead-gen scam, shouldn't bogus contact/address info be the central part of the scheme?

Also, the six-minute requirement on the first call doesn't fit with a lead-gen scam. It actually seems like it would really drain the resources of a small company trying to drum up business.

The phone number and extension is probably what's used to identify where the "sales lead" came from. As for the long-calls, there's probably a minimum connection time before the lead is considered "valid". "aaron" is probably telling everyone 6 minutes keeping in mind that this is a Craig's labor pool and they will probably only really do 2 minutes on average.

My vote is for "advance fee scam" as mentioned in the comments of the article. It plays out something like this:

He shows up at a coffee shop after a few days worth of work with a check for $1000. The actual "work" done was worth $700, so he says "just give me $300 and we'll call it even". He'll be nice and wait for OP while he goes to the ATM, but the check will be a dud.

If I'm right about this, I think there's a powerful psychological force at play. The time invested for the work will cloud the OPs judgment about whether this is a scam or not. A feeling of loss is much more powerful than a feeling of gain (I can't remember the exact psych term for this)

The OP probably scared off 'Aaron' with the "is this a scam?" email.

If you read carefully, I think that email was sent after they were supposed to meet at the coffee shop.

  After the five reviews, Aaron asked for my phone number
  and said he’d call me the next day with a meeting place. 
  It has now been three days and I have yet to hear from 
  him. He’s also stopped responding to my emails, including 
  one in which I asked him, “Is this really a scam?” Which 
  means, obviously, I’ve been duped.

I think you're right, the email looks like it was sent after the intended meeting time.

I still think that a waiting time and a 'missed' appointment could've been a part of the scam. After all, when you've been on hold with customer service for 10 minutes, do you really want to hang up at that point?

10 minutes? What planet do you live in and how much is the rent for a one bedroom? :) If I wait 10 minutes I consider myself lucky, usually more like 30.

Personally it sounds like a creative way of lead generation. Guys personal information gets submitted to the lead generation system, and the follow up call, with the scenarios that are played out make them "legit" leads. Scammer then cashes in on the leads. Keep in mind that these leads can pay from $20 to $150 easily per legit lead and it's a shady business (worked at a company dealing with lead gen at one point). Could be wrong but personally it makes the most sense to me...

Pay per call scam. Chances are the phone number or extension maps to "aaron" who is an affiliate of said companies, except instead of sending legit leads, he's sending fake ones. Still, any company worth their dime should be able to track actual conversion from their affiliates and spot scammers. That's affiliate 101.

> who has trouble with Paypal?

I can't tell you the amount of times I've had trouble with that shitty excuse of a company.

Not a Pal. Occasionally, will not Pay.

Actually, I do have pals like that.

My favourite is emailing them. Good luck getting a response.

I tried for weeks to get them to sort out a problem that was simple enough that I figured email was the way to get it sorted out in some low priority queue. Finally I called them up and the problem was sorted out in minutes. Why are the people on the phone infinitely more helpful and English-savvy? I don't know but it's a problem.

This sounds like a creative way of scamming a pay-per-call advertiser. But, I can't imagine any of the 'big boys' in the pay-per-call market risking something like this.

Doesn't make much sense given that one of the companies was a free service.

Even the 'free' service might make money based on people-served, or recommendations-delivered.

Lead generation for universities makes the most money of any of them, why do you think University of Phoenix ads are (or used to be) everywhere.

The 'big boys' might avoid it by policy, but perhaps a rogue affiliate/commissioned-salesperson benefits.

Or, it could be competitors doing a denial-of-service attack on inbound calls, or a marketing-budget-depletion-attack on a pay-per-call campaign.

One way to deduce more: were the numbers he called the most commonly-advertised numbers for the target businesses, or other numbers through some tracked dispatch?

Can't tell if the numbers were the most commonly advertised ones, but he does note that "Aaron" told him this:

"...all you are doing is calling a company that we provide the number for, pressing the correct (1) or (2) – which we specify..."

If I'm interpreting that right, they're using inside information to get him up the phone tree to the right person (whatever their definition of "right" is).

I'm throwing my vote in with the guy who suggested maybe he's getting money from the companies for getting more people to call about their services. Both ends are getting scammed, but it costs one of them time, and one of them money.

In the comments section on the blog, someone mentioned that the scammer might be running a call-center for the companies, where they get paid by the minute for their services. I think that would better explain the 6 minute requirement than the 'lead generation' argument.

Call center profit would probably be too low to make this worthwhile.

$15/hr * 0.1 hours = $1.50. Seems like the complex Craigslisting wouldn't make sense with this little profit at stake per call they manage to finagle.

I agree that it seems like a lot of work for little reward. However I think you ignored the fact that the OP made multiple calls that lasted over 6 minutes (in the comments section he also mentioned that the phone numbers he was calling were fairly similar to each other). So $15/hr0.1 hours6 calls = $15.

The fact that all of the coordination is done through e-mail means that the scammer could have multiple people per day doing this. Which would add up to a small chunk of change, enough to keep his operation going, especially if business is slow.

It is almost like an old-school version of click fraud.

Well you still have the phone numbers of the businesses you called. Call them again and ask them who's handling their lead generation.

Given the minimum-time requirement for the phonecalls, I'd say it's a DoS attack on the companies.

lots of people just have fun playing with craigslist. this really could just be that.

a friend of mine used to write beautiful 'perfect girl' ads (written from the perspective of his version of the perfect girl), just to see what kinds of responses he got.

i don't think i'm explaining very well what's interesting here about this kind of social interaction. anyway, making money isn't the main goal in my head when it comes to craigslist.

My vote is for the furiously masturbating idea

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