All About The Letter Writing Job Scam

The letter writing job scam was at its peak in the early 2000s in India. An entire generation is always seeking employment opportunities. With the Lockdown, the concept of Work-from-Home became popular in India. However, it did exist prior to the lockdown, but wasn’t as common. Some Indian companies, including startups, have adopted the concept of hybrid work and work-from-home (WFH) arrangements for their employees.

Like everything good in life,  letter writing job scams exploited the WFH concept to create scams, and people fell for them hook, line, and sinker. The genius of this scam was that people who fell for it could never really lodge a complaint about it. That was because this was a scam masquerading as a genuine job offer. The letter writing scam was one of the initial scams in India, and can be categorised as a job scam. The scam is basically an enhanced version of the advance fee fraud. Additionally, this scam targeted the educated poor—individuals seeking employment but unable to secure a traditional job for various reasons. In the West, it’s evolved into people writing handwritten letters to casinos.

Letter Writing Job Scam Modus Operandi

The letter writing job scam would begin with a person coming across a poster that offered a “home-based job.” Some also referred to it as a “letter-writing job.” The offer was simple—or so the victim thought—write letters and earn money.

For many people whose parents had worked as clerks and executives in offices all their lives, the letter-writing jobs scam came as not just a possibility but a way of life. In their minds, they were gearing up to work for an office that had a lot of paperwork, and they were looking for someone to handle some percentage of that, for a salary, of course.

Intrigued and hopeful, the individuals would contact the number that was pasted in advertisements for the letter-writing job scam all over the area. Little did they know that the advertisements themselves were illegal and would be removed the next time the BMC decided on a city clean-up mission. Of course, before this could happen, the victims would have contacted the scammers.

Upon contact, the scammers would detail how the job worked, what the aspirant would need to do, and what was in it for them. The aspirant would be given a writing kit, which would consist of paper, a pen, and other necessary paraphernalia. They would then need to write about something—in some cases, they would have to write about a job opportunity that involved writing letters. Yes, of course, the secret of this scam becoming a success was the ‘secrecy’ about the contents of the writing kit.

The catch of the letter writing job scam is that they would need to ‘buy’ this writing kit. The person who bought this kit would make money only if the recipient of these letters purchased the same kit. In retrospect, the scam appears rather foolish. However, this writer knows of at least one individual who fell victim to this scam. What makes this scam all the more infuriating is that it targeted the young and the jobless —the most vulnerable members of society.

How to Stay Away from Letter Writing Scams

A job means honest-to-goodness work, and writing letters promoting a program that is about writing letters is not one. So, you need to keep that in mind.  One evolution of this crime is the novel writing scam, where the scamster says that the person has to handwrite an entire novel. Again, even if there is a market for a handwritten novel, the people in it won’t be looking for those hand-writers on social network. Quite frankly, slam the phone down – or disconnect it – when you get a call like this.

The Vigilant Blog

Covers the crime beat, spreading awareness about crimes, scams and everything dastardly.

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