What's Happening?
A coordinated wave of fake online job advertisements has been targeting countries across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), exploiting the region's shift toward remote work. The campaign, detailed
by Group-IB, uses professionally designed social media ads to promise easy income for simple online tasks, while concealing a fraud operation aimed at stealing money and personal data. The scams operate at scale, with over 1500 fraudulent ads identified in 2025, primarily targeting Egypt, Gulf states, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Iraq, and Jordan. These ads often impersonate well-known e-commerce platforms, banks, or government bodies, and move conversations to private messaging apps like WhatsApp or Telegram, where victims are asked to share personal and financial information.
Why It's Important?
The scams exploit trust in recognized institutions and the low cost of social media advertising, offering daily earnings above local averages, which attracts financially vulnerable users. This coordinated, multi-step operation with shared infrastructure and repeated phishing methods makes it difficult to trace and dismantle. The scams highlight the need for greater caution from users and stronger safeguards from platforms. Businesses and social platforms are urged to tighten ad verification for job listings, monitor brand impersonation, and run multilingual awareness campaigns to alert at-risk users.
