Paid reviews and task scams explained by Ilia Zavialov: small payouts, the combination task and the crypto top up

01

How the offer arrives

The message looks like a lucky break. A recruiter writes in a messenger or by text: a company needs people to write reviews, rate hotels, like products or boost apps in an online store, the work takes an hour a day from a phone, and the pay is far above what such simple tasks usually earn.

The recruiter often names a real company, sometimes a well known marketplace or a marketing agency, and sends a link to a site with its logo. The candidate did not apply anywhere, and that is the first detail worth noticing.

Reviews are chosen as the work on purpose. Everybody has read reviews, most people have written one, and the idea that businesses pay for ratings sounds plausible because the reader has heard that fake reviews exist.

The conversation moves quickly to a messenger group and to a personal account on the task site. From this point the candidate is called an employee, and everything that follows is presented as normal onboarding.

02

The first days: real money, small amounts

The first tasks are easy and they pay. The new employee rates twenty products, clicks through a set of hotel pages or copies prepared review text, and a small commission appears in the account. Often it can even be withdrawn.

That first real payout is the most expensive thing the scheme buys. It proves to the victim that the job exists, and it turns caution into confidence at the moment when the stakes are still tiny.

The group chat helps. Other employees post screenshots of their earnings and thank the mentor. Some of them are real victims at an earlier stage, many are accounts run by the organisers.

The work is structured in levels, sets and bonuses. Completing a set unlocks a higher level with bigger commissions, and the design borrows everything from mobile games that keeps people tapping.

03

The combination task and the negative balance

At some point the employee receives a special task, sometimes called a combination order or a lucky order. It pays several times more than usual, and it pushes the account balance below zero.

To continue working and to withdraw the earnings, the employee has to top up the account and bring the balance back to positive. The top up is usually requested in cryptocurrency, most often a dollar stablecoin, through an address that the mentor provides.

After the top up comes another combination task with a larger negative balance, then a fee to unlock withdrawals, then a tax, then a penalty for an error. Each payment is explained as the last one before a large sum is released.

The balance on the screen keeps growing and never becomes money. It is a number in a database that belongs to the organisers, and its only job is to justify the next deposit.

04

Why this works on careful people

The scheme relies on sunk cost more than on greed. After several deposits the employee is no longer trying to earn, only trying to get back what was already paid in, and the only visible way to do that is to pay once more.

The mentor is patient and friendly, answers at any hour and sometimes offers to cover part of the top up personally. That gesture creates a debt of gratitude and makes a refusal feel like betrayal.

The tasks themselves look like ordinary work, which keeps the story consistent. A person who spends an hour a day rating products feels employed, and an employee does not expect to be the target.

Shame keeps people silent. Many victims do not tell family or the bank until the losses are large, because admitting the loss means admitting that a job which seemed real was never a job. Organisers count on that silence.

05

What the numbers show in the United Kingdom

UK Finance reported 1.28 billion pounds stolen through payment fraud in 2025, up 4 percent, including 248,070 cases of authorised push payment fraud worth 576.4 million pounds. In that kind of fraud the victim sends the money personally, and task scams belong to it.

Since 6 April 2025 the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 treats fake reviews and undisclosed paid reviews as banned practices, so the work being offered is unlawful from the first task.

Since 7 October 2024 banks must reimburse most authorised push payment fraud up to 85,000 pounds, which makes an early report to the bank essential for anyone who paid by transfer.

06

When a company's name is used for recruiting

For a business the problem arrives from the other side. Its name and logo appear in messages to strangers, and people who lost money write complaints and reviews about a company that never hired them.

Current employees are also targeted. A message that seems to come from the company's own HR team, offering paid side tasks, is more convincing to staff than to strangers, and it can pull the company's own people into the scheme.

The practical steps are simple. Publish on the careers page how the company recruits and state that it never charges candidates or asks them to pay in cryptocurrency. Give staff one internal channel to check any message that claims to come from HR.

Collect the fake domains, profiles and phone numbers used in the scheme and report them to the platforms and registrars. When the public asks, answer quickly and in the same place the complaint appeared.

Keep the answer factual. A short public note that names the fake addresses and explains how real hiring works helps the people who were contacted more than any statement about the company's reputation.

07

The reviews the scheme leaves behind

Task scams produce reviews in two directions. The fake ones written as tasks appear on real products, hotels and apps, and they distort ratings that honest shoppers rely on.

The angry ones written afterwards appear under the names the scheme borrowed. Victims search for the company named by the recruiter and write that it is a scam, even though the company had nothing to do with the messages.

For a reader both kinds look the same at first glance. The useful question is whether a review describes a real purchase or a real job with a contract, or only a chat with a recruiter who used a famous name.

For the company whose name was borrowed, the fastest remedy is a public explanation placed where people search: the careers page, the review profile and the support pages, with the fake addresses listed so the next person can recognise them.

08

How to recognise a task scam

A real employer pays you and never asks you to pay first. Any request to top up an account, buy a starter package or pay a fee to withdraw your wages ends the discussion.

Real jobs have contracts, a legal entity and a named employer that can be checked in a public register. A job that exists only in a messenger group and on a site registered last month has no employer at all.

Payment in cryptocurrency through addresses sent in chat, pay far above the market for trivial work, and pressure to complete a set before a deadline are the signs that appear in almost every case.

Writing paid reviews for products you never used is itself a banned practice in many countries. An offer to do it for money is a warning sign twice over: about the work and about the people offering it.

Check the site before the first task. A domain registered a few weeks ago, a support chat with no company name and a withdrawal page that lists fees in advance tell you what the job is before any money moves.

09

Where to check and report in the UK

Tell your bank immediately if you paid by bank transfer. Report the loss to Report Fraud at reportfraud.police.uk or on 0300 123 2040.

Check an employer through Companies House and its own careers page, and call its published number. A recruiter who can only be reached in a messenger group represents no employer.

Forward scam texts to 7726 and suspicious emails to report@phishing.gov.uk.

10

If you have already paid

Stop all payments, including the one presented as the final fee to release your balance. The balance cannot be released because it never existed as money.

Save the chat, the task site address, the wallet addresses and the payment records. Groups and sites disappear quickly once victims start asking questions.

Report the scheme to the platform where the first message came from and to the exchange you used to buy the cryptocurrency, with the transaction details.

Be ready for a follow up. People who lost money in task scams are soon contacted by fake lawyers and recovery services that promise to return the funds for a fee.