‘OpenAI’ Job Scam Targeted International Workers Through Telegram
Credit to Author: Reece Rogers| Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2025 11:30:00 +0000
A Bangladeshi worker was eager to get started at their new OpenAI job—completing basic online tasks in exchange for consistent income, while getting into cryptocurrency investing at the same time. After connecting with the startup on Telegram and creating an account through a ChatGPT-branded app, they invested crypto into the platform and began a months-long job working for “Aiden” from “OpenAI.”
The work was performed through the website “OpenAi-etc,” and internal conversations were held on Telegram. It was simple: Invest some crypto, complete a few tasks, and earn daily profits based on what was invested.
Over the course of this worker’s time with the company, mentors continuously encouraged them to invest more money into the fund and recruit more Bangladeshi people to the team. When the worker convinced over 150 to join and the mentors split the growing team of “brokers” into a hierarchy based on seniority, it all felt very real. The total crypto-investment fund for their team was around $50,000. After a devastating cyclone hit Bangladesh in May, company leaders supposedly helped those in need, further earning the trust of employees.
All seemed well until the morning of August 29, 2024, when everyone woke up to find that the website, all of their money, Aiden, and the other fake OpenAI employees had vanished overnight. The job, of course, was never with OpenAI at all, former workers say.
“I’ve seen similar scams where, at the beginning, you think you are making profit, and then basically you invest more and more,” says Shirin Nilizadeh, an associate professor at the University of Texas at Arlington who focuses on security and privacy. “Then, suddenly, you lose everything.”.
The story of the scammed “OpenAI” worker is from just one of 11 complaints about OpenAi-etc submitted to the US Federal Trade Commission by workers from Bangladesh last year, seven of which mention “Aiden.” Analysis of the complaints, obtained by WIRED through a public records request, reveal a potentially widespread job scam that used OpenAI’s name recognition to allegedly trick low-wage workers out of their savings. While some people describe getting started with OpenAi-etc in June or July, others believed they were working for the company for around six months.
The first FTC complaint obtained by WIRED, lodged over two months before the August 29 rug pull, says the complainant was invited by OpenAi-etc to invest around $170 in crypto. The person mentions an American registration number for the business, confirming it was in good standing with Colorado regulators and listing a physical office in Denver. The complaint also highlights a legitimate-looking money service business registered with the US Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, which lists the company’s location as an office inside the Empire State Building in New York City.
A WIRED review of domain name system records for the now-defunct OpenAi-etc website shows that it appears to have been hosted by a China-based web hosting company.
Jay Mayfield, a senior public affairs specialist at the FTC, declined WIRED’s request to confirm whether the group is looking into OpenAi-etc, saying that investigations are nonpublic. Mayfield did not answer additional questions about what steps the FTC is taking to prevent similar scams or provide better assistance for international victims.
“Regrettably, I found no available source online to know more about this organization except for those registrations,” wrote the complainant. “They are collecting huge amounts of investment from third world countries in Asia.”
One of the FTC complaints alleges that over 6,000 people in Bangladesh were potentially impacted by the OpenAi-etc job scam. The ages listed in the FTC complaints range from teenagers to people in their fifties, with locations spread across multiple Bangladesh cities, from Dhaka to Khulna.
“My next trading date was 29 August, 2024,” wrote another complainant. “I made the trade with my whole amount in the evening. But, suddenly, the OpenAI company vanished. I didn’t withdraw any money but lost both capital and profit. Now, I am in a great economic crisis, as I am a normal school teacher.”
Niko Felix, a spokesperson for OpenAI, declined to answer questions about whether the startup was previously aware of the “OpenAi-etc” scam, or if they planned to take action against the fraudsters. But he did share that OpenAI is investigating the matter. The alleged scam website is no longer available online, and WIRED was not able to contact the people behind "OpenAi-etc" prior to publication.
A Telegram spokesperson using the name Remi Vaughn tells WIRED that the company monitors its platform for scams, such as those allegedly carried out by OpenAi-etc, which used the messaging app to communicate with people who believed they were working for the company.
"Telegram actively moderates harmful content on its platform, including scams," Vaughn says in a statement sent to WIRED through the messaging platform. "Moderators empowered with custom Al and machine learning tools proactively monitor public parts of the platform and accept reports from users and organizations in order to remove millions of pieces of harmful content each day."
The usual pattern of a crypto job scam is to trick people into depositing some kind of digital currency into a fake account the victim believes they have control over, until the perpetrator drains it one day without warning. While this specific rug pull used OpenAI’s branding to allegedly dupe its victims, a crypto job scam can happen with the name of any company that has enough widespread recognition for criminals to capitalize on.
“These social engineering scams are designed to lower our natural suspicion and to make us complicit in our own deception,” says Arun Vishwanath, a cybersecurity expert and author of The Weakest Link. “For job scams, they try to turn our ambitions and inherent trust in brands into a vulnerability.” Similar to so-called pig butchering investment scams, a key component often includes direct messages over a long period of time to cultivate a sense of trust with the targets.
Although comparable job scams happen all over the world, Vishwanath believes that Asian cultural norms of so-called high power distance, where there’s more acceptance of interpersonal hierarchies, are a contributing factor. "Authorities are expected to ask you things and make you do things," he says. "And you just comply." Scammers are taking advantage of this by imitating authority figures and leaning into the sense of urgency inherent to searching for a job.
Bangladeshi citizens on the difficult hunt for reliable work have increasingly been targeted by job scammers in recent years. Lies about international job opportunities have left throngs of would-be workers stranded in Malaysia, and at least three cases of kidney organ theft were reported by people lured to India with false promises of work.