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No jobs, learnerships or bursaries here – Facebook page a long-running scam

This article is more than 3 years old

It’s time for the scam Facebook page “Jobs learnership and bursary” to go. For two and a half years the six people who run the page have been making money out of the hope – and desperation – of unemployed people in South Africa.

The page has posted thousands of ads for jobs that at first glance seem legit. But to apply, job seekers have to follow a link to a website that has nothing to do with the vacancy advertised.

The first link is to a page on a link aggregation site, currently MULTI.LINK. Here a confusing array of links to supposed job vacancy ads are displayed. Clicking on any of the links takes you to another website such as one named Careers23.

This is where the scammers make their money. The websites “Jobs learnership and bursary” links to are full of ads. The advertisers pay the website owners for these ads.

Careers23 mimics Careers24, a legitimate jobs portal run by Naspers, a major South African media company.

The page has also run forex trading scams, the Mandela coin scam, and more.

Behind the scam


Jobs learnership and bursary” was set up on 11 January 2018. The page was initially calledDestruction boys”, getting shares and likes by using the name of Distruction Boyz, popular gqom music duo from the South African city of Durban.

On 9 July 2018 the page’s name was changed to “Destruction boys students learnership jobs”. Then on 25 July that year it became “Jobs learnership and bursary”.

The page currently has more than 166,000 followers. Its large reach is partly because it tells job seekers they only have a chance at a job if they share its posts.

Here’s an example, from 24 July 2020: “We'll HELP if you SHARE this post on all Facebook groups and friends, the more you share will be called for job interview soon we'll monitor everything on database and only send info about Jobs to those who Shared!”

It adds, cynically: “Please note that we will never ask for any fee.”

You won’t get a job, a learnership, a bursary or anything else from the page. And if you like, subscribe, comment or share, you’ll only help the scammers make more unearned money.

Africa Check and the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab have taken a close look at scam Facebook pages, including “Jobs learnership and bursary”. Read our analysis.

To help you protect yourself against scams, read our guide to Facebook scams and how to spot them. And you can always report a scam using the “page transparency” section on the left of each Facebook page.

 

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