Scammers posing as Canadian immigration lawyers have targeted Facebook groups with tens of thousands of users, a new report reveals.
The posts, documented in a new report by the Tech Transparency Project (TTP), the research arm of watchdog group the Campaign for Accountability, have been flagged as potentially fraudulent by Latin American and Canadian authorities but continue to proliferate.
Purporting to be authored by Canadian immigration lawyers, the posts claim that Canada is recruiting more than 400,000 people for a jobs program that will grant those accepted an immediate work permit.
The scam offers to help migrants apply for the program and obtain a visa, and requires them to enter sensitive personal information on websites before prompting them to share the link with 15 friends via WhatsApp to access any visa or immigration information.
The “invite friends” link opens WhatsApp and automatically populates the app with a message that closely mirrors the original scam post, according to screenshots reviewed by the Guardian.
The users are ultimately not provided with any helpful immigration information after sending the link.
The posts have been shared in at least 12 Facebook groups with followings ranging between 2,700 and nearly 190,000 users. The groups had at least 570,000 users in total, according to TTP.
Canadian and Honduran officials issued warnings about the scam on their respective Facebook pages as early as February. “This is fake and is related to…
