Operation “Wrong Number”: AI-assisted task scam

This case study was originally published in OpenAI’s June 2025⁠(opens in a new window) report.

Actor

We banned ChatGPT accounts that were generating short recruitment-style messages in English, Spanish, Swahili, Kinyarwanda, German, and Haitian Creole. These messages offered recipients high salaries for trivial tasks, such as liking social media posts, and encouraged them to recruit others. The operation appeared highly centralized and likely originated from Cambodia.

Using AI-powered translation tools, we were able to investigate and disrupt the campaign’s use of OpenAI services swiftly.

Behavior

The majority of the network’s comments involved translation tasks. They used ChatGPT to translate conversational sentences between Chinese and several other languages, most notably English, Spanish, Kinyarwanda, Swahili, German, and Haitian Creole. These tasks typically alternated between translating an incoming message into Chinese and translating a response from Chinese back into the original language.

A subset of these messages resembled cold-call job advertisements, offering high hourly pay for minimal work. One such message was distributed via SMS to what appeared to be a random set of UK mobile phone numbers, one of which belonged to an OpenAI investigator. We have dubbed this operation “Wrong Number,” in honor of the initial SMS.

The threat actors appeared to rely on multiple messaging platforms. The initial SMS directed recipients to engage via WhatsApp, where responders were then routed to a “mentor” on Telegram. Some activity also referenced the BonChat messaging app. Early, introductory messages via these channels did not appear to have been generated using our models. They consisted of routine messages which would likely apply to every conversation.