He offered me freelance work on LinkedIn and emptied my account

Employment scam · LinkedIn · United Kingdom

This started on LinkedIn in Manchester. A man with a polished profile contacted me about remote freelance work. His company page looked real enough, he had mutual connections and the whole thing sounded boring in the most reassuring way possible.

After a few messages he sent me onboarding documents and a portal login. I was told to enter my bank details so payroll could “pre-verify” my account before the first contract was activated. That language should have made me stop, but it was presented as normal admin.

The portal was fake. The company was copied from a real one. By the time I understood what had happened, someone had used the information to access parts of my banking setup. It was not a romance scam, not a fake flirt, just a very clean professional-looking theft.