Riot Games has taken legal action against people conducting a job scam, where they steal people’s money under the guise of a job interview to work at the League of Legends studio.

According to Polygon, this was more than your simple two-bit scam. The Riot Job Scam included multiple rounds of interviews, forged Discord IDs as well as forged documents, all complete with the letterheads Riot Games.

It’s not just Riot, either. Polygon’s investigation showed that the scam ring was impersonating HR from other studios such as Rockstar and Manticore, but only Riot has announced that they would be taking action so far.

“[The scam] is absolutely appalling,” Riot’s lawyers wrote in the complaint. “Their victims largely are young, naïve, and want nothing more than to work for Riot, one of the most prestigious video game companies in the world. Defendants prey on the hopes and dreams of these individuals in order to steal their identities and pillage their bank accounts.”

According to them, the fake listings would be posted on multiple websites such as Indeed, who have also since responded to the news.

“We encourage job seekers to report any suspicious job advertisements to us, or if they feel it necessary, to make a report to the police,” an Indeed representative said. “We encourage all job seekers to review our Guidelines for a Safe Job Search.”

The scammers would even impersonate real people working at Riot for the interview, before asking for a “refundable” or “expensable” payment for work equipment such as an iPad. As all scams go, the part about it being refundable turns out to be a lie and the scammers make off with the money.

It makes sense that Riot would be impersonated in a scam like this- the studio has grown massively in recent years, with many projects that would make a hiring blitz seem like a logical choice.

Keeping Yourself Safe

While there’s no sense blaming victims for falling for such an elaborate scam, there’s some key takeaways to take from this. The most obvious is that at no point in a job interview should you have to pay the company, and you should immediately be suspicious once you do.

The other is to just always be vigilant- if something seems suspicious it usually is, and you should trust your gut and back out if you think you’re about to lose your money in the middle of a job hunt.