A single mother from Melbourne lost all her savings after falling from a scam disguised as a job for a job – and is now struggling to feed even her children.
Melissa Anderson, 43, had taken two years off to take care of her young sons, one and two years old – a time that saw her split with her partner and struggled to pay the bills.
She went online for work on Facebook jobs, where she found what a simple cleaning track seemed posted by someone called “Aurora O'Brien.”
After she had shown interest, she was immediately contacted and was asked to provide her telephone number.
But instead of offering cleaning services, the company claimed that it was actually specialized in providing 'positive reviews' for BNB statements on a platform that looked strong on Airbnb.
Melissa's potential employer moved the conversation to the coded social media app Telegram and gave her 'training' that looked like a really onboarding process.
The scammers taught her about the nature of the work, including how many houses she would judge in a batch, how they can optimize and generate reviews, and how they can leave a five -star score.
Mrs. Anderson then left reviews for 'committees', where the scammers deposit small amounts of money into the app.
The fraudsters then let her know that she should deposit some money to make recommendations about 'property' with higher payouts.
During these processes on their carefully designed app and website, Mrs. Anderson had to register with her Commonwealth Bank and provide screenshots to prove the scammers that she deposited the money.
Single mother Melissa Anderson has been robbed of her savings by international scammers
A faux training session then took care of the mother to believe she really did work
“I made a bank transfer and then they already had my details at that time.”
She said she had checked her account and saw that the fraudsters had transferred all the money from her accounts in the days that she had completed the tasks – and had lost more than $ 23,900.
“They took money and then kept it ransom. Say, give us more or you won't see your money anymore.
'It's all a scam and of course you don't see anything from them.
'To make matters worse, the scammers also took the balance of my credit card, so it is negative and I get bills for the interest.
Mrs. Anderson said she was ashamed to have fallen for the cruel schedule and only reached for her best friend for advice after she had lost everything.
While they spoke, her back pocket still buzzed with messages on the coded message platform Telegram.
Mrs. Anderson has not left any means to support her two young boys, with authorities who say she will never see the money again
“They wanted more, they said,” If you can't get this amount, borrow from your friends, borrowing your family, you can sell your car, you can pawn gold jewelry, “said Mrs. Anderson.
She told the Commonwealth Bank told her that they were powerless to investigate the theft of her $ 23,900 because she had handed her information to the scammers.
But Mrs. Anderson has done her own excavation in the scam.
She believes that she has traced the website into an office building in China and has since warned every authority she can find, including the domain hosts.
When she was viewed on the fraudulent website earlier in the week, she noticed that everything on the website had changed.
'They do a lot of maintenance to ensure that they are not caught. I want them to be stopped, but I don't know how much work is involved. '
She even warned the scammers that she would put an end and got a crushing answer.
“I threatened to tell Airbnb; They said, “Go ahead, we don't care”; They clearly think they are bulletproof. '
Mrs. Anderson slowly came to terms with the enormous financial blow.
The site began to tell Mrs. Anderson that she had insufficient money to perform her duties before scammers would take more of her bank account
'As soon as it is gone, it is gone, and in my heart I know it will not come back, but I want to think they might give it back.
“I just hope that nobody does the same as me.”
Mrs. Anderson started a GoFundMe page in an attempt to earn back part of the lost money.
Commonwealth Bank is contacted for comment.
