To earn extra money for his mum's umrah, son takes job rating airlines only to lose $413 in scam
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Posted on 11 October 2022 | 6,148 views | 5 commentsSubmitted by Stomper S
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He was told he could earn up to $300 a day rating airlines but ended up losing $413 to the job scam.
Stomper S said he took the job for his mother.
He told Stomp: "My mum is going for umrah, which is a mini haj, and I wanted to spoil her with spending money since I can’t join her.
"I was scammed and people need to know this."
It started with a Telegram message the Stomper received on Sept 29 that said: "PT available, get 300.00 per day promoting. Are you interested more details (sic)?"
After the Stomper asked: "What is the job scope?", the sender introduced herself as Alice from Trust Recruit, which is a real company.
She also sent an ad offering a job "rating airlines to increases (sic) airlines popularity and reviews" where you can earn $150 in three hours.
When the Stomper asked what he had to do for the $150, he was told that someone else would contact him with the job scope.
That someone else was Joana Cheng, who explained that there were four tasks a day and for each task, he had to complete 32 airline ratings to withdraw his commission.
"You just give five-star ratings and that was it," said the Stomper, who completed the first task with no issues.
"Then I did the second task, but in order to complete it, I had to put in my money," said the Stomper, who transferred $105 using PayNow.
For the third task, he was asked to put in $308, which he did.
"But in under 30 minutes, they wanted another $565," said the Stomper.
That was when he baulked and asked for his money back to no avail.
"It got to a point where I told them I would forego my commission for them to return my deposits. Yet nothing," he told Stomp.
"When I requested to speak to the manager, I was ignored."
The Stomper realised that he might have been scammed.
In response to a Stomp query, Trust Recruit said: "We do not approach job seekers via Telegram or WhatsApp, nor do we have such job opportunities of rating airlines.
"It was a scam. We have made the necessary police report and announced a scam alert on our social media pages (Instagram and Facebook) due to the rising number of scam cases recently."
On the Scam Alert website last month, someone reported a similar case where scammers offered a job reviewing airlines.
To avoid being scammed, the police advise taking these precautionary measures:
- Do not accept dubious job offers that offer lucrative returns for minimal effort.
- Never download applications from unverified sources.
- Never send money to anyone whom you do not know or have not met in person.
"I went into this with the best intentions just getting extra money for my mum and after that, I was going to stop."
