Amanda thought she had found the dream WFH job when she received a call from an Indeed ‘recruiter’… now she’s $48,000 in the hole

A woman who thought she had found the perfect work-from-home job has lost tens of thousands of dollars after realizing it was a scam.

Amanda Peters, a 44-year-old woman from Queensland, received a text message from Isla claiming to be a recruiter from the jobs website Indeed.

She claimed that several recruiters saw her profile on the platform and asked if Ms. Peters was interested in a WFH position.

The equine business manager told Daily Mail Australia it didn’t seem out of the ordinary as she had updated her profile on Indeed the week before as she was looking for a part-time job at WFH to ‘make ends meet’.

After saying she was interested last week, she got the details from another woman on WhatsApp who explained that the job was working for a film platform where all she had to do was give films a five-star review.

“She basically said, I’ll train you and we’ll get through it,” Ms. Peters said.

“That was about six hours of training. Showed me what to do on the website.

“They have conditions, they have facts, it’s a website. It’s very well done. It has all the Disney animation on it – it looks legit. Very extensive.’

To make the scam seem even more legitimate, Ms Peters was invited to join a WhatsApp group of fifteen people.

“Of course now I know it’s AI or a bot or something in the background,” she said.

‘But at that moment you feel like you are in a community. There are people who talk to you and encourage you.”

The work took about three hours a day, which suited Mrs. Peters and her busy schedule that also included a job.

“I thought I should sit down and look at things, and they basically told me, ‘No, these companies are actually paying us to get five-star reviews,’” she said.

Ms. Peters explained that people working for the platform had to invest a small amount of money ($100) to complete the daily tasks assigned to them.

“You will be given your first set of tasks, which will consist of 40 reviews,” she said.

“That’s what you do, you earn a commission for every review you do, and at the end you get all your money out, including the $100 you started with.”

The 44-year-old said it worked well for the first four days, earning about $40-$50 a day – which was deposited into a crypto account they told her to set up.

The ‘normal’ payment amounts were another step to make it seem legit, as they didn’t promise large amounts, which made it ‘feel realistic’.

“Day five came and they deposited my ‘pay’, which I couldn’t remove,” she said.

‘So I asked how I could get my money out.

“They said, ‘You have to complete today’s tasks. And then you can get your money out.’

Ms Peters said she was then offered ‘packages’ that included two or three reviews, but that required more money.

“The more money you have on the platform, the more they can get you,” she said.

‘If you do the first review, it costs all your money. So if you want to do the second review in the package, you have to invest again.

“So if I have $900 in there, they want me to put $900 in there to complete the next review. Then you get hit with another package before you complete your tasks.

“And the next thing you know, they want $26,000 from you to get your money out.”

Ms Peters said the money paid to unlock the tasks quickly added up and that’s when things went terribly wrong.

“I had gotten to the point where I just had one more task to complete and then I could get all my money out. At this stage I had $10,000 in, she said.

“So I borrowed another $10,000, completed my tasks and went to get my money out, but it wouldn’t let me.

‘The platform was reset to the beginning of my 40 tasks. And then they say you have to complete your tasks to get your money out.

‘But the money was needed again for those tasks.’

After contacting customer service via WhatsApp, Ms Peters was told there was nothing they could do because ‘the platform is what the platform is and we can’t change anything about it’.

At this stage, the horse manager had deposited two $10,000 lottery tickets through the scammer’s crypto account on December 10, but on Wednesday they gave her a task package that required another $20,000 to release her funds.

“I had $20,000 dollars in there and then it reset, so I put the extra $20,000 in,” Ms. Peters said.

Ms Peters now owes her partner $48,000.

‘To be honest, I’m not doing so well. “I’m just trying to figure out how I can just pay my mortgage this month,” she said.

‘And possibly buy a birthday and Christmas present for my niece.’

The 44-year-old, who was also busy cleaning the bonds because she was already struggling, broke down in tears as she said she was “emotionally exhausted.”

“I feel like I have nothing left to give at this point,” Ms. Peters said.

‘The scammers really target people who are looking for work and who are having a hard time.

‘I’m only looking for extra work because I need it. So they focus on people who have to earn money, vulnerable people.’

Ms Peters said the whole process had ‘messed her mind’.

“Even as I sit here now, in my head I’m thinking, ‘Am I reporting this as a scam and it wasn’t?’ My head was so fucked up,” she said.

But she wants to warn other Aussies and she can’t believe she fell for this scam after being so smart and ‘self-sufficient’ all her life, including owning her own property.

‘Just be careful. It looks legit, they’re so smart. “I wish there was a way I could prevent it from happening to someone else,” Ms Peters said.

A GoFundMe has been started so Ms Peters can pay her mortgage, groceries and bills – and pay her partner back too.