Ruby signed up to earn £150 a day reviewing films… but it was a scam that rocked her marriage and cost her £80,000. And more and more people are falling victim to this cruel and ingenious new fraud

Ruby Robinson always looks forward to sitting down with her feet up in front of a movie at the end of a long day as a credit analyst.

So when a text message appeared on the mother of two’s phone in March that appeared to be from the job website Reed advertising work as a freelance film critic, she was immediately intrigued.

Ruby, 38, had signed up to the site and updated her status to ‘looking for part-time work’ at the beginning of this year to earn extra income outside of office hours.

She had received several text messages from the company, but so far there were no openings that would fit into her busy schedule of juggling a full-time job and caring for two teenagers.

But getting paid to watch and review movies sounded ideal.

Working hours were flexible and it was claimed you could earn up to £200 a day.

She responded to the text message and received a message on WhatsApp from a woman named Julia, who claimed she worked at Vue Cinemas.

She explained that Ruby would be working for Vue Cinemas, using the “affiliate platform” Google Movie Reviews, to perform “day-to-day tasks.” Each task takes 20 to 30 minutes and costs between £30 and £40.

Ruby, from Milton Keynes, has signed up. But what she didn’t know was that she was the target of a growing scam that police forces across the country have been warning about in recent months.

Within ten weeks, she would lose her savings and be bullied into borrowing money from family and friends, in a deception that left her ostracized by her loved ones.

You can make money reviewing films online through real platforms like UK Film Review, which pays accredited writers £3 per review of short and indie films.

However, for most roles you will need to demonstrate that you are a good writer with an encyclopedic knowledge of films and TV series.

After registering on what she now suspects was a fake platform called Google Movie Reviews and providing her personal information, Ruby began completing tasks.

This involved clicking on images of movie posters, such as Barbie, and clicking Finish.

She was not asked to write anything about the films or watch them. The money she had earned appeared in the top right corner of the screen.

At the end of the first day, Ruby collected her first commission and £300 was deposited into her bank account. She says: ‘The job seemed simple. I had received the money and thought, ‘Let’s keep going.’

Ruby was added to a WhatsApp group where she could share her experiences with 40 other new recruits. Many, based on their profile pictures, also appeared to be parents.

Ruby says, “Everyone introduced themselves and seemed friendly. Looking back now, I don’t know if they were real people, but it seemed very real at the time.’

When she logged into her Google Movie Review account a day later, Ruby was asked to deposit £50 into her account to start her tasks, and was told she would receive this back once she had paid out her commission.

She says: ‘It didn’t seem too much and it was worth it – I had received £300 the day before.’

Ruby was told she had to pay to unlock the ability to review certain movie titles that paid a larger commission.

She says: ‘I paid between £400 and £500 to unlock quite a few films, thinking I would get my money back. The commission matched the demand for the film I was told, and my overall earnings grew.

‘Then it became very expensive. It should have been a warning sign, but they do it so gradually that at no point did I think anything was wrong.”

Ruby was told she couldn’t cash out her earnings until she completed 30 tasks, but the last few cost a lot more to unlock.

‘One cost £17,000 but at the time I had put so much money into it and I saw I owed £40,000 so I decided to try and raise the money. I was struggling to get money because I had used up my savings and borrowed from friends.”

To review her latest film, called Barbarian, Ruby was told she would have to pay £23,547, but would get her money back and £1,633 in commission.

She says: ‘In the WhatsApp group everyone said that they had experienced the same thing, but got their money back. I was desperately trying to get the money together because I had already poured so much into it. I struggled, but managed to pay for it.”

Yet Ruby’s relief turned to horror when she was told that as her commission was worth £50,000, she would have to complete another five tasks.

“I told the company I had exhausted all possible resources. I took out loans and couldn’t continue. They said they could give me a 50 percent discount. But more than £14,503 still had to be paid.

‘I could tell something wasn’t right so I messaged Julia and said, ‘I don’t feel comfortable and I feel like I’m being scammed.’ She said, “How can I scam you, you could choose to sue us.”

At the time, Ruby had used £10,000 of her savings, taken out two loans worth £10,000, put £5,000 on her credit card and borrowed £4,500 from two friends.

Desperate for answers, Ruby took to the WhatsApp group where others said they had had similar problems but had finally been paid out.

She was the only person with ongoing problems, she was told. She adds: ‘I spoke to a lady from the group, a mother of three who worked in fashion and design, who I thought was my friend. I told her about my daily problems, but she said I was wrong.’

Ruby opened up to her husband Matt, who was concerned about the legitimacy of the company, but caught up in the lie, she convinced him it had to be real.

She says: ‘I said I needed £6,000 to withdraw £85,000. He said it sounded like a bit of a scam, but I sounded pretty confident and because others were having similar problems, he gave me the money.”

By the end of April, Ruby had handed over £59,428 to the scammers.

She says: ‘I kept the extent of it to myself, but my husband ran a credit report and saw I had taken out two £10,000 loans.

‘Then the questions started and he found out how much I had borrowed from friends and the bank. He was very upset to say the least.”

Ruby didn’t turn to her bank of Action Fraud because she still couldn’t face the fact that she may have been scammed. Instead, she asked Julia for an explanation, but to her horror the agent had blocked her on WhatsApp.

‘I was also kicked out of the WhatsApp group because I was causing a commotion. I couldn’t eat or sleep and didn’t know where to go.’

Ruby’s debts began to mount as the short-term loans she had taken out cost £1,480 a month to repay, which she could not afford.

While working to raise money, Ruby was lured into another scam in late April. A man she considered a friend and whom she met online years ago suggested she invest in cryptocurrency if she wanted to make some quick money.

She was told the investment was in ‘digital asset mining’ and over the following weeks she borrowed a further £10,000 to invest.

When she realized this too was a scam, she was recommended a money recovery agency to help her recover money from her banks. However, after sending £2,500, she suspects the company was also fake.

Ruby is now facing a mountain of debt and has lost more than £80,000, and she doesn’t know how she will pay it all off.

“I can’t believe how quickly it all went wrong,” she says. ‘I don’t recognize myself anymore. I’m usually smart and can’t understand how I got to this point.”

A spokesperson for Vue Cinemas said: ‘Vue would never ask anyone for any form of payment or banking details as part of an application process.

‘We urge anyone who receives such messages not to respond to these requests and to contact police.’

Keith Rosser, director of Reed Screening, said: “We are sorry to hear of this recent incident.

‘We take the security of our websites very seriously and note that these types of scams usually target job seekers directly.

‘We encourage people to look for signs of potential scams when looking for a job.

‘This may include receiving an offer immediately without having applied, the fact that you are contacted via WhatsApp, the fact that you have to pay to work for a company, or that a company has confidential information. before you hire someone.’

• All names have been changed.

j.beard@dailymail.co.uk