'It was real': Arizona woman warns of convincing scam that cost her over $110,000

An Arizona woman is warning about an online scam after people impersonating a New Zealand-based company tricked her out of over $100,000.

The woman in question, who goes by Rachel, explained to On Your Side that she was approached through an employment website by someone who she believed to be part of Letterboxd, a company whose users can rate and review films.

She was offered a job making up to $9,000 a month just by watching movie trailers sent to her by the company. To begin, the recruiter said, she had to make a $100 deposit using cryptocurrency.

After doing so and watching the trailers, she would get the money back plus a commission. Rachel accepted and initially got her money back plus the extra amount promised. "I took that money and put it in my bank account. I converted it back to cash. You know, it was real," she said.

The supposed contact at the company then told Rachel that the more money she deposited, the higher the commission she would get. That led her to deposit $3,000. She was then told there was a glitch in the system and asked to deposit more money, to which she also complied.

Rachel again received the amount back plus a sizable commission, increasing her trust in the scheme. "I made, like, $1,000 within a couple of minutes," she said.

At that point she became unable to cash out, but kept making deposits to get trailers and increase her commissions. This led her to deposit close to $110,000 in the span of a week before realizing she was being scammed.

Asked why she was so comfortable depositing such amounts in the first place, she said: "I believed them. I believed that I just need to finish the set of 40, and I'd get all my money back, all my deposits back, plus all the commissions. And it would be like a huge payday for me. I want to let people know, really, that this is out there and, you know, to be aware of it, especially there's so many people looking for a job and they're very vulnerable. As I was, I was very vulnerable."

The FTC has published a guideline with advice to avoid falling for common scams in this link.