Victorian woman loses $35,000 in online scam, shattering wedding dreams

A young Victorian woman has had her wedding dreams dashed after losing $35,000 in an elaborate online side hustle scam.

The woman, who has chosen to remain anonymous, was looking to earn a little bit of money on the side when a Facebook post popped up that piqued her interest.

She and her partner were due to get married soon, so a little bit of extra cash to spend on their wedding was enticing.

The post was an advertisement for an online job with Virtuoso, a legitimate travel company, writing fake reviews for hotels, which she thought she could easily do.

A full-time salary of over $100,000 a year was promised.

“I decided to message the person who created the post,” the woman told 7NEWS.com.au.

This simple decision would be one that would prove life-changing.

The woman sold the job to her as an “online side hustle” for mums or people who want to work from home.

She was told she could make good commission off the reviews, and was quickly put in touch with a “mentor” by the name of April.

The pair chatted over WhatsApp and she quickly got to work.

She began writing reviews using a specific program however every so often a pop-up would appear on her screen saying there was “insufficient funds”.

April told her she needed to “temporarily” recharge her review account and that once she completed all the reviews, she would get it back.

The disability and aged care support worker could only get through a few reviews before the pop-up would reappear asking for more money.

By the time she had completed all the reviews she had spent about $300. The money, plus $50 in commission, was transferred back to her the next day through a Crypto trading platform.

Unfortunately, she took this as a sign the company was real.

“At that time I was just happy to get my money back,” she said.

“This is how they reel you in ... that’s what stupidly made me gain their trust.”

She went ahead and began reviewing more hotels, encountering the same pop-up issue as before.

Again she was told to keep paying the recharge fees with the promise she would get all of it back, plus a commission after she finished.

The price-tag of each pop-up kept increasing exponentially and when she voiced her concerns to April, was told she just needed to finish writing the reviews.

“I said this isn’t fair I don’t like this and she said ‘well you know you’ve already gone this far, do you want your money back or not?’,” the woman said.

“I (was) pressured into continuing and by the time I completed my reviews I had spent just under $35,000.”

Once she was finished, she was then informed she needed to pay $10,000 to upgrade to a “pro” reviewing account.

A further $26,000 was then required to actually withdraw it.

“I said ‘I don’t have another $10,000 plus $26,000, I’m not rich’,” she said.

“It came to the point where I realised I’d been scammed.”

She was then blocked by the people from the company she had been messaging.

She called the police and her bank but was told there was nothing they could do.

She said she was “so ashamed” by her actions and was embarrassed to tell her partner as the pair had been saving that money for their wedding.

“I was thinking ‘what have I done?’,” she said.

“It took a little while for me to even tell my partner.

“I was so ashamed and it was our money and we were supposed to start planning our engagement party and our wedding and I was supposed to buy a car.”

She said she wanted to share what happened to her in a bid to prevent the same thing from happening to someone else.

“I want to spread the awareness ... there are so many other forms of scams around and it needs to stop.”

In a statement to 7NEWS.com.au, the real Virtuoso said it was not involved with the people responsible for the scam.

“Following a report by 7NEWS ... we became aware of an unfortunate scam that falsely uses Virtuoso’s identity to prey upon victims, harming Virtuoso’s good name and positive reputation in the process,” a spokesperson said.

“As scams become more sophisticated, we continue to educate our network on how to identify false claims such as this one.

“We encourage anyone interested in Virtuoso employment opportunities to contact us directly via our website.”