To earn extra money for his mum's umrah, son takes job rating airlines only to lose $413 in scam

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 the name of a real company that the scammer used to trick victims.

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.

The Stomper said: "I just feel stupid. Nobody should go through what I have.

"I went into this with the best intentions just getting extra money for my mum and after that, I was going to stop."