Phoenix woman loses $110K to job scam in one week

PHOENIX (AZFamily) —Letterboxd is a reputable and legitimate company based out of New Zealand. Members of Letterboxd can, among other things, rate and review films.

So, when Rachel got a text message from someone claiming to be a recruiter from Letterboxd, it got her attention. “The text messages said, basically, are you looking for a job? We can give you this, this and this per month,” Rachel told On Your Side.

The so-called recruiter said she found Rachel’s resume on the popular employment website Indeed and claimed that Rachel could make up to $9,000 a month by watching movie trailers sent from Letterboxd.

Rachel says the only requirement to get started was to deposit $100 using Cryptocurrency.

Then, after watching a few movie trailers, she would get her $100 returned plus a nice commission. “I would do the 30 movie clips, and at the end I would get my deposit back and extra money.”

Rachel says her new job seemed legit because she actually received and deposited her commission into her personal bank account.

“I took that money and put it in my bank account. I converted it back to cash. You know, it was real,” she said of her commission.

But Rachel was then told that the more money she deposited, the higher the commission she would receive. “I was like, great. I’m going to make a lot of money here. So, I put in $3,000.”

However, after making that deposit, she was told there was a glitch during the transaction, which brought her balance into the negative.

As a result, Rachel was told to deposit more money to get her out of the negative, and the company could send a set of 40 more movie clips.

Rachel complied by sending just over $4,471. And like she was told, she got her commission after watching all of those movie trailers.

“I made, like, $1,000 within a couple of minutes,” she said. “Wow. So you’re thinking, this is easy money,” On Your Side’s Gary Harper said. Rachel replied, “Yes.”

At this point, Rachel was unable to cash out, but she kept making deposits so she could keep getting movie trailers and increasing her commissions.

In all, Rachel deposited close to $110,000. Eight of those transactions occurred in just one week. Her last deposit was a big one, just over $62,400.

However, when she was asked for even more money, she realized the so-called company she was dealing with wasn’t Letterboxd at all, but scammers.

Harper asked, “You were pretty comfortable with initially sending more money to this company, Why?”

Rachel said, “Because 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.”

Remember, scammers frequently troll job employment sites looking for their victims and posing as potential employers or recruiters.

There are several warning signs you’re dealing with a scammer that you need to know about:

• All communication is done through text messages. For example, Rachel was contacted through WhatsApp. If you’re asked to send or forward any money, it’s a scam.
• If email is being used, look very closely at the email address. The scammer will use an address that is very similar to a legitimate company’s address, but it’s not.
• If you’re asked to do what feels like meaningless tasks for a large amount of money in return, it’s most likely a scam.

The Federal Trade Commission has more information on job scams. Click/tap here to learn more.

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