[Jarred Santos]

A warning to all​

Hello, members! This message was sent in by member @Countryjohn in the hopes of warning all of us against scams:

'I was living in the Philippines from March 2022. I went over to be with my girlfriend whom I had met online and had been to visit pre-covid. I had my life savings in Term deposits and they were due to mature so I started looking for alternative investments. I wanted Term deposits because I knew they were safe. I googled it and found a number of sites that were offering them—mainly banks and the others I ignored. There was a bank in Sydney (ING) that was offering them at .75% better than anyone else. So I checked with ASC, accountants and other financial sites. It was all OK. A friend of mine even went online and checked it as well. I filled in the online form and the next day received a call from "Lawrence" who was employed in the Term Deposit section. He gave me his number and said to call him directly instead of going through the switchboard. Maybe that should have been a red light but that had happened to me before so I wasn't alarmed. He explained it all to me and emailed the forms through. It was all ING bank with ABN etc on it. I filled them in and returned them. He called to say he had them and it was all good to go.

He gave me the bank details to transfer them through to. I transferred the money through and received a receipt from him. No pressure, phone numbers, ABN, everything lined up. I felt safe and happy.

Then things fell apart. My girlfriend and I split up. A friend of ours was shot dead in the streets of Manila. I moved out of our home and found a rental about an hour away in the outer suburbs of Manila. I met other people, and things were great. I went with my newfound friends to a weekend away in the mountains. On Saturday, a typhoon hit Manila. My place never flooded, according to neighbours so I wasn't worried about the flooding. Until I was in church on Sunday morning when I got a text from friends telling me the whole area was a metre and a half underwater. Apparently, on Saturday night a wall along the side of the drain had fallen over with the force of the water. Friends got in and cleaned things up for me as I couldn't get back because of the floodwaters.

I lost my laptop, family photos over a couple of generations, reference and study books and some personal documents. Plus the CD player, DVD player and all my CDs and DVDs were full of water. A week later I wrote my car off. A week later when I tried to get some money from my term deposits I was told by the bank they didn't have my money. It turned out I had been "googled" into a mirrored website. Everything was the same as the correct site. I was advised by the bank to report it to ACCC and also Scamwatch. I lodged reports with details of bank accounts that I had screenshots of at the time.

The following weekend I went back up into the mountains with friends with m y new PC and my backup drive etc. I was going for a week and knew I would have had free time to set up my new PC. I was robbed of my PC, phone and backup drive. Could things get any worse? Yes. They could.

I rang the NSW police as they had received the report from Scamwatch and I wanted to know if there was a chance that I would get anything back from them. "What report?" they asked. It turned out they had "lost" it. I was not happy. Then followed a series of emails to Scamwatch and the police with nothing happening from them as neither would take responsibility for it. They claimed it had never been lodged. I had a receipt. No, that was on my laptop that had been stolen. It didn't matter if it was on the cloud. Just before I had been hit by the typhoon, I had synced everything on the cloud, so I knew I would be safe. No, that had gone wrong. All my data was corrupt. It was possibly caused by a noisy internet connection which corrupted everything. No backups anywhere! I gave up with Scamwatch and NSW police as neither wanted to do anything.

What else could go wrong? November had been a busy month of things going wrong. I also helped out a friend with about $360 for a mortgage problem. She had also offered me to move into the lower floor of her bungalow. I paid her the equivalent of $800 for the rent. She was getting the roof repaired, and then I could move in. That was repaired, and the next day she told me she had changed her mind and her family was moving in. I asked for the money back, and she said she had used it to pay the builder and would pay me back when she was earning money next month when she was moving to Brunei for two years as a contract chef. I'm still waiting for that. Scammed again. End of my sorrows? No, in early January, I broke some bones in my foot. I was on crutches and also had a big lump on my elbow which needed removing urgently. Into the hospital with a quote of about $600. I hired a housekeeper/maid to help me when I got home. When it came time to leave I was given a bill of the equivalent of $3,000. In the Philippines, you cannot leave the hospital without first paying the bill. I left but not without incident. Security had aimed a weapon at me which my quick-thinking housekeeper had prevented me from getting shot in the back. She gave the security guard nearly $40, and he put the gun away. That was sorted a few days later with me paying an additional $400, and that was to be the end of the story. Life is very cheap in the Philippines, and the money to put the gun away was more than a week's wages.

I was planning on flying home in early February for a few weeks and had a return ticket booked, but the airline wanted a certificate to fly because of my broken foot and operation on my elbow. No doctor would give me one. By now, my depression was really bad. I needed help urgently, and that was available back in Australia, but I couldn't fly. Finally, after paying an additional $400, I got a flight at the end of March. I had been living in my car as I had run out of money, and the pension was not due for another week. After arriving back in Melbourne, I found my way onto a Japanese shopping site. I was offered help to set up a shop and get trading. I even had a couple of video chats with the lady, and in one of them, she showed me around her beauty shop in Melbourne. I checked out the name, and it was legitimate. So I put $1,000 of my pension into the platform as everything had checked out OK. Then the pressure started when I had an order for about $8,000 worth of stock. I had to raise about $6,000, which I had no hope of. Then I received a threatening letter telling me that I was in trouble and needed to pay up. The letter is attached. I was already very suspicious because of the size of the order, and this clearly was confirmation. I blocked everything and reported it to the appropriate authorities.

Since then, I have decided to find scammers and warn people about them. I have found scams where people such as Gina Reinhardt, Sir Richard Branson, John Joward, Elon Musk, and Keiffer Sunderland are all suggesting to get into their just-released platforms to make thousands of dollars in just a few weeks from as little as $250 USD. It's a scam.

Coles, Bunnings, Woolworths, Big W and Target advertise for staff to enter into an employment scenario with them. The idea is to do surveys which the person is given in packets of 40. You keep clicking on these, which is meant to lift the profile of these sites on Google and social media. Then you get one that you have to pay for. You put the money in, and it's gone. None of these businesses are legitimately advertising for staff. I even asked one of the people who had an Australian number if it was falsifying hits received on businesses, and she admitted it was. I have tried to notify Scamwatch etc, with no real way to report this scam. I did, however, find a computer shop in Melbourne that is prepared to publish phone numbers of known scammers. I have submitted 12 to him so far, and that number is increasing.

I am continually looking for new scams to report to the authorities. If it helps someone, then it's worth it. I am looking for work, but until then, I will send scamming sites and report them. They scammed me out of my life savings, and now it's my turn to report them.

Regards,
@Countryjohn