Member

I am resending my original complaint below: I was contacted by someone through What's App earlier in the week about a job opportunity for a part time job supposedlly through Trivago. After going through a relatively easy training session, I was able to start "working". The job felt like mostly busy work that you had to 1st connect your Trivago account you created to an ewallet. Basically, they made you deposit minimum of $100 each day into your Trivago account and then 3 times/day they basically gave you busy work that they claimed was helping their clients by clicking on items on their site. At the end of each session, you would earn funds for your clicking and be required to withdraw all the funds (your deposited funds, plus any funds you earned for session). They had bonuses for completing tasks a number of days in a row or if you deposited more funds, you would receive deposit bonuses. Each time I completed these tasks, despite it feeling like busy work for a long con, each day, I wanted to believe it was a real job and I was able to withdraw my funds each day, so figured no harm, no foul. Yesterday, they had a supposed one year 2 day celebration where they were giving out prizes for higher deposit bonuses. I increased my deposit to $300 as I was getting sucked up with the excitement surrounding the one year anniversary. The person who brought me on board, also invited me to join a group of other fellow employees (hindsight being 20/20 it was obviously all part of the ploy), they were all talking up all the money they were making by increasing their deposit with the bonuses. The next day I increased my deposit up to $1,400 in order to get more deposit bonuses and each time, I was able to withdraw my funds; plus whatever money they paid me for what they described as my tasks for the day. A few times, something went wrong with my account while completing my tasks and my account would go negative and I was not able to finish my tasks. When that happened, they would describe it as me being lucky, but I never felt lucky b/c in order to complete my task, I had to send more funds to my account, finish my tasks, and then I could withdraw all my funds. Again, I still felt like they were setting me up for long con, but I was blinded by all the money I thought I was making as this was clearly the best part time job I ever had (or so I thought). Until today, when I made my 1st $1,800 bonus and I received my deposit bonus and they moved me up to VIP2. I completed my tasks and made my withdrawals and sent $1,800 back again as usual. This time, my account had an issue and went negative to minus $2,500. I told them I didn't have funds to deposit $2,500 and could they please just let me finish my task so I could withdraw my funds. They said no and if I didn't finish my tasks, I would ruin things for their clients and my account would be in danger of getting flagged and I could risk losing all the funds in my account. Clearly, they were using scare tactics to get me to send more funds, so I figured let me send more funds, finish my tasks and take my money out and stop working for them. However, after sending another $2,500 ($4,300 in total today), after 2 clicks, my account immediately went to minus $5,000 and I knew I was in trouble. I reached out to help desk (they could not have been less helpful!) and told them my account was now at minus $5,000 and there was no possible way I could send another $5,000 to them. I asked them to please bring my account back to positive so I could finish my tasks and withdraw my funds and be done with them. They said their hands were tied and their was nothing they could do. I asked them whether I could speak to a Manager and they said since my account was flagged, I couldn’t speak with a Manager. I then told them that they were stealing my money and if they didn’t release my funds, I would be forced to go to the authorities, they didn’t care and they almost scoffed at me and dared me to or told me I would do what I had to do. Then they told me if I was going to do that, I should let them know so they could have their attorneys get ready on their end. Simultaneously, I told the people in the group chat what was going on, but my suspicion that many or all of them were plants to convince people to send more money just grew from this point as they continued to tell me I was crazy and I should just send the money, etc. The straw that broke the camel’s back for me as much as anything today (not really, the $$$ hurts the most) was when I went to the horrible person who brought me into this thing thinking/hoping that maybe she could help me, despite always thinking that most likely she was in on it as well, when I told her what happened, like everyone else, she turned it around and blamed me for the issue and said instead of being untrustworthy and blaming everyone else, maybe it is my fault and called me a cowardly loser. Just wow, so clearly she is in on it as well and I don’t know whether you can help me or not, but I can show you all the back and forth and prove the two Coinbase transactions I sent them today and show you how they were holding my funds hostage unless I sent more money and I just couldn’t and wouldn’t do it. Please help me!