A Victorian childcare worker who was let go from her job after an injury leave has lost more than $20,000 to scammers over the past six months.
Ashley Grey*, 39, clicked on an advertisement that popped up on Facebook in March and was directed to an official-looking website for financial endeavours, where she soon became embroiled in a “task-based scam” rooted in long-term manipulation.
She thought she was bettering her financial footing but, even after red flags appeared, she kept sending the scammers money.
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Grey has now stopped sending money but continues to receive a daily barrage of messages from the scammers, the latest of which reminded her to send $500 when her next Centrelink payment comes through.
The initial advertisement had taken Grey to a website which claimed to be for “affiliate marketing”, which is when a company pays a third party a commission for sharing unique links to products. However, this is not what Grey was told.
“I’d never heard of it before … then this person called Caroline popped up with a message just saying, ‘Hi, thanks for popping on my page, how can I help you?’,” Grey told 7NEWS.com.au.
“I’m thinking, ‘All right, I’ll just send a message and say hi.’ From then on, she literally messaged me every day saying that this would be a great opportunity to invest.”
Legitimate affiliate marketing does not require a third-party to contribute any funds.
But Grey’s scammers obfuscated the concept, twisting it beyond comprehension and fabricating a need for third-parties to invest money to “unlock” levels of the scheme.
She was then sent a link to a legitimate cryptocurrency app to move forward.
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A National Anti-Scam Centre spokesperson told 7NEWS.com.au: “The use of legitimate cryptocurrency platforms and software is common in these scam types.”
7NEWS.com.au has chosen not to reveal the original link Grey clicked on, but the Anti-Scam spokesperson noted the site showed “similarities and digital footprint cross-over” with other reported scams.
Stolen identity supports the swindle There is a name for this kind of convoluted swindle — the Anti-Scam Centre spokesperson describes it as a “task-based job scam”.
“Generally, these scams try to convince victims that they have a legitimate job. A subset of those legitimate jobs purport to involve ‘business affiliate related tasks’,” the spokesperson said.
With the tasks made overly difficult to understand, “Caroline” offered to help her new colleague with some of the back-end work — all she would need to do is deposit her cash into a cryptocurrency wallet, and then send over her username and password.
Exodus, the company behind the cryptocurrency wallet software they used, warns its software is commonly used by scammers but it is not centrally regulated, so funds uploaded cannot be recovered if a scammer gets access to the account.
In hundreds of messages sighted by 7NEWS.com.au, “Caroline” used a combination of partially AI-generated responses switching between the urgent tone of a busy professional, and the warmer tone of a concerned and caring colleague .
The messages were also sporadically harsh, containing ultimatums, rebukes and rhetorical questions such as “You think this is a joke?” and “It’s unprofessional to read message without any response”.
Ashley Grey* transferred $A20,000 and believed she made more than $US60,000 — then she was told she needed to keep making payments to withdraw her funds. Credit: Supplied When 7NEWS.com.au spoke to Grey, she still referred to the scammer as a US-based woman called “Caroline” and referenced a social media account displaying the same name and photo that her scammer has been using.
7NEWS.com.au reached out to the real Caroline, a social media influencer who confirmed she had never heard of “affiliate marketing”, but it was not the first time she had been contacted in relation to identity theft.
‘I owe nearly $12,000 to friends and family’ The scammers were aware of Grey’s medical situation, lack of employment, dried up WorkCover payments, growing debt, and serious mental health concerns including depression, bipolar and suicidality.
They still continued to pressure Grey to use her superannuation and welfare payments, to apply for a loan or credit card, to sell her belongings and to keep asking her family for money.
“I am slowly losing faith in myself that I WILL see the $60,000 profit. I am TRYING my hardest to get money, but I have asked so many friends and family to help and I owe them so much money, they won’t help me anymore,” Grey wrote to the scammers six months into the swindle.
She told 7NEWS.com.au: “I owe nearly $12,000 to friends and family. I just feel like a freaking idiot.
“I feel like I’ve let myself down.”
Vague terms such as ‘account maintenance’ were used to convince Grey to continue sending money she did not have. Credit: 7NEWS.com.au Leading cyberpsychology and cybersecurity expert Monica Whitty told 7NEWS.com.au: “Society, and even scam victims themselves, tend to blame the victim (or themselves) for being scammed.
“It is one of the few crimes where victims are blamed.
“Victims are often perceived, incorrectly, as stupid and gullible. The reality is that all sectors of society are vulnerable, including the well-educated. Cybercriminals create realistic-looking scams and employ persuasive techniques to trick users.”
Red flags and boiling frogs While the term “red flag” suggests an obvious sign of danger, its figurative use around scams points to increasingly obscure clues.
On the initial website Grey was taken to, the ACCC spokesperson pointed 7NEWS.com.au to “many classic scam red flags”.
“All footer links are non-functional, it has regular pop-ups of alleged earnings of fictional individuals, and asserts 15000+ positive reviews with no ability to see the source of the reviews,” they said.
Whitty says knowledge of red flags can be helpful but said: “Not all red flags are easy to identify and people miss them.
“ Our lives are already very busy and very complicated and if we make it too hard for ourselves (to identify red flags) we’re not going to do it.”
She pointed to another scam prevention warning that is “often unhelpful”: If something seems too good to be true, it probably is.
Similar to the parable of the boiling frog — which jumps free when dropped into a pot of hot water but sits complacently in cold water slowly brought to the boil — Whitty said that scam dangers are often not immediately perceptible.
“It is very rarely too good to be true in the first instance,” Whitty said. “It happens in increments to a point when you can’t recognise that it’s too good to be true.”
The scammers sent Grey long AI-generated messages creating an online relationship seemingly based in sympathy and understanding. Credit: 7NEWS.com.au The scammers were aware of Grey’s debts, mental and physical health concerns, loneliness and vulnerability, and still pushed her further into debt. Credit: 7NEWS.com.au Whitty also noted the “near-miss phenomenon” commonly seen with gambling victims, when the brain can treat a loss as a looming win.
“They find it hard to leave a scam even though they think it most likely is (a scam), because they think maybe it’s not, and maybe they will get their money back,” she said.
IDCARE call just another scam Grey has reported the scam and her eyewatering losses to her bank, ReportCyber and ScamWatch and, while investigations have been lodged, she has received no further direct support in the wake of her ordeal.
Whitty said that aside from IDCARE “which is fabulous and one of the only organisations … that’s quite like it worldwide,” there is otherwise “not a lot of government support systems” for scam victims.
“Unfortunately what it sometimes means for victims … is they might get caught up on the next scam, because of being on the ‘suckers list’,” Whitty said, referencing a commodity sold between scammers listing the personal details of vulnerable scam victims.
Weeks later, that is exactly what happened. Grey got a call from an IDCARE impersonator.
“They want me to pay $100 for them to start my case, I kept telling them that I don’t have that money,” Grey told 7NEWS.com.au, which advised her to contact official channels directly to confirm legitimacy and to avoid sending any more funds.
“IDCARE’s support services are provided free of charge. IDCARE will never ask individuals to pay for assistance, transfer money or provide payment details,” IDCARE interim CEO Charlotte Davidson told 7NEWS.com.au.
“Criminals are also known to conduct ‘money recovery’ scams. They target people who have already been harmed by a scam. They may claim they can recover lost funds or trace stolen money. But they are actually attempting to steal more money from the person.
“Being targeted a second time can be particularly distressing, often compounding the emotional and financial impacts of the original scam.”
Meta makes billions from advertising scams Facebook was only the gateway to Grey’s scam site, but Meta internally projected in late 2024 that it would earn about 10 per cent of its overall annual revenue — or $16 billion — from running advertising for scams and banned goods, Reuters reports internal company documents show.
The documents revealed Meta will only ban advertisers if its automated systems predict the marketers are at least 95 per cent certain to be committing fraud. If the company was less certain – but still believed the advertiser could be a scammer – Meta charged higher ad rates as a penalty.
But Meta will be held to new legislation by the end of next March, when the new Obligations for Digital Platforms under the Scams Prevention Framework comes into effect.
7NEWS.com.au has contacted Meta for comment.
* Not her real name