A family who have been the victims of online scam

Hi, I do not wish to give my name out to the public as I feel embarrassed, guilty, and overwhelmed with sadness. I would like to start this fundraiser so that I and my family of 4 can support themselves for a while because not only have our life savings been stolen but, all of us are unemployed currently and have no savings or funding to support ourselves. Please help us.

PLEASE NOTE WE DO NOT BLAME ANYONE WITHIN OUR FAMILY FOR WHAT HAS HAPPENED.

We have evidence of the scam if anyone is feeling or thinking as this may be fraudulent. Please contact me if you need evidence of this scam.

This all started on the 26th of August 2022, when my father got a part-time job offer at a company based in Melbourne for a work-from-home job. When he clicked the ad, it lead to a WhatsApp number of a girl named Venus. She then directed me to the website of the company which was not the actual official website.

Every product was different from one another and after the 40th click, she informed me that I would need to create my own account and start the deal clicks from 1 - 40, after finishing the 40th click my father would receive a commission in our bank account. The commission ranged from $150 - 350 which he would receive after the 40th click. At first, there was a set wallet income amount from which the money for the products would be taken out but when he was doing it on his own and around the 5th or 6th click, the system said there were insufficient funds in the wallet. So he was required to top up the wallet as there was a negative balance appearing there, He reached out to Venus questioning why he had to pay his own money in the wallet. She explained that the money received would turn the negative into a positive and he would receive our money after finishing the 40 clicks as well as the commission he had earned. She confirmed that the money he sent to the wallet would be able to withdraw and would appear in our bank account once again.

After the third time of having insufficient funds in the wallet, we then began to contact customer support. In order to reduce his suspicions, Venus invited my father to a WhatsApp group that had various other workers such as him, however, unlike everyone else, we did not receive our money let alone the commission. By this time we had invested over $87,000 Australian dollars into the company including the money, we borrowed from a friend.

After finishing the 40 clicks, we had thought that we could get our money back but we were not. We were told by customer service that we would need to be silver members in order to withdraw, the entirety of our money otherwise, we would not be able to get back our money.

After which, we suspected that this was a fraud and had spent not only our life savings but also borrowed money from a friend. We then started to research and investigate the company background and found that there was a similar company that deals in Digital Marketing based in Melbourne which provides digital presences for smaller businesses. When we mentioned that we wanted to speak to a support member by call, they mentioned that they did not have a customer support number so asked for a company phone number where they then directed us to their official website. This looked similar in terms of the logo and the domain name but the placement of the words was wrong as the fraudulent website. We kept mentioning that we did not want to upgrade and wanted to withdraw our money but they refused and kept telling us to upgrade. Any member from the WhatsApp group chat, we contacted via their number would lead to nowhere as the number did not exist outside of Whatsapp, anyone we messaged kept telling us to upgrade by spending an additional $30k which I couldn't. They kept reassuring us that our money was safe but provided no evidence, the admin of the group chat also kept mentioning the upgrade

In the group chat, the members were receiving money from $50-90K but the screenshots were blurry, and the accounts they were receiving this money from were random letters instead of proper business or individual names. When searching for the fraud website, google kept showing me the official Melbourne website which was an official business separate from the fraud one.

Now we are helpless, as all of our family members are currently unemployed. We have to pay our Mortgage and living expenses as well as the borrowed $30K of my friend.