Serenity Advertising
Complaint 35178 Details

I received an email from a person who said they were looking for people to work for there company from home. This is what the first email read:

Location: Australia, New Zealand
Education: High School/College
Residency or Work-Visa: Needed
Salary: 51,000/year
Bonus: Yes

Hi!

We have a vacant position for everyone who has a few spare hours a day.
For further information, please reply back with your contact details.

We will contact you with further job details.

Best regards.

Sounded easy so I replied thinking it wasn't real what do I have to lose, then the second email came back which read:

Dear Maam,
We are glad to inform you that after we had reviewed your resume we decided to offer you employment with Serenity Advertising Agency. Our company offers you the position of Outside Support Representative.
Now, we’d like you to read carefully the terms of your work and if you happen to have any questions after reading all the information below - please do not hesitate to contact me.
You will begin working from November 1.
Your job title will be Service Manager/Sales.
You are hired as a part-time employee.
Your salary will be from $3,000 base pay + commission.
As for your salary, basically, you will be paid from $3,000.00 for the duties you will be supposed to fulfill. In addition, you will be able to get bonuses as a reward for hard work. You will be able to get 5% per order.
Here is the more distinct definition of the employee plan you may be interested in:
Personal account plan. You will represent personal interests of our company on the territory of your location. You will work with our clients and partners, you will process orders and perform simple online office duties using your own personal checking account for these purposes. For that you will be paid $3,000.00 monthly plus a 5% bonus per order completed.
Business account plan. You will represent our company's business interests on the territory of your location. You will work with dedicated and personal clients only. You will process orders from our business clients and private investors. You will use your business bank account for these purposes. This plan is very important for us and you will receive $5,000.00 monthly plus a 9% bonus per order completed.
As for the benefits, we are free to cancel or modify any of our employee benefit plans at any time.
As for your duties, you will be responsible for building long-term relationships with advertising companies and marketing agents/agencies from around the world. If you happen to have a certain experience concerning this kind of job, then we appreciate this. Our company specializes in buying/selling/exchanging online ad places, creating marketing plans for Internet-oriented projects. We decided to enlarge the territory of accepting sales orders, that’s why we are hiring you for helping us in this. According to the local and international law we cannot accept direct payments and orders from foreign companies or persons. That is why we are offering you to be our official representative with full rights and powers. You will receive orders/payments/billing records/payment invoices/transactions from our clients, customers and/or investors and you will also receive a transaction invoice before every order you have to process or ensure. You are sure to like the job we are offering you as it doesn’t take a lot time but it is paid for very well.

If you decide to accept our offer you will be in such relationship with our company when the employment relationship can be terminated by either one of us at any time for any reason.
This offer will remain open until December, 2011.
Now, as you have read all the information about your duties, terms and your salary carefully, complete APPLICATION FORM & EMPLOYMENT AGREEMENT and wait for the response in 2-3 days
We are glad that you decided to join our organization. We are looking forward to working with you.

I thought wow this sounds easy and great but still thought it was all a bunch of lies until I received more emails from the same
people saying please give us your bank details for payments etc so I gave it stupidly thinking this was an actual JOB!!! I'm a stay at home mum with 3 children under the age of 5 so this job sounded simple I don't have to spend much time away good money for doing simple online tasks!! I done it for almost 2 weeks receiving money from them and paying to some person in Russia thru western union.

I asked questions to cover myself and seemed pretty happy with the answers I was receiving so kept doing it thinking it was legit they said if anyone asks you any questions just say its for personal reasons cause we don't want to pay extra business fee's just say you used the money to send it to a friend again you will get charged extra fee's if you say its for our business.I started to become a bit skeptical but they reassured me that it was all for the business and that soon I would open business here for them under there brand in my location. So of course I was more than thrilled with the idea that I was going to be a business owner I even celebrated with my family thinking that this was real.
Until I received a call from my bank asking me If i knew who was sending the money, where it was coming from etc and I said yes a friend is sending it for personal reasons and they said so how do you know this person and I said "She's a friend of mine we've communicated over the internet and thru the phone" and she thought it would be a good idea to send you all this money and I thought yes she is! I was abit confussed but thought answered there questions exactly how they told me to cause they said they'll do it to see if I'll tell them about the business and then get charged extra fee's. Then he says to me these funds have been stolen from this persons account and its apart of fraud. I thought OMG is he for real and i actually said it as well but thinking I've just lied to him about
the money for reasons way different to what I had originally thought he said Its under investigation so I told him the truth that I was employed by a company who was sending me the money to send out to a person he asked where i was sending it and i had kept every single email, transfer number, every information in regards to my so called JOB!! So i had to quickly take everything to the bank send them every email I had received from these people asap!! The 5% I was receiving as payment from them has to be payed back ASAP which was just over $500 but I am currently waiting on my bank to get back with me with details on what is going to happen next!! Otherwise I may be left with a $14,000 fine which i most certainly can't afford to pay. I most definitely didn't tell anyone besides my mum & partner about this as I was crushed, humiliated and embarrassed beyond comprehension that day while i was with my kids I cried thinking about the hideous crimes I had committed even knowing that I was so blind to the whole thing I started thinking about what people thought about me thinking everyone here knew about it and then thought what if I go to jail!!!
Please don't let anyone get stick like I am or go thru this hopefully someone stops them!!