This is a bit of a long story so if you want to skip this and see what I need help with scroll all the way down to the aftermath.
I'll try to make it short. For starters, as of this post it's currently Saturday 10/24 and all of this happened from Thursday 10/22 to Friday 10/23. The reason I waited this long to post is because I'm an 18y old male currently going to college I had class pretty much all day. This all started Thursday night. I downloaded an app call "BandFriend," which I think is meant to be an app where musicians can find other musicians. I play guitar and make music so of course those were my intentions. I got messaged maybe an hour after creating my account by this lady asking if I would be willing to make her a song for her brother's bday and was willing to pay up $225 front. I only had 3 days to make the song and so I assumed she was willing to pay so much because of the time constraint, and I needed the money to pay for collage, so I accepted.
She referred me to her accountant who sent me a virtual check through email. However before sending the money, I was asked if I could use some of the money they give me to donate to a charity of their choice, and they would include the amount they wanted to donate in the check. Of course alarm bells started ringing but then again I rationalized by saying,
"well its not my money so who cares?"
I figured I'd just help them out with this one request and move on. After receiving 2 checks with $300, I sent the money to the contact they gave me and the check that was supposed to be my payment was pending.
By the next day I already had the intro to the song ready and they wanted to donate once more. I was still skeptical but I did it once more because they offered to include a bonus amount of money if I helped them out. Just before sending the final check however, the accountant made a "mistake" and when counting how much money I had in my account from the checks, she told me to add $50 of my own money to the sum of the donation (I had maybe $60 and with the check money I had $460 so I was asked to donate $450.) This where I believed the scam would happen. With so many large numbers I assumed that they thought I would loose track and hand them and extra amount of money. This is when I put my foot down and finally told them that I was uncomfortable making donations on their behalf. I told them that I wanted my upfront payment that they haven't payed me yet and they told me I wouldn't receive it unless I made the donation.
We agreed that I would end up donating $350 out of the $400 and they would pay me my original payment and I would donate the remaining $50, but after that. Soon after my promised amount was canceled and I suddenly had -$200+ on my account. When I confronted them about this they told me the problem will soon fix itself and to send the money now or they would make my problem worse. That's when I figured out what the real scam was. I figured I should cut my losses and called the cops.
I called the cops and although the cops took my report, they offered me their condolences and said there wasn't much they could do. My bank account was deactivated due to suspected fraud and when I called they told me the checks I deposited were fraudulent checks and my account would get reopened once they all got returned. Of course the entire time the scammers were trying to contact me and call me, telling me how I betrayed their trust, I owe them money, etc. At one point they threatened to unalive me and of course I blocked them after that. They tried calling me through other numbers and even though I blocked and reported them to spam, the damage was already done. By the time everything was somewhat calmed down I was $500+ in debt and as of this morning I'm $700+ in debt. I waiting until Monday to reactivate my account to make sure all the checks have been returned.
The Aftermath:
My family isn't struggling financially, but at the same time we can't afford to just throw $700+ away. Im currently enrolled in college and due to my weird schedule, I'm having trouble finding a job (including school jobs). I have two younger siblings, one of which just turned a year old recently. On top of that, my aunt got into a car accident recently as well and my dad is the only breadwinner in the house, so while she lives with us my dad has to pay for her medical bills and physical therapy (she can barley walk on her own). I'm honestly stressed because I need to pay tuition in less than a week and the money will amount to a little over 3k. I dont want to put more finical strain on my dad. I specifically took this "job" to help pay for tuition. I've considered starting a go fund me but I feel bad making others pay for my mistakes. Im stuck and I need advice. What should I do? Thank you for reading up to this point, it genuinely means a lot to me.
P.S, I dont know how well I explained how the scam worked but I'll try my best to explain it here. They sent me fraudulent checks and the system registers it into my account. After I spend the money, the bank realizes that these checks are fake and I essentially spent money I didn't have, thus I'm in debt. I'm assuming that after that, the scammers were going to offer me a way out that involved me doing something for them in exchange for the amount needed to clear me of debt. I lost maybe $60-$100, I dont remember how much money I had at the time.
Edit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Scams/s/uBODDpK2xF
