hi and help!

[Arnold]

Quite likely, I'm afraid. It's a very common scam. Often targeted at au-pairs who tend to be young, unexperienced and therefore vulnerable.
Not that there aren't older and wiser scam victims.

[Bill3]

Hello victoria24 always glad to hear almost victims that got away clean and then still taking the trouble to tell the world about it, so others might prevent worse. Thank You.

If I want to reconstruct this story from the beginning:
How/Where did you get the news about that job?
And where did you apply online? If you applied online that is.
This so we can figure out where they get their victims from, if we can stop that we're even helping more people.

Thank you for your time and good luck in (careful) job hunting.

Bill