Thiago conta que imediatamente seguiu à casa do dono, viu que estava vazia - tinham se mudado - e foi à logo à polícia, local e federal, que não se interessou pelo caso e nem tomou o seu depoimento.
O caso agora está sendo investigado pelas autoridades.
The Brisbane-based student exchange agency Tu Futuro en Australia, who bring students from Latin America to Australia, is involved in a scandalous case which has mainly been discussed over social media.
Ex-funcionário da agência Tu futuro en Australia Source: Courtesy
Apparently the owners of the agency, a couple, have left the country and abandoned the business sometime between Christmas and the beginning of January.
They have disappeared from the country, having abandoned the agency at some point between Christmas and the beginning of January.
It is believed that hundreds of Latin Americans, including about 20 Brazilians and one Portuguese man married to a Brazilian woman, may have lost the money they paid the agency to obtain their Australian visas, health insurance, accommodation, and enrolment in the schools. 
A Facebook group was created – "Afectados de Tu Futuro en Australia" – and the representative of those affected in Colombia told the SBS Spanish-language show that they estimate $800,000 dollars have been lost in payments to the agency.
Account suspended Source: www
He reported that both he and his brother paid $13,000 for a service that was never delivered.
Today we speak with Tiago Deoti, a former employee of the agency in Brisbane, who tells us how this saga unfolded.
Tiago tells of how the owner told him directly at the beginning of January that he would not be refunding the Brazilians.
Tiago tells us that he found the owner’s house empty, and went straight to the local and federal police, who were not interested in the case and didn’t even took a statement.
From what we understand, the news first came on the 5th of January from a Brazilian on the Facebook group Brazilians in Sydney, Tiago Deoti, from Sao Paulo.
Good afternoon Tiago, how are you? Welcome to SBS.
Tiago: Good afternoon, thank you for the interview. I’m very happy to be here, and I hope that I can help more and more Brazilians as well.
Beatriz: What a story. You worked at the agency Tu Futuro en Australia, and from what I can see you were the first one to alert anyone that the owners had left. Tell us how those last few weeks at the agency Tu Futuro en Australia went down.
Tiago: I started working there around the beginning of April last year, 2016. It was actually a well-established agency in the Latin American market. They worked in over 15 Latin American countries for about 5 years. They hired me to open up to the Brazilian and Portuguese market, I worked with both countries, and everything was going really well. We brought many people here, there are already clients in Brisbane who are here studying who have in fact already renewed their visa. It was during those last weeks that I started to notice that something was going wrong. When I saw that they were delaying payments and it was taking a long time to get a response to an enquiry here, a question there. The agency was also part of a large multi-story house and they ended up moving to the garage. They used the house as a place to accommodate students and the agency itself moved to the garage. I started to feel that maybe something was going wrong. And this is when I was no longer selling for the agency - I wasn’t bringing more people to the agency after this moment. I left the agency at the beginning of December, I left someone else in my place and everything was fine. But then that’s when the problems started. Some Brazilians started getting in touch with me saying ‘Hey Tiago, I know you’re no longer working there, but they’re not responding to me, they’re not telling me about my process, I don’t know what’s happening.’ So I called the owners and they said ‘yes, we are going to pay, don’t worry everything is fine.’ This was at the end of December.
Beatriz: When was the last time you managed to get in contact with the owners of the agency Tu Futuro en Australia?
Tiago: It was at the beginning of January. I said to them ‘so what’s happening, are you going to finalise the payments, or are you going to return the money, what are you going to do?’ That’s when they told me not to call them anymore. They said ‘Please don’t call us anymore, we don’t have any more money - don’t bother.’
Beatriz: They said that they didn’t have any more money?
Tiago: Yes, he – the owner of the company –said ‘Look, don’t call me anymore, it’s over. We can’t ay anything anymore. Tell the clients that we’re sorry but there is nothing we can do. We don’t have the money to pay anything to anyone’, and they disappeared. They haven’t spoken to me since. They blocked me on Whatsapp, they blocked my phone number, on fFacebook – everything. So that was the last time I spoke to them.
Beatriz: So they did actually tell you that they did not have the money and they were not going to pay.
Tiago: Yes, yes exactly.
Beatriz: You went to their home and the house was completely empty?
Tiago: After they blocked me and weren’t answering my calls, I went to their house to speak with them in person, because the Brazilians were desperate. I went to their house with some Braziian clients and we found out that they were no longer at the house, the house was empty and on the door of the house there was a card of an international moving agency. The house looked like a house that have been quickly abandoned, you know, people drop stuff everywhere, there was a chair overthrown, there were papers on the ground and children’s clothes, it looks like they left in a hurry.
Beatriz: What day was it exactly in January when you last spoke with them?
Tiago: It would have been the 2nd or 3rd of January.
Beatriz: And when did you go to their house?
Tiago: On the same day. I spoke with them in the morning, then I tried to call again, he didn’t answer, I went to the house and he was no longer there. It was a call over whatsapp, so they may have answered from anywhere in the world, over the internet. I tried to call again over the regular phone line, it just rang out. This led me to believe that they were still in Australia, because the phone was at least ringing, but they didn’t answer by local phone, only over whatsapp.
Beatriz: So this was 2 or 3 January, and then you went to the police?
Tiago: Yes, so I hung up, they were no longer answering, I went to their house, as I said the house was empty, I left the house and went straight to the police and they told me that this happens every day in Australia and unfortunately, they couldn’t do anything to help.
Beatriz: And what was your expectation for what the police would do with your statement?
Tiago: At the very least I thought that the police might accompany me to the airport, or might go to the airport themselves to investigate and to to prevent them from leaving the country, or do some urgent action. But we ended up finding out that the police here aren’t exactly everything we had imagined. They don’t have all the glamour we thought they would have. In Brazil I would even understand, all of this would have resulted in nothing there. But here it was a real surprise that they did nothing.
Beatriz: So it’s not currently known if they did leave Australia, and if do, when they left or what flight they took, or the destination?
Tiago: No, no one has any idea and if the police were to investigate this it might not be so hard to find out as they have 3 passports – from Argentina, Spain and Australia. She was Spanish/Australian.
Beatriz: On social media there are people who say that they know where the owners are right now.
Tiago: Yes, there is a lot of speculation on social media. Since it was over 150 Latinos, not just Brazilians but Latinos – Colombians, Venezuelans – there are lots of people searching, trying to get information about where they might be. So the CV of one of the owners was found. She was looking for work in Dubai on a website and on that CV it says that her last job ended in December 2016 as the Director of Tu Futuro en Australia. She was already looking for work in December in Dubai. So that’s what everyone is speculating– perhaps they’re in Dubai. The other theory is that they went to New Zealand because that is the destination which the international moving agency works with, then they saw the CV looking for work in Dubai, so now we think maybe she is looking for work as a nurse in Dubai on this website.
Beatriz: We are speaking with Tiago Deote, the first person to denounce the disappearance of the owners of Tu Futuro en Australia. Do you know how many Brazilians have been disadvantaged?
Tiago: Yes, I know all of them. In Brazil we have 6 to 8 Brazilians between single people and couples, its 2 or 3 couples if I’m not mistaken, and 5 single people. Here in Australia we have between 10-15 people who arrived here and their accommodation wasn’t sorted, they were to receive some money back and they haven’t received it. This is the refundable fee that the agency charged in advance. This money should have been returned.
Beatriz: This is the famous $500 dollars that they charged to accept the client?
Tiago: Exactly, exactly. So those $500, between $150-$500, were to be returned but they never were. That’s aside from the accommodation that they didn’t pay for, so when the clients arrived they didn’t have a place to stay. We had to try and help everyone as best we could and thank God we were able to accommodate everyone.
Beatriz: You also mentioned on social media that, in December, you were able to get the owners to repay a few Brazilians?
Tiago: Yes, that’s right. We managed to get at least 2 Brazilians refunded, and those two Brazilians are doing their exchange program without a problem. We think this was a bit of a pre-emptive move, like ‘okay, here is your money, now don’t talk to us until January’. So they paid those two back and then they disappeared. But yes, there were 2 who were able to get a refund.
Beatriz: Do you have an estimate of how much money the Brazilians have lost to the agency?
Tiago: Look, the calculation is a bit hard to do. Well, its between $5,000-$7,000 per person, so we’re estimating at least $40,000 to $50,000, about that. And when you include everything – accommodation, all that – at least $50,000 just for the Brazilians. But the estimates are more then $500,000 with all the Latinos.
Beatriz: A Facebook group was created for those who were affected by Tu Futuro en Australia. Are you in touch with other Latin American students who were affected?
Tiago: No. I know about this group but I haven’t joined it. There are some other Latino groups on Skype too. I did join one of these groups to talk to them, but they didn’t want to deal with me as they knew that I had worked for the agency so I ended up leaving that group. I think they misunderstood something. There are these other Facebook groups but I haven’t joined them at this point.
Beatriz: I understand that there is some policeman from Queensland, leading the investigation. Are you in contact with the police?
Tiago: No, no one from the police has been in touch with us. The Consulate of Brazil are the ones who are really helping us, Mr Valmor. They are the ones that are more involved in the investigations. No one has come to speak with us. I don’t have any information – whether or not they are investigating – I don’t have any understanding whether they are moving forward on anything. I would really like to have that information actually.
Beatriz: So you have not been contacted by any Australian organisation, no department, no one, not by an ombudsman, nothing, to tell your story?
Tiago: Nothing, nothing. The story went on the ABC, on the news, the radio and online. But otherwise nothing. Actually, when we went to the police – it’s the most bizarre part of this story – that I went to the federal police and to the regular police, and the federal police told me to fill out a form because this happens every day. They did not pay any attention to the case. Which is what really shocked us the most, we thought, you know, we are in Australia and they would go after the owners with a helicopter, you know! But they haven’t paid it any attention, apart from completing a form. That was it. So we went to the regular police, and they sent us to… Fair Trade, if I’m not mistaken. So I went to the Fair Trade office after speaking with the police, and they did the same thing – fill in this online form here, ask that the affected clients also complete the online form, and if there is a lot of interest we might look into it, that was it.
Beatriz: You’ve spoken to Brazilians who have been affected. What have they been saying, what have they told you?
Tiago: Well, we are in contact with all the Brazilians who have been affected, working at the agency I knew them all. Thank God, of all the Brazilians that were affected, the ones in Brazil and the ones here, they have been receiving help. A bit here, a bit there, from people who want to help in some way, but they are really disappointed. The ones in Brazil are very disappointed because this is their life savings. Us who are already here, we know how much it costs to come here, how hard the struggle is just to come here. To lose 20 or 30 thousand Reals in one go is a very big loss for a Brazilian. I’ve spoken with the mother of one of them in tears, begging us ‘for the love of God, please help my son’, as he’d been saving up his whole life to come here to try for a better life and now the money has disappeared. So its been really sad for them and for us as well.
Beatriz: Tiago Deoti in Brisbane, thank you for explaining the story to us. We will be following the developments of this story.
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