How to Recognize Offline and Online Money Scams
I'm In Debt
- Posted:
11/15/2008
How many times have you won the Nigerian lottery, without ever having entered? Do you have a few hundred rich relatives in Africa or some other country, where you are the only living "next of kin" who could receive thousands or millions of dollars if you just send enough money for the courier to deliver the funds?
These are two examples of widespread, online money scams. My email inbox fills up with this sort of stuff on a daily basis. It's easy to spot online scams through emails that you get over and over again, but what about when something new comes up, that COULD be true?
I know someone who was almost the victim of a very clever offline scam. She signed up to be a mystery shopper - and we all know that there are REALLY mystery shopper jobs that exist, which makes this scam harder to spot at first. A few days later, she received a letter of congratulations - she was selected to be one of their workers. Her first task would be to try out the Western Union Service, so we can see how well the customer service is and if they deliver everything they claim to provide to their customers.
So far - everything seems normal, right? Also enclosed in this letter was instructions for her first assignment, and a check for over $3,000. The check looked real. It had watermarks and a company name and address in the left hand corner. The instructions told her that she should deposit the check into her bank account, send all but $400 to another company through the Western Union Service (to rate their service) - and keep the $400 as her pay for doing the work. It also promised many more assignments to come, averaging $400-$600 per week in pay.
The instructions specified that the money had to be sent through Western Union BEFORE a specific date, which was less than 2 weeks away from the date she received the letter and the check. This still doesn't raise too many red flags, since all assignments have deadlines and they certainly wouldn't want someone to hold on to the money for too long - what if they forgot to send it at all?
And this is where you should start thinking - hey wait a minute... My friend never signed any contracts with this company, she had never given them anything other than her name and address. Would any real company anywhere simply send you thousands of dollars without any contracts in place to protect them, should you not follow through with your end of the work?
Do you know what this type of scam is? It's becoming the most popular offline money scam - and was recently referenced in our local daily newspaper, too, with many interviews of unsuspecting people falling victim to this scam.
If you deposit the check and send out the money on or before the deadline date they give you, a day or two later the "check" you deposited will be reported as fraud. There is no real money in your account from this deposit. The reason this scam works is because banks have to make the money available to you within a certain time - even if they haven't received the funds from that check deposit yet. So while they're working on finding the funds to back the check you've deposited, you've already withdrawn the money from your "available balance" to send via Western Union or whatever service your scam letter tells you to use, and BAM! You get hit with a notice from your bank that you are $3000 overdrawn because the deposit you made was with a fraudulent check.
No matter how bad your money situation is - don't fall victim to these scams. It's easy to get caught up in the money - an extra $400 a week or even ONE TIME is enough to make people overlook some obvious clues that the entire thing is not real. If you don't recognize this as a scam - you're left with having to recover that $3000 or whatever the amount may have been, and chances are, people who are targeted for these scams simply do not have extra money to play around with. You end up in worse shape financially than before you started.
You can check for scams by searching online - I showed my friend the name of her company and the thousands and thousands of complaints made against that company (and also about 20 companies with similar names). Do your research before embarking on any journey to increase your income.
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