Beware of Unemployment Scams

  Earlier this fall Richard Bailey, who is out of work, got a letter with a check and an offer to make some money.

    “It wanted me to be a secret shopper and purchase something at Mcdonalds and Wal-mart and then go ahead and keep like $600 or so out of it and then go ahead and send them the rest of it back,” said Bailey.

    But bailey saw the red flags and took this fraudulent check right to the better business bureau. 

    Kathy Barrett the President of the B.B.B. in Greenville says she’s seen an uptick in the unemployed targeted for secret shopper and “work from home” scams because they’re more likely to post their resume and private information online. 

  “A lot of things come back to you that are not legitimate jobs and they are going to be phishing for your information—trying to get anything they can from you to make you a target of identity theft—of all types of scams and schemes that are out there,“  Barrett said.

    You may not think many people fall for the scams but the Better Business Bureau has stacks of fake checks that have been sent to people in our area,  many loosing thousands of dollars after cashing them—wiring or spending them and being left to foot the bill.

    Barrett says she sees 30 new job scams pop up each week—and 25 percent of those people have lost out.

    Barrett suggests keeping an eye out for these red flags:

- Look for grammatical errors—often the scams come from abroad.
- Never pay to get a job or job interview.
- And never wire money unless you know the recipient personally

    Of course the most common sense advice…“If it’s too good to be true—it’s too good to be true. There’s a reason why that’s a cliché,“  said Bailey.
   
  The best way to determine if a company is legitimate is to check with The Better Business Bureau website.