Payment Processing Scam

This is one of the fairly recent scams, but it’s quite a nasty one. An ad is posted looking for someone to handle payments for a company that is out of the country.

The offer sounds wonderful: Receive payments for the company then wire them their share of it.

Here’s the catch: You’re participating in criminal activity. They’re breaking the paper trail by using you.

One version of this is that you receive payments made by people shopping on eBay. They think they’ve bought something and send the payment to you. You forward the payment. The criminals never send the item; in fact, it probably never existed.

In another version, they persuade you to share your bank account information, then simply clean it out.

If you do this innocently odds are you will not get in trouble. However, people have been charged with felonies for this, so lack of knowledge is not a perfect defense. If you’ve been doing this already, the best thing you can do is go to the police and tell them everything. That’s far better than having the police show up at your front door to arrest you.

If You Get Scammed

First try to clear it up with the company. If they are uncooperative, let them know that you will be contacting officials about the matter. Then do it.

 

More Articles on Work at Home Scams

Data Entry
You have great typing skills, so data entry sounds like a great work at home opportunity. How do you know if it's real or a scam?

Reshipping
Recieve a package someone else bought, then forward it on. What could possibly be wrong with that? Plenty!

Multi-Level Marketing
What makes the legitimate opportunities different from the scams?

Google Will Pay You How Much Per Hour/Day/Week/Month???
This kind of scam keeps going around. They claim to tell you how to earn lots of money at home from Google, but there's a catch.

Copyright © 2003-2012 Stephanie Foster unless otherwise indicated

Disclosure: I often review or mention products for which I may receive compensation in the form of affiliate commissions. All opinions are my own.



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