These May Be the Worst Scammers in the World

Photo credit: Chi King, CC BY 2.0.

Earlier this month, we looked at Planet Money’s investigation into the work-at-home scam:

Planet Money Breaks Down the Work From Home Scam – The Billfold

You might think a scam like this, which preys primarily on senior citizens and people who have, to quote Planet Money, “never done super great financially,” is heartbreaking enough—and it is.

But there are people out there ready to grab the pieces of that broken heart and squeeze even more money out of them.

As the New York Times reports:

So-called asset-recovery firms target people who have lost money in another type of fraud — often, a bogus work-at-home scheme or a fake time share investment, according to an advisory issued this week by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The firm promises the victims that it can recover much of the lost money, for a hefty upfront fee. But after taking the payment, the firm does little — or takes steps that the consumers could do on their own at no cost.

In other words: they scam the already scammed, by promising to get them the money they lost in the original scam.

Once you get scammed, the New York Times explains, your name is likely to end up on a “sucker list” that will be passed from one scam operation to another. You might even be contacted by the same scammers who took your money in the first place, now presenting themselves as a company that’ll recover the cash:

Amy Nofziger, director of regional operations with the AARP Foundation and manager of its Fraud Watch Network call center, said criminals often re-targeted the same victims, having had success the first time.

This is the sort of thing that boggles my mind and is also completely obvious. Of course a criminal might target the same victim throughout the lifecycle of the scam, as it were.

As with other types of scams, the scammers do just enough work to keep you hooked. From the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau:

For example, if the consumer used a credit card to pay the original scammer, the asset recovery company usually will do nothing beyond disputing the charge with the credit card company, which the consumer can do themselves, for free. They often submit a complaint to an agency that does not charge anything to process a complaint — like us, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Moreover, they often do not even adequately follow through with the worthless services they offer; filing claims that are too old to be legally valid or without proper documentation to support the consumer’s claims.

If you listened to the Planet Money podcast, you might remember that the person they interviewed got hired by a call center after graduating from college. He believed he was selling legitimate website services, and had to discover on his own that he was part of a scam. I could imagine the people contacting credit card companies or submitting complaints to the CFPB to be much the same—which means that the scammers might be scamming their employees as well, by offering them jobs without fully explaining that the job is to defraud other people.

How can you protect yourself? If you or someone you love has been involved in a work-from-home scam or any other type of scam, be aware that phone solicitations from asset recovery companies are nearly always scam artists. If someone calls you and offers to recover your money for a fee, do not pay them.

“Hang up the phone,” Ms. Nofziger said, and contact the consumer regulator in your state. The Fraud Watch Network’s website contains links to relevant state authorities.

So that’s the worst scam I’ve heard about in a while. Anyone else want to top that?


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