Picture this: you are a struggling college student looking for some extra money so you can pay bills, go shopping, or just help pay for your education. Full of good intentions, you sign up for Care.com. With your love of kids and babysitting experience, you figure you’ll land the perfect job.
You send your resume to a potential employer and one morning, you get an email from “Sarah Page,” who has decided you’re the right candidate for her. Just a few things first though: what’s your address? Phone number? Do you have a criminal record? Are you CPR certified? And, just for assurance’s sake, where is the McDonald’s closest to you?
She outlines her situation and what your job would consist of: she’s a single mom with an ailing mother of her own …show more content…
(Ali requested that her full name not be used.) Initially, she reacted the way any college girl who had succeeded in her job hunt would, “[Sarah’s] literally so cool from what she's told me so far. She's moving here from Florida, and so I'll be in charge of making sure all the furniture is paid for and decorated. She [also said] if you ever want to stay the night when I travel we can make you a room! It never dawned on me that when people move with their job they usually don't know anyone. She was super professional, I had to send her my resume and answer questions about my …show more content…
“Her sister just died,” Ali told me in our early conversations—before she ever suspected anything, “so I don’t want to push it, but I need to know more.”
Ali was smart—she followed her instincts and dug a little deeper, making sure to ask for Sarah/ Pegie’s last name at every opportunity. When she never got an answer, she knew something was up. “I knew it was too good to be true,” she laments, “there were so many red flags.” However, these red flags aren’t something good-natured, naive twentysomethings are trained to look for. Of course, we all know better than to wire $14,543 to a Nigerian prince, but how could we possibly get scammed when they’re the ones sending us money?
That’s exactly how scammers get you. In fact, in Ali’s case, she was asked multiple times to prove how honest and trustworthy she was—presumably a kind of mind trick designed to make you trust them.
It is a creative variation of advance fee fraud that has become known as the “wheelchair con.” In this situation, the son is disabled and you buy a wheelchair for him, which will be reimbursed by the mother. In Ali’s case, it would’ve meant paying for the furniture. Of course, this time around, the perpetrator got smart and changed up the story a little bit, in case their target had heard about them
You send your resume to a potential employer and one morning, you get an email from “Sarah Page,” who has decided you’re the right candidate for her. Just a few things first though: what’s your address? Phone number? Do you have a criminal record? Are you CPR certified? And, just for assurance’s sake, where is the McDonald’s closest to you?
She outlines her situation and what your job would consist of: she’s a single mom with an ailing mother of her own …show more content…
(Ali requested that her full name not be used.) Initially, she reacted the way any college girl who had succeeded in her job hunt would, “[Sarah’s] literally so cool from what she's told me so far. She's moving here from Florida, and so I'll be in charge of making sure all the furniture is paid for and decorated. She [also said] if you ever want to stay the night when I travel we can make you a room! It never dawned on me that when people move with their job they usually don't know anyone. She was super professional, I had to send her my resume and answer questions about my …show more content…
“Her sister just died,” Ali told me in our early conversations—before she ever suspected anything, “so I don’t want to push it, but I need to know more.”
Ali was smart—she followed her instincts and dug a little deeper, making sure to ask for Sarah/ Pegie’s last name at every opportunity. When she never got an answer, she knew something was up. “I knew it was too good to be true,” she laments, “there were so many red flags.” However, these red flags aren’t something good-natured, naive twentysomethings are trained to look for. Of course, we all know better than to wire $14,543 to a Nigerian prince, but how could we possibly get scammed when they’re the ones sending us money?
That’s exactly how scammers get you. In fact, in Ali’s case, she was asked multiple times to prove how honest and trustworthy she was—presumably a kind of mind trick designed to make you trust them.
It is a creative variation of advance fee fraud that has become known as the “wheelchair con.” In this situation, the son is disabled and you buy a wheelchair for him, which will be reimbursed by the mother. In Ali’s case, it would’ve meant paying for the furniture. Of course, this time around, the perpetrator got smart and changed up the story a little bit, in case their target had heard about them