Friday, October 4, 2024

Scammers Weekly: When working from home seems just a little too good of a deal

(Southside Daily File Photo/courtesy of AARP)
(WYDaily File Photo/courtesy of AARP)

WYDaily has collaborated with AARP to raise awareness about scams people need to watch out for.

A scam will be featured every Wednesday, so be sure to always check WYDaily.com and be in the know.

Here’s this week’s scam.

The work from home scam

Today, more and more people are working from home for companies halfway around the country or even the globe.

But with this new flexibility comes a new risk of falling victim to scammers looking to take advantage of people wanting to work from home.

The scams can promise work on medical billing, data entry or starting an online business, but they all require paying something up front.

Once you start paying, the requests for more money for training never stop and in return you get a lot of useless information or requests to recruit more people into the scheme.

There are genuine work from home jobs out there.

The trick is knowing how to spot the real opportunities in a sea of empty — and costly — promises.

Visit the AARP Fraud Watch Network by clicking here or call the AARP Fraud Watch Network Helpline at 877-908-3360 to report a scam or get help if you’ve fallen victim.

Scam tracker map

Scammers work 24 hours a day, seven days a week looking for their next victims. The unfortunate reality is that millions of people fall victim to scams carried out by sophisticated national and international criminal organizations every year.

You can get a sense of how widespread this is by visiting the AARP scam-tracking map. Understanding how widespread scams are and which ones are trending in your community can help you stay safe.

John Mangalonzo
John Mangalonzohttp://wydaily.com
John Mangalonzo (john@localdailymedia.com) is the managing editor of Local Voice Media’s Virginia papers – WYDaily (Williamsburg), Southside Daily (Virginia Beach) and HNNDaily (Hampton-Newport News). Before coming to Local Voice, John was the senior content editor of The Bellingham Herald, a McClatchy newspaper in Washington state. Previously, he served as city editor/content strategist for USA Today Network newsrooms in St. George and Cedar City, Utah. John started his professional journalism career shortly after graduating from Lyceum of The Philippines University in 1990. As a rookie reporter for a national newspaper in Manila that year, John was assigned to cover four of the most dangerous cities in Metro Manila. Later that year, John was transferred to cover the Philippine National Police and Armed Forces of the Philippines. He spent the latter part of 1990 to early 1992 embedded with troopers in the southern Philippines as they fought with communist rebels and Muslim extremists. His U.S. journalism career includes reporting and editing stints for newspapers and other media outlets in New York City, California, Texas, Iowa, Utah, Colorado and Washington state.

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