June 22, 2020 – Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody issued a warning to Florida college students about work-from-home employment scams. The latest round of scams seek to obtain personal information from college students while posing as representatives from their college. Some students have been issued counterfeit checks that they are instructed to cash against their accounts and return a portion of the money to the issuer of the check.
According to the press release, students can protect themselves by doing the following:
- Research the company before accepting any job offer. Does the company have a professional website and legitimate contact information? Search for what others are saying about experiences with the company;
- If the solicitor is communicating via email, locate contact information for the sender through the school’s website and confirm whether the job offer is real;
- Look for red flags, such as typos and grammatical errors. Offers of employment or pay without an interview are another sign of an employment scam; and
- Never send funds in the form of cash, checks, gift cards or wire transfers to secure a job or as part of an assigned duty by a new employer.
If you believe you may have been a victim of a scam like this, contact the Florida Attorney General’s office at 866-9NO-SCAM or MyFloridaLegal.com.