DELRAY BEACH, Fla. — As people continue to rebound from the pandemic, many job seekers are turning to online jobs, and scammers are on the prowl.
The Better Business Bureau said in 2020 there were an estimated 14-million victims with $2B in direct losses because of job scams.
“They had a job, work from home, remote, a couple of hours a day and I was like…hmm that sounds interesting. I just retired, that could be fun,” said Jeannie Blish who almost fell victim to a job scam.
Blish said she was scrolling through Facebook when she came across a job post on a community page.
According to Blish, the person who made the post had a profile, with pictures and appeared legitimate.
Blish is a former competitive gymnastics coach and wanted a way to make some extra money, so she applied and landed the job.
She went through a seemingly normal interview process and followed instructions by sending them a picture of her I.D. until she came across some red flags.
“Nine thousand dollars was the invoice for the materials they were gonna buy. They would send me the money to purchase apple cards to buy the materials that I needed, then I knew,” said Blish.
Blish quickly cut communication and contacted her bank.
A few houses down, Carol Duncan wasn’t as lucky.
She fell victim to a similar scheme over email.
“I immediately went to the bank and said, ‘I think I’ve got a problem,’ and guy in the front desk he looked into it and said ‘lady you’ve been scammed.’ And I said, ‘well, now what do I do?'”…
