A young woman looking for work on Craigslist contacted the Lee County Sheriff\u2019s Office fraud line to report that she was duped out of $2,600 by an on-line scammer claiming to need a \u201ccaretaker\u201d for her mother who was planning to move to the Southwest Florida area. After corresponding by e-mail with the scammer, the victim received a check in the mail for $2,950 with instructions to keep a portion of the funds and send the balance to a location in Hammond, Louisiana. The scammer claimed that the funds would be used by a real estate agent to rent a home for her mom in Lee County.<\/p>\n
Not realizing that she was caught in the middle of an advanced fee scam, the woman wired several thousand dollars via MoneyGram and then spent a portion of the money she had left. The next day, the woman received a phone call from the \u201creal estate agent\u201d and was told that she needed to send an additional $500 in order to receive the keys to the home her \u201cclient\u201d would be renting. The victim advised the caller that she did not have that much money, but did agree to send another $250. When keys to the home never arrived, the victim became suspicious and contacted the Sheriff\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n
These types of scam can be avoided if you follow these simple rules:<\/p>\n
\u2022 NEVER wire money to someone you do not know. Once money is wired and received it cannot be recovered and unfortunately you will be at a loss for any money transferred.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Never agree to deposit a check from someone who says to send some of the money back.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Beware of fake checks, cashier checks and money orders. Even if the bank accepts the check and releases the funds, you will be held responsible for all withdrawn funds when the fake check or money order is eventually discovered.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Beware of job offers that sound too good to be true.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Never give out financial information such as your bank account number, social security number, eBay or PayPal information.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Do not submit to credit or background checks for a job until you have met the interviewer in person.<\/p>\n
Craigslist comes in handy when looking for work; however, it is very important to be on the lookout for any of the above red flags. If you suspect that a Craigslist post may be part of a scam you should report it to Craigslist,\u00a0www.ic3.gov<\/a>\u00a0or the Lee County Sheriff\u2019s Office fraud line at\u00a0239-477-1242<\/a>.\u00a0 Media inquiries should be directed to 477-1037.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A young woman looking for work on Craigslist contacted the Lee County Sheriff\u2019s Office fraud line to report that she was duped out of $2,600 by an on-line scammer claiming… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[83],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9730"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9730\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}