(Havre) – According to the Department of Justice’s Office of Consumer Protection Montana’s have been target by a lot of Work-From-Home scams recently. Jake Griffith the Supervising Attorney with the Office of Consumer Protection talks about the scams.
“Recently our office has been getting phone calls about some of these Plymouth type scams. These scams are advertisements or reaching out through social media accounts linked-in and Facebook advertising work from home. People are getting contacted having interviews and then essentially the scammers are either looking for personal information such as social security numbers date of birth, addresses bank account numbers, or people are receiving checks for upfront costs such as for computer equipment and things like that. So, you receive a check from a forwarded company and then when they go to cash that check they are instructed to either put the money back in a bit coin machine or send the money back to the company and the check bounces and is flagged as fraudulent and the person is out that amount of money.”
He also talks about what to do if you are caught in such a scam.
“So, if you are finding yourself in this situation just don’t have any contact with the scammers cease contact if you are a person who is kind of down the road a little bit and you receive a check and you think it’s probably fraudulent you can call our office and we can try to help you identify whether it’s a fraudulent situation or not. You can call local law enforcement and describe the check, just don’t be in a situation where you’re readily giving out personal identifying information or cashing checks and then forwarding that money on in a quick manner.”
