Promised a splendid job opportunity or an admission in your dream college? Watch out!
One falls prey to an advanced fee scam when a fraudster convinces them to make an advance payment for goods, services or other gains, which ultimately never materializes. Some common and emerging types of advance fee scams are loan scams, employment scams, fake job offers, rental frauds, dating scams, lottery frauds, and business opportunity.
Hapless job seekers and students seeking educational loans and admissions to colleges are particularly vulnerable to such fee scam perpetrators who demand money on the pretext of providing career opportunities and admission in premier educational institutions.
Perpetrators generally send spoof emails and SMS, or unethically hacking into email accounts of victims to convince them into making payments or divulging financial details.
Students should watch out for such fee scams
Loan Scams
Students are often faced with the burden of paying huge sums as educational fees and thus end up responding to offers of speedy and low-interest loans, which are nothing but a part of the murky world of fake loans. Fraudsters insist the victims pay an upfront fee for covering the insurance fee for the loan and then abscond with the money leaving the victims in the dark.
Scholarship Scams
In the greed for easy scholarships having the ‘no special requirement’ tag, students often forget that all genuine scholarships come with some requirements necessary for deciding the criteria for awarding such as grades, merits, religious affiliation etc. All across the globe students keep falling prey to promises of guaranteed scholarship by fraudsters to trick them into making payments for availing of the scholarship.
Fake Seminars
In order to secure admission in coveted colleges/varsities, students and parents often yield to emails sent by fraudsters about fake seminars on financial aid for education. Fraudsters create fear and panic among students and parents about the difficulties in availing educational loans. This convinces them to pay an enormous fee to these fraudulent financial advisors in the hope of helping them find the financial aid of their choice.
Stay vigilant while job hunting!
Job seekers usually upload their profile and resume on multiple job search engines. This makes their personal data available to fraudsters waiting to take advantage of their desperation to get a job. Victims receive fake offer letters that bear the fraudulent logo of a premier company and which promise exceptional salary and remuneration. They then end up paying an advance fee for attending the interview or for securing the job, only to realize later that the offer was nothing but a part of a fee scam. Sometimes, a job seeker’s personal data is exploited during the application process and sold off to third parties for a financial gain, or as a part of a bigger cycle of identity theft.
Stay vigilant while job hunting!
Job seekers usually upload their profile and resume on multiple job search engines. This makes their personal data available to fraudsters waiting to take advantage of their desperation to get a job. Victims receive fake offer letters that bear the fraudulent logo of a premier company and which promise exceptional salary and remuneration. They then end up paying an advance fee for attending the interview or for securing the job, only to realize later that the offer was nothing but a part of a fee scam. Sometimes, a job seeker’s personal data is exploited during the application process and sold off to third parties for a financial gain, or as a part of a bigger cycle of identity theft.
How IFF Lab can help?
We leverage our core area of digital and cyber forensic expertise to investigate such frauds and help law enforcement agencies nab the perpetrators. Our state-of-the-art forensic laboratory coupled with our acumen enables us to retrieve and extract data even when attempts may have been made to obliterate them. We can verify the authenticity of unsolicited emails through digital forensic examination. Our intelligence, security and incident response teams are adept at taking prompt action to stall and mitigate attacks and potential threats.