Greg's Corner

Beware of these scams targeting college students

Back when I was in college, the only scam you really had to look out for was predatory lenders offering ‘great deals’ on credit cards. Being young at the time I did, in fact, fall for that particular scam and it ended up being a black mark on my credit report for years. Today, with so many avenues scammers have to approach college students, they have to be even more vigilant in watching out for multiple scams.

If you have a child who’s currently getting ready to attend college you probably know about how much pressure they can feel about securing student loans or grants in order to try to secure funding for their education. As is their usual M.O., scammers always love to prey on those who are in stressful situations, especially when it comes to financial ones. The Detroit Free Press is reporting that scammers are targeting students of one Michigan college where the scammers will pose as the college financial office threatening that their classes will be dropped if they don’t pay an additional fee and that the fee must be paid over the phone then and there. Of course, the college does not accept payment over the phone.

Other common scams appear as offers that will either reduce your student loan or claim to offer some kind of financial assistance. In many of these cases that can appear as text messages or emails, will either try to get the student’s financial information or will try to get the student to pay some kind of upfront fee. Sometimes the fee requested will be in some form of a gift card which should be a dead giveaway that it’s a scam.

In today’s controversial world of colleges and financing, our students have enough on their plate without having to worry about scammers trying to take their money. While they may be smart, students at that age can still be impressionable. If there’s an incoming college student on your family or circle of friends, please let them know about these scams so they don’t have to keep paying for their mistake for years to come.