Greg's Corner

Job scam back in time for Christmas

By Greg Collier

Every year during the holiday season, many people look to take on a second job to help supplement their income to make the holidays more enjoyable for their families. Unfortunately, scammers are also looking to increase their income but at the expense of others. The scammers do this by offering easy jobs that can be done at home that are either costly, dangerous, or downright illegal.

One job scam that seems to always pick up steam during the holidays is the reshipping or repackaging scam. In the reshipping scam, victims looking for work are offered a job that usually has a title like ‘shipping coordinator’, ‘warehouse distribution coordinator, or ‘local hub inspector’. The victim is asked to ‘inspect’ packages that are sent to their home before repackaging the items and sending them to a third party. During this time of year, the positions may also be listed as gift wrapper. Recently, in Michigan, a woman was offered a reshipping position where the scammers said they ship items to people in countries where Amazon isn’t available.

The problem with these items is that they’re often purchased with stolen credit card information and shipped overseas before the cardholder is aware. This scam is essentially a form of money laundering, and the unwitting reshippers are known as money mules.

There are usually two outcomes for victims of this scam. The first is that they reship all these packages and never get paid. The second is that they could possibly end up in jail. Even victims of the reshipping scam can find themselves in trouble with the law if the victim knowingly falsifies shipping documents under the instruction of the scammers to get around US customs.

Fake jobs like this often hire people on the spot and only communicate by email. One noteworthy job site has even listed on their site that there are no legitimate jobs that involve receiving packages and shipping them to someone else from your home.