Greg's Corner

Scammers offer ‘bonuses’ to victims

By Greg Collier

San Antonio, Texas, is most famous for being the site of The Alamo. However, what many people outside of Texas don’t realize is San Antonio is not only the second-largest city in Texas, but it’s also the 7th largest city in the United States. We bring this up to show that when a scam show up in San Antonio, there’s a good chance that the scam will be showing up in other areas of the country.

In this case, the Better Business Bureau of San Antonio is reporting a dramatic increase in job scams in the area. The main difference between this and previous job scams is that scammers are using honey instead of vinegar to get their victims to react quicker.

For example, a woman in San Antonio thought she had been hired as a secret shopper. She was instructed to buy numerous gift cards from a store and evaluate the store. To get the victim to complete her task more quickly, the scammers told the victim that if she completed her task within 12 hours, she’d get a $200 bonus. Scammers may also be doing this to try to occupy the victim’s time, so they have no time to figure out that the whole procedure is a scam. The BBB has said that the scammers are even texting the victims continuously to make sure they’re completing the task, keeping them even more occupied. Unfortunately, the victim completed her task per the scammer’s orders. She was paid with a phony check that later bounced, leaving her thousands of dollars in debt to the bank, while the scammers made off with the gift card money.

Any time a potential employer asks you to use your own funds or deposit a check for business purposes into your account, that should serve as a red flag that the job is probably a scam. The same goes for being hired without being interviewed.