Greg's Corner

If it’s in the news, there’s a scam for it

By Greg Collier

One of our well-used adages about scammers is they may be some of the most informed people on the planet. If there is a major news story, there will be scammers looking to take advantage of it. Typically, we see this with natural disasters such as hurricanes and the like. However, the news story can also be something more socioeconomic that’s a call to action for scammers.

For example, student loans have regularly been in the news for the past few years. We all know why student loans have been in the news, and we’re going to gloss over those details to try to prevent this from becoming a political discussion. And as we all also know, student loans garnered a large amount of the headlines this past week.

This has caused not only the Attorney General’s Office, but the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to issue a warning about student loan scammers. Both offices are warning consumers, scammers will more than likely start sending out texts, emails, and robocalls offering some kind of student debt relief.

These scammers tend to use a nebulous name of an organization that doesn’t exist. They’ll often use generic names like ‘The Student Loan Forgiveness Center’. However, the scammers may have some of your identifying information to make the scam seem more authentic.

In most cases, the scammers are trying to get you to pay an ‘application fee’ while they promise debt relief that will never come. Once a victim makes a payment to the scammers, they’ll continue to hound the victim for more payments, usually under the guise of having to navigate government red tape.

Despite, the recent news, there are still student debt relief programs; however, they are only available through the government. Please keep in mind, the government is not going to call you to start the debt relief process. You have to reach out to them first.

If you have more concerns or questions, you can read more about student debt relief scams at the Federal Student Aid website.