14 DAY TRIAL // An increased number of recent reports received by the FBI in regards to work-from-home type of scams prompted the agency to issue a warning to college students in the United States.
This kind of fraud is far from new, but recently it has been observed that students became the focus of scammers slinging messages to their school emails offering the possibility to make easy money by doing some fictitious job. At one point, they are asked to move part of a sum received to their bank accounts to different ones.
Students could face federal prosecution
What the student does not know is that the funds received have been obtained through illegal means and they run the risk of federal charges, or in the most optimistic scenario, having their bank account terminated due to fraudulent activity.
The FBI described the simple scam saying that the college student is asked to open an account in order to receive payment from the alleged employer.
After compromising the computers of a company, the cybercriminal switches the direct deposit information of a victim with that of the student. When the employer of the victim makes the payroll deposit it will reach the student’s account.
The next step in the fraud is to ask the student to hold some of the money as payment for their work, withdraw the rest and send it via wire transfer to a bank account provided by the criminal.
This way, the trace of the money is lost when the fraud is detected and the student gets all the heat from law enforcement because they facilitated the theft of the initial victim’s paycheck.
Details hinting at the scam attempt
The consequences range from getting arrested and prosecuted in a federal court, which creates a life-lasting criminal record, to affecting the credit record.
Some clues that reveal the scam include the promise of a great monetary reward in return to little to no work and use of poor English in the email exchange (incorrect grammar, capitalization, and tenses) because oftentimes the perpetrators are not native speakers.
It is important to keep bank account information private and never accept wiring funds received from an unknown individual to a bank account they provided.
The FBI advises students to forward these emails to the IT people at the university. Additionally, a complaint can be filed with the agency’s Internet Crime Complaint Center at www.IC3.gov.