It seems like we can’t get through a days’ worth of emails without one type of scam or another however; you need to realize one when you see it. Even if you are just a bit suspicious, chances are that you are right, it’s probably a scam.

Another way scams are being pulled off now are through text messages, either as an individual text message or a group text message.

A recent scam that was brought to my attention was allowing a company to put a wrap, as a form of advertising, on your personal vehicle. The company, a well-known brand, offered to pay $500 per week for participants to drive their car with the company’s advertisement however; the advertising campaign was being carried out by a third party. That should be a red flag because most major companies have their own advertising departments.

After these scammers get your address (they don’t ask for your banking information to set up a direct deposit, that way it seems less like a scam), they send a money order for a large amount of money then tell you that you have to cash it, keep $500 for yourself for the first week of driving with their wrap and give the rest to contractor that applies the wrap, generally via wire transfer however; the wrap never gets applied and you later find out that the cashier’s check was either stolen or printed with an actual bank’s information and you are on the hook for the entire amount!

During a discussion about this, a woman asked me why the police never do anything to catch the people committing these crimes. Well, in many of these cases it’s difficult because the scammers buy prepaid phones and/or use a scrambling application that shows a different phone number than what their number actually is and also are able to use fake IP addresses which makes tracking them very difficult.

There are many different variations of this type of scam however; you need to be very careful about what you respond to and agree to, both email and text messages.

As I always say, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.