Popular app hit by scam on loans

On Instagram, you get to tell your story through pictures. Arizona State University student Courtney Merz loves posting pictures. She’s been an Instagram user for two years.

“I check (Instagram) every day. I love the interaction,” Merz said.

But lately, criminals have been posting to the service, promising students their student loans will be forgiven in light of the recently ended partial government shutdown. According to credit.com, scammers created at least 15 fake Sallie Mae Instagram accounts, offering loan forgiveness to the first several thousand users to follow them.

The instructions differed among the accounts, which were called officialsalliemae, salliemaestudentloans, salliemae_2013 and the like, many of which included misspelled versions of the company’s name. On Facebook and Twitter, the company’s official accounts announced it was not running any promotions on Instagram —

Sallie Mae doesn’t use Instagram, according to a tweet from @SallieMae — and encouraged consumers to ignore the impostors.

“A lot of students are on financial aid, so if they hear that their financial obligations will be erased, I can definitely see them getting scammed,” Merz said. She hasn’t seen any suspicious postings, but is now growing leery about the presence of criminals.

Merz said she will be extra careful when she clicks going forward.

“They’re out there and that’s pretty ridiculous,” Merz said.

Ridiculous or not, this is what scam artists do. There are legitimate loan-forgiveness programs out there for students in need, and criminals know this and will use every opportunity and every forum to rip people off, especially during a confusing government shutdown.

The experts at credit .com are telling students simply to ignore the posts.