They warned her it was a scam, but she didn’t listen
Michigan woman was warned but didn’t listen.
DETROIT – Tracey Taschereau tried over and over again to find a quick loan online. And somehow, the scammers figured out she was desperate.
Taschereau, 48, had trouble paying everything from payday loans to utility bills to the property taxes owed on a home she was buying on a land contract in Dearborn Heights, Michigan.
Her bank account had but $100 or $200. She only had seasonal part-time work in a school cafeteria. So she searched online for loans made to people in tough spots.
And she was rejected each time. “I have real bad credit, so the payday loans are hard to get, too,” Taschereau said.
All of a sudden, though, she got an email out of the blue in early February from an outfit called Ace Cash Express saying she was approved for a loan.
“OK, great, somebody is finally willing to lend me money that I need,” she thought. “They asked for my bank account information, and like a dummy I gave it to them, hoping this was my godsend.”
But things only got much worse. ❚ Gaming the banking system: Crooks are running an elaborate scheme that targets consumers who are financially vulnerable. Some are so financially distressed that they will cast aside pretty big red flags on the hope that they can get their hands on some money to pay the bills.
The con artists are gaming the banking system by sending fake paper checks or electronically depositing phony checks in consumer accounts.
The consumer thinks the check is real and believes it is OK to wire money or send money via gift cards for an essential, make-believe reason. Con art-
ists claim you need to give back money immediately as a step for building credit to obtain a bigger loan.
“In the end, I was supposed to be getting a $4,000 or $5,000 loan,” Taschereau said. In reality, she ended up being scammed and owing her bank more than $4,800.
Chase shut down her access to her bank account. At the same time, Chase was allowed under its agreement to use money being electronically deposited into that account – in this case a monthly Social Security benefits check for $513 for her young daughter – toward gradually paying off that debt.
❚ What about those red flags? Many people, of course, love to engage in victim-shaming. Who falls for this kind of stuff anyway? And gets tripped up over and over again? Yet the crooks only use that shaming to keep victims quiet. Some days, it can take a brave person to admit to getting trapped.
Taschereau certainly isn’t alone. I heard from one young consumer who lost money in a similar way when she wanted to get a loan to pay for a wedding. Another who had served in the military called me as he frantically headed to the bank to unravel how much money he and his wife just lost as they tried to get an online loan. One senior thought he found a way to both boost his credit score and easily borrow $1,000 online but told me he ended up being scammed out of $500.
Fast cash isn’t the only bait. Fake checks are used as part of all sorts of scams, including work-at-home schemes, phony sweepstakes and lotteries, small-business fraud and even scams that target law firms, according to a detailed report titled “Don’t Cash that Check” issued by the Better Business Bureau in September.
Upset with herself, Taschereau sits in the living room of the home she moved to recently in Ypsilanti, Michigan. She rummages through an envelope filled with Best Buy gift cards, notes she made talking to the people who promised a loan, paper copies of the bad checks and letters from the bank telling her that her account is past due. The first email with an offer for a loan looked real.
“I looked up Ace Cash Express, and it was a legitimate company,” she said.
Now she knows that scammers impersonated a well-known company that markets payday loans and cash advances. The real company is aware that fraudsters have used its name in the past. If only, Taschereau thinks, she had paid attention to some warnings along the way.
“I was so desperate, I let it cloud my judgment,” she said.
Instead, she went to Kroger to put money on gift cards, as the scammers suggested. “They said I could buy Steam, Google Play, Best Buy or Amazon.” She opted for Best Buy.
If only she listened to the supermarket cashier who had tried to warn her, too. “I’m smart enough. I should have known better,” she said last week. ❚ How did scammers get the money? Some suspect that scammers might even know that some consumers, such as Taschereau, are down on their luck. “The No. 1 message that is important for people to understand is that just because the check has cleared doesn’t mean it’s good,” said Nessa Feddis, senior vice president, consumer protection and payments for the American Bankers Association, which works with the Better Business Bureau and the Federal Trade Commission to alert consumers on fake check scams.
Scammers will rush you to send money immediately via gift card or Western Union. The scammers need to you act fast – fast enough so that the bank doesn’t have a few days to discover that the check is a phony.
What many consumers overlook is that the bank does have the right to recover the money from the account holder if the check is a counterfeit, according to the BBB report. And you will end up on the hook. Feddis said banks make that money available quickly when a check is deposited because most checks are good and many times people need their money quickly. So the fraudsters exploit the consumer’s trust and the banking process.
Now that checks can be deposited by mobile phone, it’s even more important that you don’t share your bank account number.
Don’t give your bank account information to anyone. “You’re giving the keys to your account. You authorized it,” Feddis said.
“I’m smart enough. I should have known better.”
Tracey Taschereau