Types of scams and How to spot them

How to spot a scam

Here are 14 red flags that any scam awareness training should cover:

1. Buyer’s willingness to pay full price without haggling and pay shipping and other costs

2. Landlord’s inability to show you inside of property

3. Scammer uses unusual stressor events, including:

   • Claim that transaction must happen ASAP or the deal is off

   • Claim you must take a check and no other payment method will work

   • They want to send you a check for more than what is owed and have you remit the excess to someone else

   • Death of a family member is impacting the deal somehow

   • You will be arrested if you don’t send money now

   • Someone in your family is hurt, arrested, or detained and so you need to send money

4. They offer to let you pay in gift cards

5. They are out of town so they can’t meet with you

6. Claims of having been scammed by previous buyers before, so they want to do the transaction in a strange, unexpected way that, if examined, gives them every opportunity to financially benefit

7. Adamant you must use their escrow person for payment

8. Adamant you must send them your banking or identity details to get payment

9. Adamant they will not use online service’s mandatory payment service

10. Cannot take your phone call

11. You can’t find their company name or email address on the internet

12. Their company name is very similar to a very well-known, global company name, but not quite the same (e.g., P&G Printing, GE Electricians, Amazing Books)

13. A request that you need to send them money so they can send you even more money

14. They are in love with you, but for some reason, just can’t speak to you on the phone (or take a picture showing today’s date on a newspaper)

I’m sure there are dozens of other signs that you and every person in the world should be aware of, but this list of red flags is a good start.