Watch Out For Scams

One thing that everyone needs to watch out for is Online Scams. These will come in the form of a lot of different types and venues. You see a lot of the email scams that come through from Nigeria, or Lottery wins from Europe. For the most part most of these are very noticable and most people will delete them and not bat an eye. The problem enters when it elicits a response due to a volnerability, by this I mean that the person viewing something is in a state that they have an issue. These issues can be one of many a list such as finacial, relationships, jobs and etc.

The issue I want to talk about is the issue of people with questionable credit looking for loans. The person looking for the loan has a definite need for some kind of funding but has been all through the web looking for just one person to give them a loan. One day out of the blue that person gets a phone call after spending the previous night filling out loan applications. Great somone to finaly give the person a fighting chance, but waite you have to ask yourself why would everyone turn me down and this person is willing to give me this loan. They give you the particulars and give there phone number and send you the specific loan documentation. All is going well and you decide this will work and you call the loan officer and there pbx type system routes you to the specific agent. You talk then you both go through the contract and you sign it and send it back. They then notify you that they have a couple options for sending you money but first since you are a new customer you have to secure the loan with advance months of payments, and maybe insurance. Do not ever send any money up front to get money, other than if it was disclosed as an application fee or some sort of appraisal. So you tell them you agree but you will not pay anything up front, if it is a scam they will more than likely give you a line that they need to send this to there accounting department and it will take a certain amount of days. What they seem to be hoping is that your situation gets desperate enough that you send them the money to get the loan. Do not do this, wait the seven days and see if they return your call.

Most of these preditors are preying off the people that are in a lot of need that have a weekness. Your problem may be hard but think things through, make sure when it deals with money or something that is crucial to your well being research it. Here is a couple things you can do, first of all do not deal with an overseas lender, there is a lot of things other countries do not have to disclose that the U.S. does, and you may get in trouble that way, other than that the fraud in these cases are more common than ever getting a legitimate lender. Second Ask for the web site, also address and phone number, check the address out put it in Google see if there is a business with that name in the building, if there is goto that site and compare them, usually a mirror of a scammer is close. Do a Whois search make sure there information does not have flags in it. Also check out the phones they gave you compare it to the google page you pulled up, call it put in other extentions see if they have more than a few people on the directory. Look on the web put there name in make sure no one has posted a scam report, this is crucial.

Here is a list of things to absolutely say no to:

1. Send up front fees to Someone via Western Union
2. Send fees WU to Canada or other countries
3. Do not disclose your bank account and routing number.
When I am getting a loan from a third party lender I will sometimes open a separate checking account just to use for expedience, that way once the money is transfered then you can easily pull the funds and they can no longer get to them.

Just one of the sites I have ran across that are scams are
Suntrustfin.com Suntrust Financial is a real company, but this site tries to mirror them, notice the phone system is not operational.

Most of these guys will send you a contract that looks very real so just be on the guard.

As a closing note do not ever deal with a loan from europe, or Canada, or of course Nigeria, these seem to be hotspots as of late. If you know the lender in these countries and have dealt with them before it is usually safe, as long as your dealing with known contacts.

I Hope this helps everyone.