by Ari Lazarus
Consumer Education Specialist, FTC
If you have a car, you know how expensive the upkeep can be. Gas, maintenance, parking â the whole lot. So what if a company offered to pay you to drive around â which you were already doing â with their branding wrapped onto your car? It could sound like a good deal.
Weâve heard about some car wrap scams that have targeted college students, a group known to look for ways to make a few extra bucks. The gist of the scam is this: The scammers send emails with messages like âGET PAID TO DRIVE.â They offer to pay you $250-$350 a week if youâll drive around with your car (or truck or motorcycle) wrapped to advertise a well-known product â or even an event like the 2020 Olympics.
If you bite, theyâll send you a check to deposit into your bank account. Then theyâll tell you to use some of that money so a âspecialistâ can put the ads on your car. And theyâll tell you to pay by money order, Walmart money services, or by making a cash deposit directly into the âspecialistâsâ bank account â all ways that are hard to cancel or get your money back.
For a lot of people, itâs only once their money is gone â and no car wrap materializes â that they figure out the âspecialistâ is really the scammer. And that check they deposited is a fake. Which also means the bank will take back the amount of that fake checkâĤleaving people out even more money. Hereâs how that works:
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