Don’t Fall For A Grant Scam
As the old saying goes, if something seems too good to be true, it probably is.
Utah resident Olive Michelle got a phone call from a man identifying himself as “Sam Smith” with the Department of Health and Human Services offering her federal grant money. To be specific, $8,500 dollars in grant money.
The catch? She had to send him $200 in order to get it. Smith explained that the money was for “processing.” What’s more, he specified that the money had to be sent using a Green Dot card.
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So, the Federal Government was asking for a “processing fee,” and they were insisting on using a form of payment that could not be traced. For Olive Michelle, these were giant red flags that something was wrong, and that’s when she contacted my team here at GephardtDaily.com.
Of course, this man was not calling from Washington, and his name wasn’t Smith: he was calling from overseas, and he was a con man. This is a common scam. The green dot card is commonly used by scammers because it makes the money untraceable.
Any time you are contacted by someone promising you money but asks you to send them a smaller amount first, you should immediately be suspicious. $200 in order to claim $8,500 sounds like nothing when you are first presented with it, but that’s exactly the problem: nothing is exactly what you will be getting out of it. Any legitimate transaction is not going to demand only one, very specific and obscure form of payment, and the government would never ask for a form of payment that cannot be recorded. In this type of scam, the caller will press upon you a sense of urgency that you need to act immediately to get these funds. That’s because they don’t want you to have time to think through it logically.
If an unknown source asks you for money and you cannot confirm their identity, regardless of what they are offering you, don’t believe it. Look into it. Usually a quick Google search of key words like “federal grant scam” will immediately bring up confirmation that this is a common scam.
