LAS VEGAS (KSNV MyNews3) -- Online job offers can be seductive. In today's Rip-Off Alert, we'll show you that some of these jobs might bring you down a path you should definitely avoid.
Victim Ella Butler said an online ad promised “Good money you can make at home."
Butler decided to apply for the job-in the re-shipping business.
"They needed someone to send packages,” she said. “So, I sent my information in.”
After sending a copy of her driver’s license, Butler signed a contract to re-ship items via Express mail.
"Receive packages at my home and then send them wherever they tell me to send them,” Butler said. “It was easy money, $16 dollars a package."
Butler was sent ski equipment, watches and even an electric guitar to ship out, but then she started to become suspicious.
"I noticed that all of the packages I was sending went to Russia,” Butler said. “All these different names coming to my address, and I called the Postal Service."
"The Internet allows fraudsters to hide behind the computer," said U.S. Postal Inspector Frank Schissler.
Postal inspectors began tracking the packages Butler was receiving.
"Basically it is a fraudulent credit card purchase that is shipped to an individual in the U.S. who unwittingly participating in the scheme from a work-at-home job," Schissler said.
"I felt like, ‘Well, Ella, you have gotten caught up in something,’ " Butler said.
The lesson: Before taking a job advertised online, check out the company with the
Better Business Bureau or the state's attorney general.
"You can fall for this kind of scam because they are just too good to be true,” Butler said. “It's quick money. Do not fall for it."
