Employment scam: New Braunfels woman nearly falls victim

NEW BRAUNFELS, Texas - This summer, con artists have been taking advantage of Central Texans who are looking for work. The promise of a good-paying job can sometimes lead to criminals taking your money, or getting your personal information.

Over the past couple of months, the Better Business Bureau has received about a dozen reports of employment scams in the area. FOX 7 Austin spoke with a Central Texan who was offered what she thought was a work-from-home job, but turned out to be a pretty sophisticated shakedown.

"I was just trying to look for something part-time that I could do from home after my 9 to 5 job," said a New Braunfels woman, who asked that we not use her name.

The woman found a job posting on a well-known employment site.

"They had a couple of openings, from customer service to data input to administrative assistants. But they were all supposedly work-from-home type positions," she said.

A few days later, she had an interview for a data processing position.

"They did have me go through the Teams app, which made it seem like it was legit," she said.

But when it came time for the interview, it was not face-to-face.

"Everything was done via first email and then text," she said. "I never spoke to a human, ever. And that felt weird. But then I thought, maybe that’s the way things are being done these days."

She was soon informed that she’d landed the job, and got an email from what she thought was an HR person.

"It says human resources. It tells you what the next steps are. They have an employee portal that they have. You go ahead and log in so you can follow the steps," she said.

The woman says the fact that there was an employee portal made the situation feel legitimate.

"And they sent me an offer letter. They sent me a W-4 to fill out. They gave me all the payroll benefit information," she said.

Some of the wording in the emails seemed a little off, she said, nothing glaring, though. But the big red flag came when the conversation turned to getting her work-from-home office set up.

"When she started getting into ‘you sign up through this portal to get your equipment’ and then once I received it they would refund me. I was like, ‘yeah, no.’"

They even asked her to photocopy her credit card and send it to them.

"And I called her out on it, and she got real rude with me," she said. "At that point, I was like, ‘no, I'm done, I'm out.'"

"If you have that gut feeling, you need to go with it. In this case, that's exactly what this person did," said Heather Massey, V.P. of Communications for the Better Business Bureau Serving the Heart of Texas.

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Massey says work-from-home scams like this are on the rise. Some come from phony companies, others from con artists impersonating real ones.

Either way, having to pay money for equipment should be a big red flag.

"Any legitimate company is not going to have you out of pocket right out of the gate," said Massey.

And there’s a tricky twist to this, too: someone offering you a check to buy office equipment yourself.

"And then comes back and says, ‘hey, we overpaid you’, we need you to send us back a few hundred dollars. That is a red flag," said Massey.

Massey says you should stay away from high-pressure job offers that promise quick cash, and situations where people reach out to you rather than vice versa. Also, be very wary of jobs involving repackaging and shipping merchandise.