Description

I received an email from a staff member at the college I attend, informing students of a job offer from the Olympics regarding "advertising while driving". Interested applicants were to email Frank Anderson at [email protected] for more information. I emailed Frank and we had a series of conversations about placing the car wrap on my car to advertise for the Olympics. He said he would pay me $250 weekly as well as $50 weekly for gas. He said he would send out a check containing my first weeks pay as well as an additional $2500 to pay the specialist when he came to place the wrap. At this point he started communicating with me via text messages. When I received the check, it was written for $2950. I asked Frank what the extra $150 was for, he told me it was for sending the funds to the specialist. I was confused at first but went along with it. Not giving the situation enough thought, I deposited the check. The next day he demanded that I purchase 5 $500 Wal-Mart gift cards and sent them to him so the specialist could buy the supplies. Again, not thinking enough about the situation, I supplied Frank with the gift cards. The money was spent on the gift cards within an hour and I had not heard from Frank so I reached out to him. He said the specialist would be in contact with me. The specialist never reached out to me. At this time I became extremely suspicious, and tried to find more information about Frank and this practice. I found this article about a similar thing happening to a girl in 2017, https://fox59.com/2017/05/26/college-student-warns-of-olympic-themed-job-scam/. At this point I also noticed that the envelope that contained the check was send from someone named Donald Simon in Dallas, Texas. Now that I realized what would happen, I tried to convince him to send me cash as compensation for the specialist not coming. I figured this would be unsuccessful but I wanted to at least try, as I knew the check would bounce and I would lose $2500. He said he would see what he could do for me but then requested that I send him another $500 gift card for the second specialist. I declined to send him anymore money and I kept demanding that he send me cash. Eventually he stopped responding. After a few days, the check did bounce and now I am out $2500 with a bank account balance in the negatives. I reached out to the President of the college I currently attend and was told that the email did not actually come from the staff members email and that I should always make sure the sender details have the proper email address for the college. However I did check the sender details and as far as I can see, the original email did come from a legitimate college email address. After explaining this to the President of my college, she has not replied. I have attached the original email for the job posting. I have many screenshots of my conversations between Frank and I that I would be happy to attach, however I am only permitted to attach one below. I want to warn others to be weary of scams like this. I am a desperate Nursing student who thought this would be a great way to make some extra money as I would already be driving a lot. I let my hopefulness blind me from seeing the truth, and this person took advantage of that. Hindsight is 20/20 and now I see the red flags that I should have noticed from the start. If it seems too good to be true, it is.