Description

I applied for a short term small loan and was contacted as i was approved. Talked with a female named Janice who advised her financial manager would be giving me a call to go over the documents and the process. I received a call minutes later from Paul who went over the documents and that because of state requirements,they needed to send me $500 to my account to which i would then need to return that money in order to receive my full loan amount of $2000.00 due to state requirements, which he explained as fees. He then told me i would need to go to a Walmart or a Cvs or grocery store to purchase a prepaid debit card(Visa or Mastercard)for $500, call him back and give him that prepaid debit info so he could debit that amount in order to release these funds. I called them back the next day to advise that my bank has received the 500 however the bank was holding that amount and did not release as available funds. He advised me someone else would call me back in 5 minutes and i needed to answer the phone. I received call not even 30 seconds later and spoke with a different man with a accent and he said that no,i didnt need to purchase a prepaid card but i needed to purchase Versa check and he would email me a copy of the loan check and i needed to go to staples store or office max and have them print my loan check onto that. I advised this man that no i wasnt going to do this and that i felt this was a fraud and a scam. He became very rude and told me to do that as he already sent me 500 to my bank account. I said it will be returned to you. I ended the call and took a look at my account to see if the amount had been released by the bank and i was unable to access my account. I went to a Atm located in my work building to check my balance and my debit card was invalid. I called my bank,asked what was wrong and that i had gotten a loan but was leary about it. The bank representative advised me that they had put my account in a restricted status due to fraud and that this loan was a common fraud and that the fake 500 would be returned back to them.