Getting paid to drive around with a company's logo, decal or advertising wrap on your car might sound like a pretty good side hustle.
However, one woman in Detroit found out the hard way it was too good to be true. She shared her story with me, so you don't waste your money.
Krysta Cantrell is a single mom and a full-time college student. So, she signed up for what she thought would be a perfect way to make extra money, advertising an energy drink on the side of her car.
"It's got the little C-4 Energy Drink stamp on top. And it even says. ‘Best regards, friend. Chad Lewis, the auto wrap campaign manager,'" Cantrell said of the letter.
It arrived in a priority mail envelope with a check for $3,990 to include "the first-week payment" of $700, with the rest of the money, "3,290 to go to the decal installer."
"You thought you were going to be making $700 a week for how long?” I asked.
“For 90 days," she said.
The letter instructed her to start a text thread with the sender, then deposit the check into her bank account and wait for it to clear.
“Did you cash that check? Did you deposit it?” I asked.
“I tried to deposit it, and that's what caused my accounts to be frozen. And when I tried to contact my bank to figure out what happened, they told me that I'm the victim of a fraud," Cantrell said.
“What went through your mind when you got that fraud alert from your bank?” I asked.
"I was just absolutely panic-stricken. I actually had a panic attack," she said.
Melanie Duquesnel, the head of the Better Business Bureau serving Eastern Michigan, said it's not a new scam.
One red flag she said to look out for was that the letter has typos everywhere with bad grammar.
The letter Cantrell got said "Dear Sir/Ma" instead of "ma'am," followed by a run-on sentence, a handful of incorrect subject-verb agreements, missing words, missing spaces between words and more.
Duquesnel recommends you talk in person or arrange a live video call before agreeing to a side gig, ask for referrals for other workers, verify the decal vendor and contact the company that's advertising.
”So I would have reached out to C4 Energy Drink directly and said, ‘Is this how you're doing your branding?'" Duquesnel said.
Fake check scams come in variety of examples, according to the FTC. Not only the car wrap decal scheme but scammers who also pretend to hire you as a personal assistant or even a mystery shopper.
Then some scammers will send you a big, fat check for shipping and taxes for a sweepstakes prize or overpayment for an online purchase you never made.
"How would you describe how you felt when you realized your bank account had been frozen and somebody was trying to scare me out of money?" I asked.
"It was earth-shattering," she said.
Cantrell is still waiting for access to her money so she can open up a new account and pay her bills.
I reached out to C4 Energy Drink's parent company Nutrabolt for a comment and have not heard back at the time of the publishing of this article. But company logos are often copied and used in scams in order to trick people, and the BBB and Krysta Cantrell do not think C4 Energy Drink was involved with this fake check scam.
If you think you've been the victim of a fake check scam, report it to the Federal Trade Commission, add the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, your state attorney general and the BBB scam tracker.
