Many people fall victim to work-at-home business scams. The Federal Trade Commission receives over 8,000 complaints of these scams every year. These scams take many different forms, so it's difficult to keep track.
The resale credit card services scam is one of the newest versions of the work from home phone scam. The people behind the scams reach out to their victims by phone or online. The caller claims you can make good money by reselling services for Visa, MasterCard, and other credit card companies.
How Does the Resale Credit Card Services Phone Scam Work?
Resale service scams have been around for decades. Timeshare resale scams were big in the 1970s and made a huge comeback during the recession. Many crooks have been using similar resale business opportunity scams.
The resale credit card scam sounds like a perfectly reasonable business opportunity. There's clearly a lot of demand for credit card services, because Americans have over $1 trillion in credit card debt. Many of these customers are looking for new cards with lower interest rates, more flexible payment plans, and better rewards.
Scammers tell their victims that people are willing to pay a hefty premium for the right credit card plan, so franchisees can make a bundle selling them. They claim you can get in on the action by paying a franchise and international business license fee, which can be upwards of $1,000.
These people are more sophisticated than most other scam artists. They set up websites and call centers to make their con more believable.
How to Protect Yourself From the Scam
While the scam is very well thought out, you can avoid falling victim to it if you know what to look for. Here are some of the biggest warning signs:
Promises of unrealistic income potential.
Work from home scams prey on the greedy side of human nature. The scammers promise that you can get rich with little work. You should always be skeptical if anyone promises an unrealistic amount of money. If it was so easy, wouldn't everyone be doing it?
Website is new and has no registrant information.
Credit card resale scammers tell you to visit their website to make their business appear more legitimate. The website may look fancy and professional, but that doesn't mean the company is reputable.
It's a good idea to research the company website with a service such as who.is. If the website is less than a few months old, then you should be suspicious. You should also be suspicious if the registrant name and address are hidden.
How to Report This Scam
Resale credit card services scams should be reported to the FTC. You can also report them to your state’s Attorney General’s Office.
You can also trace the phone number that contacted you, and run searches on the numbers that appear on the website of the work-at-home job offer. It’s likely that you aren’t the only one being targeted by this scam. You can check for scam activity and warn others in your community about this scam with our white and yellow pages app for iPhone, or via our online reverse lookup phone book.