Mystery Unfolds: Why Did Book Marketer Lauren Foster Really Want Me to Wire Money to Abdulkareem?
R.
A –
There are so many red flags here!
A HUGE red flag is when someone with an American name:
- Gives you a different person’s name on the payee account…especially one you can’t pronounce! This happened to us recently. A “freelance writer” with a (fake) American name gave us a Paypal account for payment that had a completely different name on the account. That was suspicious. Then, we ran the article through an AI detector (it failed!). We told the “writer” that we don’t publish AI-generated articles, and that we don’t send writers’ money to third parties. He simply replied, “Okay.”
- Asks you to wire money. All legitimate companies accept credit cards. We also recommend NEVER using third-party services like Zelle (read THIS ARTICLE!). Using Paypal carries a lower risk, but NEVER use the friends and family method (many scammers require that) because, under Paypal’s guidelines, you’ll never get your money back when doing that. However, if you file a complaint with Paypal later, if the scammer has already moved the money out of their Paypal account, you may still not be able to get a refund from Paypal. Again, we STRONGLY recommend only using a credit card to give you the best possible chance of getting your money back. Just be sure you issue the chargeback within the first 60 days. Some scammers will drag out the process so, if you do issue a chargeback, you won’t get your money back because, under the credit card companies’ guidelines, too much time has passed.
You wrote, “She presents as Lauren Foster, Book Promotion Specialist for Buchboost based in Mississippi, USA.” That’s another red flag. Legitimate companies in the U.S., who are marketing to U.S. citizens, don’t put U.S. or USA in their communications (nor on their websites) after the name of the state. Foreign scammers do that because they don’t know any better.
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