Work-at-home schemes, whose Internet pop-up ads show tempting heaps of greenbacks, often leave their customers feeling burned when the promised financial windfall never happens. Now fraud investigators warn that those who sign up for work-at-home deals could actually be committing a crime by helping someone launder stolen money.
A recent fraud alert from the federal Internet Crime Complaint Center offers this example of a criminal scheme:
"An individual applies for a position as a rebate or payments processor through an online job site or through an unsolicited e-mail. As a new employee, the individual is asked to provide his/her bank account information to his/her employer or to establish a new account using information provided by the employer. Funds are deposited into the account that the employee is instructed to wire to a third (often international) account. The employee is instructed to deduct a percentage of the wired amount as their commission."
But the "rebate processing" business is actually about laundering ill-gotten money for crooks. Anyone who helps them could also be charged, the feds warn.
Check the company with the Better Business Bureau or by checking the ownership of the website. Above all, you shouldn't have to pay someone for the privilege of working for them.
Update on two cases
Two guardianship cases familiar to Whistleblower readers may be closer to resolution, as the result of recent court action. Thanks to an anonymous benefactor, Isabelle Jessich will be allowed to stay in her Edina home, and she has a new court-appointed conservator to help manage her finances, according to a settlement approved in court last week.
Since last year, Whistleblower has described Jessich's struggle to regain control of her life from a court-appointed guardian and conservator, Joseph Vogel, whom she accused of keeping her confined in a nursing home. In August, Vogel asked the court to allow the sale of Jessich's Edina home to pay his bills and those of seven lawyers, even though such a move might put Jessich back in a nursing home and put her teenage daughter into foster care.
