It is both interesting and sad to learn about the various new scams out there meant to low-income working people. A woman I know recently contacted me to ask for my help regarding a scam which victimized her, and left her unable to pay rent for December. I'll call her "Laura".
She was taking gig cleaning jobs from care.com. For those of you who don't know, care.com is a site where people hire gig workers for things like housecleaning, pet care, child care, senior care, tutoring, etc.
Anyway, she responded to an innocuous-looking ad from a woman advertising a cleaning job for a 1-bedroom apartment, which was strongly implied to be the place where the job poster lived.
When Laura responded, the job poster introduced herself as Amber. Amber strongly implied (but did not directly say) that she owned various apartment buildings around LA, and that this was one of many available cleaning jobs she needed done.
They agreed upon a rate, and Laura was happy for the moment that she would have a steady stream of apartment cleaning jobs from what appeared to be a wealthy, reputable building owner.
Laura did these jobs as agreed upon, and at first was paid quickly. Amber was steadily offering her jobs, though these were in different buildings, and on one occasion Amber met Laura to let her in to the apartment. Laura was surprised to see that Amber looked only late 20s, and did not at all have a professional look to her. Amber did not at all have the appearance of someone who would own several apartment buildings around LA, but Laura was getting real work and getting paid for it, so what could be the problem?
As you might guess, this eventually went bad. Amber started slow-paying Laura for the jobs, making excuses regarding the "bank having issues" and other type of scammy BS. However, she kept giving more jobs to Laura, swearing that the issues would be cleared up shortly, and Laura would get paid in full.
After a number of unpaid jobs, Laura told Amber that she needs to pay the December rent, and needed this to be rectified immediately. Amber responded by giving Laura 20% of the money owed, promising the rest would come "next week".
Unable to pay rent, Laura contacted me and asked for my opinion.
I'll give you my asssessment and tell you the action I helped Laura take in the next posts...