Comments on: Virtual Assistant Scam Alert

By: Danielle Keister

Danielle Keister — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 15:53:42 +0000

You obviously are a reader of my blog... are you paying attention?

What you're asking about is not Virtual Assistance.

Virtual Assistance is a profession; it's not a job.

Virtual Assistants are business owners. They run their own businesses. They find their own clients.

What you are talking about is finding telecommuting work. That is NOT Virtual Assistance, and it's not something you are going to find help with here.

Come on, people. Use your heads.

By: S from PA

S from PA — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 15:34:57 +0000

Thanks for the information. What agencies are reliable for virtual assistants? Should you be charged a fee for certification? Is it necessary? And should one be charged a membership fee to receive job postings?

By: Candace Lally

Candace Lally — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 18:46:20 +0000

I applied to virtual assistant positions listed on hotjobs.com. I was told that money orders would be mailed to me and I was to keep 8% and send the rest via Western Union to a person in the Dominican Republic. I was given a website address that listed a virtual assistant position! How could this be wrong?? Well, today I did not have time to go to the bank and cash money orders (this would be my second transaction with this company) so I asked my husband to run to the bank and cash them. Well, the bank would not cash them! They actually took photo copies of the money orders to show their security officer. They suggested my husband go to CVS to see if they could be cashed there since that is where they were bought. CVS cashed them, no questions asked! After thinking about what the people at the bank were saying, how there were four checks all for the same amount, we got a little suspicious. My husband ended up taking the remainder of the checks (ten in total) to our local police station. They want to me to come down there tonight with everything I have from these people! Thank goodness I saved EVERYTHING!! Every email was saved, I photo copied the money orders before cashing them, I kept a spreadsheet of all the transactions I was responsible for. I cannot wait to see how this turns out! It seemed too good, too easy to be true and it really is!!

By: Rita Cartwright

Rita Cartwright — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 18:04:53 +0000

Thanks Danielle. I received the same email more than once. Another scam that is going on is someone is taking the text from our blogs and inserting it into their blogs. However, their blogs contain viruses. It makes us look bad, because if someone clicks on what they think is a valuable blog, they will activate viruses, which are attached to the blogs. If the blog looks suspicious, don’t click the link!!

By: Teresa Morrow

Teresa Morrow — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 12:09:10 +0000

Thanks Danielle for posting this warning about this type of con artist scam. I haven't received anything like this (yet) however, I will be on the look out for it. I would like to help spread the word about this so I am going to place your post url in my blog for others to read as well.
Also, thank you Jasmine for the #5 tip - don't work for a company you can't find on Google but do find on scam.com. I didn't realize that there was a website scam.com.

Thanks to both of you for this very useful information for virtual assistants and really anyone who owns a business.

By: Jasmine

Jasmine — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 19:43:46 +0000

I received the same message two days ago. Only because I’d gotten a similar message from a con artist was I able to identify this as unscupulous immediately. Following are some rules of thumb I use to weed out scammers: 1. Unsolicited e-mail or a message not stating directly where they found out about my services, 2. Senders whose names are different than the named on their e-mail account, 3. Misspelled and lower case subject lines, 4. International mailing addresses, 5. Company not found on Google and but is found on Scam.com. These things have helped me hit DELETE as soon as I found a questionable solicitation.