Be Aware Of Student Loan Consolidation Fraud
On the whole, there aren't many thieves willing to target college student graduates because this is a group notoriously short on money. However, there are some people who will try to steal from even those who are broke. Loan consolidation has been given a lot of good press in the last ten years. Student loan consolidation also has a lot of advantages. With common sense, you should be able to easily avoid student loan consolidation scams.
Social Security Number Scam
One of the reported student consolidation loan scams involves a telephone call or an email from famous financial institutions. They claim that they are doing background checks for your student loans. Sometimes they can find out the names and phone numbers or email addresses of students who apply for loans from a particular bank. They then ask you to verify part or all of your Social Security number.
This student loan consolidation scam is just a variation of the more common "contact our security department immediately" spam that has plagued inboxes for years. The emails even look like they are from the sites or banks they claim to be from. This most famously happened to users of eBay or PayPal. They just trick you into giving out your personal information.
Watch Out For
Other emails, phone calls or mailings that may be from student loan consolidation scams involve one or more of the following warning signs:
Interest rates that are too good to be true
A lot of grammatical or spelling errors
The entire email or letter written entirely in capital letters
Any address of company that you have not contacted first
If You Think You've Been Had
If you suspect that your student loan consolidation company has taken your money and run, you need to write down all of the details about your dealings with the company. You then need to get in contact with not only the Better Business Bureau, but also with your creditors to let them know that you believe you are the victim of a student loan consolidation scam.
In 2007, one student loan consolidation scam posed as a false company in order to bilk the American government of an estimated $200,000,000. This company had offices in Africa, Europe and the Americas. You never can be too careful.
Also, contact your Congressmen and state representatives about your problems with a student loan consolidation scam. The governemt is now taking a very serious stand against this kind of fraud and will need all of the details they can get in order to successfully prosecute.
