SCAM ALERT: Federal Trade Commission Advises College Students to be Aware of Car Wrap Scams

scammers send emails with messages like “get paid to drive”

BREVARD COUNTY, FLORIDA – If you have a car, you know how expensive the upkeep can be. Gas, maintenance, parking – the whole lot.

So what if a company offered to pay you to drive around – which you were already doing – with their branding wrapped onto your car? It could sound like a good deal.

We’ve heard about some car wrap scams that have targeted college students, a group known to look for ways to make a few extra bucks.

The gist of the scam is this: The scammers send emails with messages like “get paid to drive.” They offer to pay you $250-$350 a week if you’ll drive around with your car (or truck or motorcycle) wrapped to advertise a well-known product – or even an event like the 2020 Olympics.

If you bite, they’ll send you a check to deposit into your bank account. Then they’ll tell you to use some of that money so a “specialist” can put the ads on your car.

And they’ll tell you to pay by money order, Walmart money services, or by making a cash deposit directly into the “specialist’s” bank account – all ways that are hard to cancel or get your money back.

For a lot of people, it’s only once their money is gone – and no car wrap materializes – that they figure out the “specialist” is really the scammer. And that check they deposited is a fake.

This also means the bank will take back the amount of that fake check, leaving people out even more money.

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