Advance Fee Loan Scams

A personal loan where the lender is requesting monies upfront as security for your loan is going to be a scam 99.9999/100. The most desperate of people fall for this scam, usually after being declined by their bank, credit union and even online with non-traditional lenders for their loan request. Those with limited understanding of finances or how personal loans work often fall victim too.

Armed with a hard selling approach, but a silky sales pitch, these hustlers are able to regularly scam consumers out of a few hundred dollars, to even thousands. Even after these crooks have conned someone out of money, they will try and squeeze more from the unsuspecting victim. For example, if they are asking for you insure your loan, they may indicate that underwriting came back and the already advance fee you paid is not enough, and that you need to pay more up-front. They will keep asking for money, until you have figured out that you have been conned. To add insult to injury, these cons acquire enough personal info during their scam to make their victims vulnerable to identity theft.

How to spot an advance fee scam
-Emails or phone calls indicating you've been approved for a loan you didn't even apply for.
-Over the years, we have heard of a pattern with these advance fee loan scammers as being think accented foreigners, usually misrepresenting a real company. They will use the real company's address and website in their selling, and we've even heard of them using the real company's phone number as the display number on called ID (they use software to spoof their actual number).
-Red flags if you making an advance payment for application costs, loan processing or insurance, or even pre-paying the first month's payment are pre-requisites of your loan funding.
- The request of wiring of money via Moneygram or Western Union to anywhere, including anywhere in the US.

How Advance Fee Loan Scammers Find Their Victims
When applying for a personal loan online, avoid submitting more than three applications at different sites. The source that is leaking/selling your data to these people are probably seeing your data every time you apply. Once they see your info via your multiple applications, they reach out with the scam, because at that point, since your data has been received by multiple sites, their scam can't be traced.

Advance fee scammers will often buy bulks of data from black-market online data providers that have hacked all sorts of online merchants. So if you have ever submitted your personal info anywhere, it can potentially fall into the hands of these crooks. Most people need money, so when they are contacted about a loan they were approved for, even if they never even applied for a loan, they listen.