The FTC has settled its claims against Career Education Corp. (CEC) and as a result is now sending refunds totaling thirty million dollars to victims of CEC’s scams.  CEC bought leads from companies that constructed bogus websites to attract people looking for information about jobs, how to enlist in the military and Medicaid information.  CEC would then use that information to contact them and made high-pressure sales calls to induce people to enroll in their schools that would not provide the services they desired.  According to the FTC, CEC  used telemarketers to make aggressive enrollment pitches to people who had signed up for the federal Do Not Call List.

TIPS

Whenever you are searching online for information about jobs, the military or government benefits, you should be wary of scammers.  Merely because a search brings up a website high on a search does not mean that the website is legitimate.  The website may either have paid for that position or manipulated the algorithms used to rate websites to get a high position in a search.  Therefore, if you find an unfamiliar website that appears to have the information you are seeking, you should do an additional search putting in the name of the unfamiliar website with the words, “scam,” or “complaint” and see what comes up.

In regard to looking for a job, check out the Department of Labor’s American Job Centers for information about jobs in your state.  Here is their link https://www.careeronestop.org/localhelp/americanjobcenters/find-american-job-centers.aspx

For information about enlisting in the military services, a good place to get reliable information is this site of the Department of Defense. https://www.todaysmilitary.com/joining-eligibility/questions-ask-recruiter

For reliable information about Medicaid benefits go to https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/index.html

For those of you receiving the Scam of the day through an email, I just want to remind you that if you want to see the ever increasing list of Coronavirus scams go to the first page of the http://www.scamicide.com website and click on the tab at the top of the page that indicates “Coronavirus Scams.”  Scamicide has been cited by the New York Times as one of three top sources for information about Coronavirus related scams.

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