Amazon employment scammers prey on elderly, hurl n-word
Believing that everything was on the up and up, a Birmingham, Ala., widow turned over her bank account information so she could receive her pay through direct deposit.
In an apparent attempt to join the shameful hall of fame, scammers are targeting the elderly for fake work-from-home jobs, and, in one case, called a woman a racial epithet after she caught on.
That’s the story being shared by Belinda Jackson of Birmingham, Ala., who told CBS 42 that one of the alleged scammers called her the n-word when she confronted him about whether a job really existed. The scammer was offering an alleged work-from-home job with Amazon, the retail website.
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Jackson said that her husband recently died and in order to make ends meet, she was seeking work-from-home employment performing data entry or customer service, writes the television news outlet.
She came across a website that claimed to help people find home employment with Amazon and the claim seemed believable to her because Amazon recently announced it would open a fulfillment center in Bessemer, Ala., Jackson told the station.
Believing that everything was on the up and up, Jackson turned over her bank account information so she could receive her pay through direct deposit. But when she saw the cursor on her computer screen move while she was on the computer, she knew something was wrong, she told the station.
She saw her Amazon account in front of her with her credit card information. As soon as she saw that, “I started unplugging, deleting and doing everything I can to get him out,” she recalled.
As the situation became more tense, the man on the telephone told Jackson she would not be able to get a job with Amazon because she is Black.
“I was thrown for a loop, and I asked him again, and he said, ‘You are a (n word).”
Jackson contacted the Better Business bureau to complain. The organization’s communications manager, Andre Kral, told CBS 42 that there are not any jobs posted yet for Jackson’s area.
Jackson said that in spite of the attempted hacking, it does not appear that any of her money has been stolen.
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