E-Mail Scam in Willison | Video

Chris Williams | 9/5/2012

Cristina Castro is a student at Williston State College. She was looking for a second job to help pay her bills, when she got an e-mail from someone using the name Mark Nelson, it looked promising.

"He had a job offer for me to take care of his mail. Pick up, send out things, while he was out of town. That he would pay me $500 a week to do it.”

She gave the man her address so he could send her the money, but before Castro knew it, she was in over her head.

"He started sending me checks. After the first check, I kinda felt weird about it because that`s not what I signed up for."

She received three checks. One for almost $5,000 and the other two for almost $8,000. She was told to deposit them and send new checks to people overseas, but there was a problem.

"I put the checks through and they came back. The account they were written on doesn`t even exist, so they started withdrawing that from my bank account, and I did not have $4,000, $7,000 in my account.”

Castro is now $20,000 in debt. Because she personally sent the money overseas, she isn`t considered a victim, so there isn`t much police can do, but Castro`s mom, Leslie Carns is already looking into it.

"I went online, I looked at their website, I tracked the package to see where they came from. There`s USA address on the packages for return address."

Carns is working with her bank to pay all $20,000 back.

"They were very understanding. It isn`t the first time it`s happened they told us. They were very sorry that she did become a victim in this,” Carns added.

After she got the checks, she realized it was a scam, but she didn`t want to stop doing what the man asked her to do. He was texting her 10 to 20 times a day.

"I was afraid to say no, I was afraid to stop. Because he knew where I lived and he could find me or my family and hurt us. It never crossed my mind that it was fraud.”

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