What is the Student Loan Forgiveness scam?
A surefire way to put yourself in even more debt
Student Loan Forgiveness
"Press 2 if your student loan debt is over $10,000".
You might have gotten one of these calls recently or it came to your voicemail without your mobile ever ringing. Student loan forgiveness scams is one of the hottest new scams.
How it works: student loan forgiveness scammers make huge amounts of robocalls looking for what is known in the industry as a 'lead'. This is basically a synonym for victim. The scammer who is calling is not your loan servicing company who is handling your student loan. Instead, this company operates in one of two methods:
The barely-legal scammer: outfits such as Documents Done Right claim that they only offer assistance with applying for federal student loan forgiveness applications. However, recordings of their own robocalls indicate that they mislead victims into believing that they are actually the purveyor of forgiveness programs. While a scammer like this plays at the razor-edge of the law to avoid jail, you shouldn't make any sort of deal with a scammer like this.
The illegal-without-a-doubt scammer: a student loan forgiveness scammer can do quite a bit of damage. They will ask you for Federal Student Aid ID and access to your online account. Some student loan scammers have changed the passwords of their victims accounts after applying for a deferrement on the loan and setting up a payment plan with the victim.
By the time the victim realizes what happened the victim will have already sent more than more than one payment to the scammer. Once the victim receives conformation paperwork in the mail that their student loan was deferred without their authorization, the scammer has absconded wih their money and identity.
You can forget pushing the button to be removed from "the list"
Our extensive research into student loan forgiveness peddlers has shown that not one of them actually maintains an internal Do Not Call list. Pressing any option to be removed from the scammer's calling list will only guarantee that you will receive more calls.