'Almost all of the time, it's stolen merchandise:' Work from home scam warning

Work from home scam

MILWAUKEE — It seemed like a great job with flexible, decent pay and individuals could work from home. However, the payday never came.

A pile of returned packages were a sign that Naomi Israel's new job wasn't what it seemed.

"It's like, shipping and receiving. So, I ship out packages that they send to me," Israel said about the job.

She found it on Indeed.com. Israel would make $15.00 an hour plus bonuses to check labels on packages and apply new labels.

She liked a lot about it.

"Working from home. Working when I want to. Wake up when I want to. Ship the packages out when I want to," Israel said.

Israel along with 27 others have filed complaints with the Better Business Bureau about their employer -- Insight Bridges. The complainants believe it was a scam.

"I tried to log in on the day I was supposed to get paid, but I wasn't able to do so," Israel recalled.

Jim Temmer of the Wisconsin BBB says the job sounds like a classic work from home scam.

"You'll see an ad that's part time, work from home, limited hours, big pay," Temmer said. "I'm gonna be shipping you something and here's some addresses. And, you move this stuff around and you're shipping it. Sometimes it's electronics. Sometimes it's gift cards. Almost all of the time, it's stolen merchandise."

The BBB says be leery of jobs that seem too good to be true and have no interviews or very short ones.

Don't send any personal information to anyone you haven't met.

Israel never opened any of the packages sent to her, but another Milwaukee woman who fell victim sent Contact 6 pictures of hers. Inside the packages was kitchen utensils, a bathtub faucet and a can of spray foam insulation.

"I'm like, 'Ok, this is kind of messed up," Israel said.

For her, it was 30 days wasted.

"At the end of it, I was owed like $3,000," she said.

The BBB says work from home scams ranked number one among the scams reported to them last year. Contact 6 reached out to Insight Bridges and Indeed.com but never heard back.