'Wrapping' is a process in which a company pays you a set amount to display their advertisement on your vehicle. Cyber criminals are taking this opportunity and running with it. Falsified LLC's are reportedly contacting individuals via email and offering to wrap their car for cash.
They send the individual a check for a large sum of money, and then notify the individual that they can keep a portion but they need to wire the rest to another company that will wrap your car. After the money is wired the check is then rejected as it was falsified from the start, the money will then be taken directly from your personal account. Reporting these incidents is crucial as the influx of reports may justify legal intervention.
There are legitimate ways to make money by wrapping your car, so how can you tell if one of these potential ventures is legitimate?
Well for starters you could use verified apps like Wrapify who check the legitimacy of the offers themselves. If you decide you'd like to go for a more direct approach then look for these indicators:
If a company is legitimate they will not have any reason to withhold information from you, so ask questions, a lot of them.
The need for you to pay a separate company with the original offering company's money is suspicious on its own, so if you aren't using a verified app avoid these offers at all costs
Often one of these offers will include an attached website, or at the very least an email address associated with the offering. A quick google search could yield some telling results on the legitimacy of the company.
We will be doing a follow up on our LinkedIn page where we go through the process of one of these scams as well as how to locate the assailant so they can be properly reported.