If you're interested in becoming a virtual assistant, start by identifying your strengths and then looking for jobs that offer a salary and hours that fit your schedule. With your skills and experience, you can offer a high-quality service at a price that's affordable for businesses. From taking orders over the phone to providing customer service, you'll be able to do everything from customer relations to data entry. How do I become a personal assistant remote?Īs a virtual assistant, you'll have the opportunity to help people with their day-to-day tasks. As a remote personal assistant, you can provide great support for your business. This gives you a lot of flexibility and allows you to be hands-on with your work. You can take calls, answer emails, schedule appointments, and coordinate travel arrangements. Plus, if they were going to waste my time I could waste their time-or at least I could have a little fun at their expense.When working as a remote personal assistant, you have the opportunity to provide many services to your clients from home. The more time they talked to me the less they could scam other people. After about ten minutes of stewing I cooled off and then my mind wandered to ways I may be able to mess with this scammer. I felt raw-not only had I missed out on some needed income, but I had also been duped enough to tell friends and family about my new gig. Then the money disappears, after being ‘cleaned’ and the victim of the scam then has to pay back the bank for the bounced check, assuming they had spent the money on the instructed errands as a personal assistant. Then they ask you to transfer the money to a different account, stating that this is an account for use in running errands. Here’s how one of these typically goes down: Someone contacts you through an old job posting, saying something to the tune of, “Hey, the position you applied for has been filled, but I need a personal assistant.” They then mail you a bogus check on “faith” stating that they are “trusting you” and when the money arrives they give the bank just enough information so that the check looks like it clears. I couldn’t find anything on Anthony or his engineering business, but when I plugged in part of the email that sounded technical and specific, I was bombarded by a full page of articles on personal assistant scams. Like any sensible suspicious person would, I then decided to Google the company. He tried to distract me by offering up more information about his supposed business, including a company name and mission statement. I contacted Anthony and told him about the check situation-without using the word fraud, as I wanted to maintain contact. Enjoy life's little blessings and be thankful for another day.” It sounded like a cross between a Hallmark card and an ad for a male potency drug. “Embrace this day with gladness, even if your blue skies turn grey. After we’d been out of contact for a few days, I received a bizarre string of upbeat rhyming platitudes: “Make a decision to enjoy this Sunday, no matter what comes your way,” Anthony wrote. Who was this person claiming to be a Nova Scotian engineer? I began studying our email exchange for clues. Still, I remained deeply curious about this stranger attempting to take my money. Not only was the envelope stopped for fraud, but Anthony had told me he was in Nova Scotia at the time-not Philadelphia. They said about 200 envelopes from Philadelphia-all with checks in them-had been stopped and were being inspected for fraud. Eager to get paid and start working, I called FedEx to see what the issue was. The check was stopped at the Toronto FedEx facility. Kristine lost almost $4,000 of her own money that I am sure she needed for school.īefore I had fully realized that I was being scammed (in retrospect the orphan thing really should have given it away) Anthony gave me a tracking number for an envelope containing the aforementioned check. It turns out the money had never actually transferred, it just had appeared to do so. When she went to make a purchase the next day, Kristine’s card was declined. When she deposited the check it seemed to clear, so she transferred the money. When she took the job her first task was to make sure the money cleared and then transfer the money to an account she would then use for her errands. She apparently got an email from someone claiming to be a professor offering her $400 a week to run a few errands. The most significant example I found was of a North Dakota student named Kristine Dale. The personal assistant scam is a less common strain of email phishing fraud which has already worked on many people before.
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