Consumer complaint received 2025-01-16 00:00:00
Product: Money transfer, virtual currency, or money service — Domestic (US) money transfer
Issue: Fraud or scam — 
Company: Early Warning Services, LLC
State: NY

Complaint narrative:
On Wednesday, XX/XX/XXXX, I received an email from the address XXXX advertising a research assistantship position for the XXXX XXXX XXXX  XXXX working under XXXX XXXX XXXX at XXXXXXXX XXXX. The position was offering {$300.00} pay per week for 7 hours of commitment. 

I had sent a message to the number provided and reached out to the individual who I had assumed was XXXX XXXX. The individual briefly restated the position offering and the tasks I would be in charge of. They asked for my resume which I sent over, the resume included my full name, contact information, and home address. After reviewing my resume they asked me to search for the prices of the office supplies that would be needed for the position, which included the following items. 
XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXXXXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX  XXXX XXXX self-inking date stamp After searching on XXXX the total amount of the office supplies came out to be {$1700.00}. I was directed to get back to the individual with the estimated cost. Once I sent over the estimate they instructed me to provide an additional email and they would send over a check for the costs of the supplies. From there I printed the check and proceeded with a mobile deposit per their instructions, the check was for {$1700.00}. The check came up as pending and the funds would appear the following day. The individual proceeded to ask me to purchase the office supplies from a vendor they has already contracted with the materials but I made clear I was not comfortable with using my personal finances to purchase the materials and would wait until the next day for the check to come through. The next day the check has shown up as cleared in my account and the funds were available to me for use. Since the hiring process moved so quickly I had yet to meet with who I thought was XXXX XXXX so I requested that we meet over XXXX to discuss the position a little more and to have an opportunity to ask questions. The individual grew hostile and proceeded to say they had no time to meet and were too busy to meet over XXXX. I still insisted that we meet over XXXX since I knew it would be helpful to get more information about the position and meet at least virtually the professor I would be working with. They grew even more hostile and stated that they had no time and that they did not work with students who had " trust issues ''. After this, I communicated that I was no longer comfortable with taking the position and asked them if they would prefer me to send the money back through a check form, Zelle of XXXX. They opted for Zelle and I proceeded to send back the {$1700.00} that was originally sent to me. The next day I checked my account and saw that it was in overdraft for {$1500.00}. I immediately contacted my bank after realizing this was an incident of fraud and put my account of freeze and submitted a claim with them. I also filed a police report with my university public safety officials. Nothing has been resolved as of today, it has been devastating to my financial stability.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation