Student Union
Scammers Scare Students Into Giving Up Personal Information
The call comes late at night, waking up a student with an angry voice that issues a threat about the student’s visa status.
Your visa is out of compliance, the aggressive caller says, and instructs the student to send thousands of dollars to an account that he says belongs to “U.S. Immigration and Customs Services.”
When the student says she or he has to call home -- which can be many time zones away for many international students -- the caller warns that if there is any delay, the student will be deported.
The threat is a scam designed to make the unsuspecting student part with his or her money, say school administrators.
“It’s a pretty serious situation,” said Senem Bakar, director of international student and scholar services at American University in Washington.
International students are not familiar “with our police and how things work. And so they sometimes will fall victim to these kinds of calls,” said Masume Assaf, director of international student and scholar advising at Pennsylvania State University.
Scams also come in what look like official -- but cleverly disguised – letters that would make it appear as if the correspondence comes from the U.S. tax agency, the International Revenue Service. These make international students more likely to buy into them.
In one instance a form with the heading, “IRS Form 2623 third-party consent,” tells the individual to complete it with personal banking details, send it back to the IRS for processing, and wait for a refund.
“And it looks pretty legitimate,” Assaf said. But instead, their accounts are hacked.
The legitimate document is Form 2624, or “Consent for Third Party Contact.”
The legitimate immigration agencies include U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Headlines are full of stories about students who have been scammed. “I was a Chinese grad student and lost all my money to a scam,” wrote Xinlu Liang, a recent graduate of the University of Southern California, for the Los Angeles Times. “How could I have been so gullible?”
Wichita State University in Kansas publishes a page of warnings, alerting students about the scams that include calls to Chinese students from people speaking in Mandarin.
“The caller encourages the victim to fly to China to complete an official statement. They may warn you not to contact any other people including your parents because you are involved in a ‘criminal case’ saying that anyone (friends or family) who is in contact with you may also be in danger,” the web page instructs.
At the same time, the scammer contacts the student’s family members or friends, saying the student has had a car accident or has been kidnapped.
The student has been warned not to contact their family. When their family can’t reach them, they think “something terrible has happened to their child and so they wire money to the scammer to ‘help’ the student with their emergency,” according to Witchita State.
Another way students can get scammed is through eBay and Craigslist, online sites where people buy and sell goods or services.
In some cases, international students who have to shop for housing online arrange to rent a property without seeing it first. When they show up to move in, they find the unit already occupied.
Scammers call from many different phone numbers and use different voices, and fake or temporary numbers that cannot be properly tracked appear on the phone’s Caller ID display. When the number is dialed, the caller hears a message saying the number is out of service.
“There is no grace period. They are very persistent. They are very authoritative,” Bakar said about scammers.
“Caller ID, which used to mean something, means nothing now,” Bakar said.
Assaf elaborates, explaining that scammers disguise their numbers to make it appear as if the police or legitimate agencies are calling. Assaf said she has had this experienced.
“John Smith” called, saying he was from the Montgomery County Police Station. When she realized it was a scam, she pushed back.
But the scammer was confident.
“I said to him, ‘Oh no, I know what you're doing.’ And he said, ‘Look, (...) see the number on your phone?’…‘Look it up.’ (It was) the Montgomery County Police Station” number, she said.
It’s tricky figuring out which calls are real. For some students, this thinking is intuitive. For others, it’s not.
“Some people, you know, it's an easy thing. For others, the students especially, when you get somebody on the phone that’s pressuring you for money and you’re scared, the brain’s telling you this: ‘There's something wrong here.’
“But your blood pressure and your heart are telling you, ‘Oh my gosh, (...) I'm in panic mode. I need to listen and get this done because I have an emergency,’” said Christina Lehnertz, director, Immigration Compliance and Advising, International Programs and Services at George Mason University in Virginia.
As a way to help differentiate among scams, Lehnertz says international students should be aware of the information they put online, especially in surveys. Red flags include submitting credit card information, their date of birth or Social Security numbers.
“Getting them to be able to tell the difference between a real survey, a real online survey and something that is phishing -- that's a challenge,” Lehnertz said. Phishing is an attempt to obtain sensitive information by fraudulent means.
Young people are not the only targets for scammers and hackers.
“Many grandparents get those kinds of calls as well. Or parents get those calls that … their child or their grandchild is in jail, they need to send money immediately,” Assaf added.
A recent scam uses an app to manipulate photos of people -- mostly women -- with clothes on to make them look like their clothes are off. If a scammer sent a text to female students threatening to publish nude photos unless a ransom is paid, the students might be so embarrassed -- especially if they are from a more modest culture -- that they would wire money to buy the photos.
“If someone is pressuring you to do something, that’s fake,” Bakar said in an interview with VOA.
Assaf says that people are becoming smarter about recognizing scams but are still bad at it. Assaf adds that students need to realize that scamming happens anywhere and to anyone.
Experts say there are ways to tell if someone is scamming you:
· The caller pretending to be from the U.S. government asks for money. Real government officials never ask for money over the phone.
· There is pressure for students to pay now rather than letting them pay later.
· The officials do not give students time to think about the situation overall.
When asked what advice she would give international students to avoid scams, Assaf offered this: “911 will never call you,” she said. “You call them.”
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The 19-year-old University of Montana sprinter was among college athletes in the state who received an inquiry from Montana Together asking if she was interested in a name, image and likeness deal to support Sen. Jon Tester, a three-term Democrat seeking re-election. The group, which is not affiliated with the Tester campaign, offered from $400 to $2,400 to athletes willing to produce video endorsements.
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There are examples of political activism by college athletes: A Texas Tech kicker revealed his support for former President Donald Trump on a shirt under his uniform at a game last week and a handful of Nebraska athletes a few days ago teamed up in a campaign ad against an abortion measure on the Tuesday's ballot.
Still, such steps are considered rare.
"It can be viewed as risky and there may be people telling them just don't even take that chance because they haven't made it yet," said Lauren Walsh, who started a sports branding agency 15 years ago. She said there is often too much to lose for themselves, their handlers and in some cases, their families.
"And these individuals still have to figure out what they're going to do with the rest of their lives, even those that do end up getting drafted," she added.
College coaches are not always as reticent. Auburn men's basketball coach Bruce Pearl has used social media to make it clear he does not support Kamala Harris, Trump's Democratic opponent in next week's presidential election. Oklahoma State football coach Mike Gundy once caused a stir with a star player for wearing a shirt promoting a far-right news outlet.
Blake Lawrence, co-founder of the NIL platform Opendorse, noted that this is the first presidential election in the NIL era, which began in July 2021. He said athletes are flocking to opportunities to help increase voter turnout in the 18-to-24 age demographic, adding that one of his company's partners has had 86 athletes post social media messages encouraging turnout through the first half of the week.
He said athletes are shying away from endorsing specific candidates or causes that are considered partisan.
"Student-athletes are, for the most part, still developing their confidence in endorsing any type of product or service," he said. "So if they are hesitant to put their weight behind supporting a local restaurant or an e-commerce product, then they are certainly going to be hesitant to use their social channels in a political way."
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Many college athletes have opted to focus on drumming up turnout in a non-partisan manner or simply using their platforms to take stands that are not directly political in nature. Some of those efforts can be found in battleground states.
A progressive group called NextGen America said it had signed players in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Virginia to encourage voting among young people. Another organization, The Team, said it prepped 27 college athletes in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Arizona and Michigan to lead volunteer voter participation opportunities for students. The organization also said it got more than 625 coaches to sign a nonpartisan pledge to get their athletes registered to vote.
The Team's executive director is Joe Kennedy, a former coach who coordinated championship visits and other sporting events at the White House during President Barack Obama's administration. In early October, it hosted a Zoom event during which panelists such as NCAA President Charlie Baker and WNBA players Nneka Ogwumike and Natasha Cloud gave college athletes advice about using their platforms on campus.
In its early days, The Team seized upon momentum from the record turnout seen in the 2020 election. The NCAA that year said Division I athletes could have Election Day off from practice and play to vote. Lisa Kay Solomon, founder of the All Vote No Play campaign, said even if the athletes don't immediately take stands on controversial issues, it's important for them to learn how.
"It is a lot to ask our young people to feel capable and confident on skills they've never had a chance to practice," Solomon said. "We have to model what it means to practice taking risks, practice standing up for yourself, practice pausing to think about what are the values that you care about — not what social media is feeding into your brain, but what do you care about and how do you express that? And how do you do it in a way that honors the kind of future that you want to be a part of?"
Shut up and play?
Two years ago, Tennessee-Martin quarterback Dresser Winn said he would support a candidate in a local district attorney general race in what experts said was very likely the first political NIL deal by a college athlete.
There have been very few since.
The public criticism and fallout for athletes who speak out on politics or social issue can be sharp. Kaepernick, the Super Bowl-winning quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers, hasn't played in an NFL game since January 2017, not long after he began kneeling during the national anthem at games.
Meskers, the Montana sprinter, said political endorsements through NIL deals could create problems for athletes and their schools.
"I just think that NIL is going to run into a lot of trouble and a lot of struggles if they continue to let athletes do political endorsements," she said. "I just think it's messy. But I stand by NIL as a whole. I think it's really hard as a student athlete to create a financial income and support yourself."
Walsh said it's easier for wealthy and veteran stars like James and Ogwumike to take stands. James, the Los Angeles Lakers star, started More Than a Vote — an organization with a mission to "educate, energize and protect Black voters" — in 2020. He has passed the leadership to Ogwumike, who just finished her 13th year in the WNBA and also is the president of the Women's National Basketball Players Association. More than a Vote is focused on women's rights and reproductive freedom this year.
"They have very established brands," Walsh said. "They know who they are and they know what their political stance is. They know that they have a really strong following that -- there's always going to be haters, but they're also always going to have that strong following of people who listen to everything that they have to say."
Andra Gillespie, an associate professor at Emory University who teaches African American politics, also said it is rare that a college athlete would make a significant impact with a political stand simply because they tend to have a more regional platform than national. Even celebrities like Taylor Swift and Eminem are better at increasing turnout than championing candidates.
"They are certainly very beneficial in helping to drive up turnout among their fans," Gillespie said. "The data is less conclusive about whether or not they're persuasive – are they the ones who are going to persuade you to vote for a particular candidate?"
Athletes as influencers
Still, campaigns know young voters are critical this election cycle, and athletes offer an effective and familiar voice to reach them.
Political and social topics are not often broached, but this week six Nebraska athletes — five softball players and a volleyball player — appeared in an ad paid for by the group Protect Women and Children involving two initiatives about abortion laws on Tuesday's ballot.
The female athletes backed Initiative 434, which would amend the state constitution to prohibit abortions after the first trimester, with exceptions. Star softball player Jordy Bahl said on social media that the athletes were not paid.
A University of Montana spokesperson said two athletes initially agreed to take part in the NIL deal backing Tester. The school said one withdrew and the other declined to be interviewed.
For Meskers, deciding against the offer boiled down to Tester twice voting against proposals to bar federal funds from going to schools that allow transgender athletes to play women's sports, a prominent GOP campaign topic. Tester's campaign said the proposals were amendments to government spending packages, and he didn't want to play a role in derailing them as government shutdowns loomed.
"As a former public school teacher and school board member, Jon Tester believes these decisions should be made at the local level," a Tester spokesperson said. "He has never voted to allow men to compete against women."
Meskers said she believes using influence as college athletes is good and she is in favor of NIL. She just doesn't think the two should mix specifically for supporting candidates.
"I think especially as student athletes, we do have such a big voice and we do have a platform to use," she said. "So I think if you're encouraging people to do their civic duties and get up and go (vote), I think that's a great thing."
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