SEATTLE - Tens of thousands of students will be victimized by fraudulent companies posing as legitimate foundations this fall, according to the Federal Trade Commission.
Jodie Bernstein, director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, said, "Bogus scholarship search services are just a variation on the 'You Have Won' prize-promotion scam, targeted to ... students and their parents who are anxious about paying for college."
Bernstein said these questionable agencies guarantee students free scholarship money in exchange for an up-front fee, usually around $50.
"You don't need college-level math to know that multiplying those fees by tens of thousands of victims adds up to big money for the scam artists," Bernstein said.
Some of the techniques used by the fraudulent companies include using official-sounding names that are slight variations of legitimate government and