Florida woman thought she found a sweet stay-at-home job — then the police showed up. The red flags she missed

Sparks didn’t see anything suspicious on the Indeed job listing. As she told News 6 investigators, “It felt so legit. I was just like, okay, yes, I finally got a job now.”

After landing the job, Sparks sent personal details then completed training courses that walked her through her responsibilities, which revolved around opening, checking and reshipping products.

Then the boxes arrived. Sparks would open the parcels, snap a few pictures then send them out as quickly as possible. News 6 said some packages contained high-ticket items, including Tiffany jewelry and Xbox consoles.

Everything seemed to be going smoothly — until that fateful day when an Orlando police car rolled up.

When ‘flexible jobs’ are fraudulent

Sparks told News 6 she believed her role was mainly “checking [products] for any damages” before sending the items to their final destination. In reality, she was “the middleman” for items that people allegedly bought with stolen credit card numbers.

That’s why the police showed up at Sparks’s property. Hackers recently broke into another woman’s Amazon account and were ordering goods in her name. This woman managed to track one of those purchases, which arrived at Sparks’s home through the Freight Steward system.

After talking with Orlando police, they told her she was likely involved in a scam known as a “reshipping scheme.”

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) says these scams all have a similar structure. Like Sparks’s case, fraudsters first lure people in with attractive salaries and a low-stress, stay-at-home job. To build credibility, these companies often claim connections to a big brand like FedEx or Amazon.​

Although these job postings promise an official-sounding title like a “quality control manager,” you’re really just covering the tracks of criminals who bought items with hacked accounts or compromised credit cards. The FTC says many workers usually don’t realize something’s wrong until the company doesn’t pay them.

Even though Sparks now knows she got scammed, she still has to worry about identity theft. As she told News 6, “I pray no one has bought a house in my name or opened up a bank account and it’s negative a million dollars or something.”

Stay skeptical when job searching

Moneywise reached out to Indeed for more details, and they confirmed all job postings for Freight Steward are now off their platform.

Indeed’s spokesperson also highlighted their dedication to security, stating, “Job seekers are at the heart of everything we do. Fraudulent job postings violate our policies, and our Trust and Safety Team uses human oversight and advanced technology to help prevent, identify and remove them. We take action against misuse of our platform by removing postings that don’t meet our strict quality standards and suspending the accounts of job seekers and employers who violate our policies.”

But even with these precautions, Indeed said job-seekers have to be vigilant about any suspicious features.