Ascesso Trojan sends out dozens of student loan forgiveness scam emails

Student loan forgiveness is something that almost every student loan borrower dreams of, sadly, students who desperately look for ways to get rid of the debt can fall into scammers’ hands. It is not surprising that frauds quickly discover what concerns people and shortly make a plan how to take advantage of those who are looking for help. According to recent reports, America has already handed out loans to about 42 million people with a total value of 1.3 trillion USD dollars. While students are burdened with debts, scammers quickly develop strategies how to deteriorate the situation and make miserable graduates penniless. Now, with the help of Ascesso Trojan, they send thousands of phony offers to students via email, suggesting them to participate in bogus student loan forgiveness programs. This Trojan horse is mainly used as a tool to send mass emails. Such emails sometimes contain malicious attachments, so be careful and in case you get the message described below, do not open any links or files attached to it.

Email letters that crooks send typically promise perfect debt repayment clauses, debt reductions or even forgiveness. These scam messages usually contain this line in the subject field:

Don’t get garnished because of late SL payment. We can Help!

The message suggests the victim call a provided number to see if he or she qualifies for the Student Loan Forgiveness Program. The phony email message informs about “office working hours,” and says that it is a must to call them ASAP to “take advantage of these new federal laws.” No matter what information victims provide, scammers falsely inform everyone who calls them that they can qualify for the program, and in order to become a participant, it is required to buy an iTunes card for a couple of hundreds of dollars and then to provide the number written on the card. Such requirement clearly indicates that people behind this “forgiveness program” are scammers, because the government would never ask people to pay fees by buying iTunes cards and providing their numbers. However, one payment is not enough – it turns out that later scammers ask for more money, and this is where the victim realizes that he or she is being scammed.

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Alice Woods
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Alice Woods is the News Editor at 2-spyware. She has been sharing her knowledge and research data with 2spyware readers since 2014.

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