HARRIS COUNTY – By now Beverly Lopez had hoped to be setting up her home office. Instead she's out of a job and owes her bank nearly $3,000.
"This is the one that caught my eye," said Lopez.
Working as an at home office assistant sounded like the opportunity of a lifetime.
"They help you out, they train you and they need bilingual people," Lopez said.
Good pay, flexible hours, Lopez thought the position she found on line was too good to pass up.
"I started pinching myself. Am I dreaming or am I not?" Lopez said.
Looking back she wishes she had. Last month, Lopez received more than $4,800 in the form of two cashier's checks and put them into her bank account.
The 24-year-old claims her boss told her to wire $200 to two different women who would then supply her with the equipment she needed to set up her home office.
Lopez would later learn those had been cancelled, one came back as counterfeit. Lopez, who received a third check, went to the bank and what the teller told her nearly made her heart stop.
"That's when she told me this could be a scam. She told me to go to the police," Lopez said.
She contacted the Harris County Sheriff's Office. Financial crimes investigators discovered the two women who Lopez wired the money to are also victims.
"Another victim is in Minnesota. Another victim is in Chicago. I got victims everywhere," said Sgt. Leona Peterson with the Harris County sheriff's office financial crimes unit.
Unemployed with a lot of debt is not the position Lopez imagined she'd find herself in by answering the online job ad.
"I just want that person to stop doing this and for somebody to catch him so other people will not fall for this," Lopez said.