Westat offered a work from home data entry position for $31/hour with flexible work from home hours.
I followed instructions to reach out to certain representatives in the company and received day by day instructions to sign a contract electronically and then wait for a check to be mailed to my home.
After receiving the check, I was told to cash it to buy the training materials needed to set up my home office where I will be doing the data entry work.
Each day I was required to check in to my online supervisor who kept prompt communication with me up until the bad check.
I went to cash the nearly $4000 check and needless to say it bounced. My next instruction was to deposit the funds in another bank account!
When I asked why do I have to deposit a check into my account and then withdraw and deposit into another unknown account, the "supervisor" Emily Pesicka said it was so I can keep the training materials after the training period is over.
When the check was mailed, there was also a very strange letter stating to report to the "financial manager" and to ignore any replies stating that the financial manager had retired.
I incurred a fee from my bank for the bad check and of course was not reimbursed in any way.
WESTAT was a complete scam, please be aware of fishy and shady instructions.
Giselle
Bloxwich,#2Consumer Comment
Tue, February 07, 2017
Westat has been around since 1963 and is a half billion dollar corporation. The scammers you were dealing with were not Westat employees. The dead giveaway is that they claimed you would be paid $31.00 an hour. Westat does employ work from telephone data collectors and they are paid less than $9.00 an hour. FYI: NO ONE MAKES $31.00 an hour for data entry type work!!!
As soon as you were sent a fake check and were instructed to transfer funds to another account, that was your next dead giveaway. The fake check scam has been around for YEARS, there are thousands of warnings online, many, many of them on site alone, yet people keep falling it!