By Gray Hall, NBC 12

There is a warning about a suspicious email that may show up in your inbox. It’s an offer for a loan. If you need some quick cash, it may sound good but consumer experts say don’t reply.

The subject of this email is “Do you need a loan?” If you do, the sender says all you have to do is reply for more information. For many, the answer may be yes but Dana Wiggins, with The Virginia Poverty Law Center says to just say no. She says the random offers are not legitimate. “If you get one of these emails, you need to delete it. If you are being solicited and you didn’t go out looking for a loan, just send it into the spam folder,” she explains.

Wiggins says more than likely, the loan offers are from predatory lenders. There are a number of ways you could end up on the email list. Many times it happens if you’ve already applied for a loan online. “You may have put your email in some sort of sweepstakes or your email may have gone on to some sort of form that got sold a million times. From one company to another, people’s information is now the new commodity,” Wiggins says.

Read the full story

Published: August 28, 2013