Victim Location 94505
Total money lost $100
Type of a scam Credit Repair/Debt Relief
I graduated from college last May. As with many other post-graduates who took out student loans, we wait for the day we get a letter from our loan provider about our first payment to our loans. So it’s early January, I’m sifting through my mail and I see a letter from a "Student Loan Center." I open it and on the top says "Final Notice." As I read through the letter, it’s basically to notify me of programs to help me consolidate and refinance my student loans. I’m well aware that these programs exist and are offered for free by the government so I thought the letter had some merit. Not only that, it also contained the amount that I owed and the URL to create your FSA ID which is how you sign up for and manage these loans.
So I was fairly confident the letter was from MyFedLoans just reminding me that I have options to restructure my loan. I called the toll-free number and was on hold for about 10 seconds. I was greeted by a woman and I told her that I would like to adjust my monthly loan payment, if not more. She says great and gathers up my information: name, address, and my loan information in the form of a .txt file that you can get through the actual nslds website. After a few minutes she transfers me to another representative named Josephine. She pulled up my information and started to ask me tax claim-esque questions such as the size of my household and my marital status. After a few minutes, she told me that I am eligible for a forbearance on my loan with a really low minimum monthly payment. I thought that was great and she offered to fill out all the paperwork. With me, believing that I’m still talking to MyFedLoans said yes.
After all that was done, we get to the muddy part of this call. After all of that, Josephine then tells me that there is are fees for this service. She tells me that the processing fee upfront is $800 but can be paid in installments and a monthly $19 maintenance fee to have them keep my files updated with my loan provider so I can keep my low payment rate. Now this one raised a flag in my head. I told Josephine that I don’t have that kind of money to fork out and she said she can take $100 right then. I like to look at the world in a better light and gave this the benefit of the doubt so I told her alright. I paid the $100 with my debit card, she had me sign some e-documents containing limited power of attorney clauses, had it sent to my email, and we hung up. Feeling a little mixed about that phone call, I was reading through the email for the documents and on the first page it said "Studora." I ask myself "what’s Studora?" I did a quick google search and I find their website. As a person who does web-design, all I can say is the website looked really…generic. It had a bunch of stock photos, barely any navigation, and really obscure contact information. I did a little more digging around on the internet and I can’t find a thing about this company other than links to articles about not falling for student loan relief scams. While Studora wasn’t in any of the articles specifically, it was enough to freak me out since a lot of the signs check out with them. So now, I’m trying to contact Josephine again to try and cancel the whole thing (still me being optimistic about humanity) and get my refund. I emailed her and she didn’t reply, I called the toll-free number and was answered by the same girl as before, I told her I’d like to speak to Josephine and was informed that she’s speaking to another client and will try to contact me before the end of the day. She didn’t. I emailed her again and if she doesn’t reply then I will just have to cut ties with them some other way.
Long story short, I was incredibly naive and fell for a scam.