Iowans need to be vigilant for scams as they restart student loans payments

DES MOINES — More than 400,000 Iowans will have to resume paying off their student loan debt in October.

Nathan Nash, an attorney with the Federal Trade Commission, warns scammers are hoping to capitalize.  “One way to detect scammers is that they’ll ask you to pay for something that’s normally free,” Nash says, “so we really encourage people with student loans and any government program to go to the government’s website and see what your options are.”

Every US government website ends with dot-gov. Nash says the Federal Trade Commission recently stopped scammers claiming they could get student loans forgiven — for a fee.  “Often these scams happen where someone…asks for an immediate payment or to share personal information,” he says.

The defendants in the recent student loan scam claimed be from the U-S Department of Education and falsely promised to lower or eliminate student loan payments.