Verified answer

100% scam.

There is no government grant.

There is only a scammer trying to steal your hard-earned money.

The next email will be from another of the scammer's fake names and free email addresses pretending to be the "government grant agent" and will demand you pay for made-up fees, in cash, and only by Western Union or moneygram.

Western Union and moneygram do not verify anything on the form the sender fills out, not the name, not the street address, not the country, not even the gender of the receiver, it all means absolutely nothing. The clerk will not bother to check ID and will simply hand off your cash to whomever walks in the door with the MTCN# and question/answer. Neither company will tell the sender who picked up the cash, at what store location or even in what country your money walked out the door. Neither company has any kind of refund policy, money sent is money gone forever.

Now that you have responded to a scammer, you are on his 'potential sucker' list, he will try again to separate you from your cash. He will send you more emails from his other free email addresses using another of his fake names with all kinds of stories of great jobs, lottery winnings, millions in the bank and desperate, lonely, sexy singles. He will sell your email address to all his scamming buddies who will also send you dozens of fake emails all with the exact same goal, you sending them your cash via Western Union or moneygram.

You could post up the email address and the emails themselves that the scammer is using, it will help make your post more googlable for other suspicious potential victims to find when looking for information.

Do you know how to check the header of a received email? If not, you could google for information. Being able to read the header to determine the geographic location an email originated from will help you weed out the most obvious scams and scammers. Then delete and block that scammer. Don't bother to tell him that you know he is a scammer, it isn't worth your effort. He has one job in life, convincing victims to send him their hard-earned cash.

Whenever suspicious or just plain curious, google everything, website addresses, names used, companies mentioned, phone numbers given, all email addresses, even sentences from the emails as you might be unpleasantly surprised at what you find already posted online. You can also post/ask here and every scam-warner-anti-fraud-busting site you can find before taking a chance and losing money to a scammer.

6 "Rules to follow" to avoid most fake jobs:

1) Job asks you to use your personal bank/paypal account and/or open a new one.

2) Job asks you to print/mail/cash a check or money order.

3) Job asks you to use Western Union or moneygram in any capacity.

4) Job asks you to accept packages and re-ship them on to anyone.

5) Job asks you to pay visas, travel fees via Western Union or moneygram.

6) Job asks you to sign up for a credit reporting or identity verification site.

Avoiding all jobs that mention any of the above listed 'red flags' and you will miss nearly all fake jobs. Only scammers ask you to do any of the above. No. Exceptions. Ever. For any reason.

If you google "fake government grant scam", "fraud Western Union grant scam" or something similar you will find hundreds of posts from victims and near-victims of this type of scam.

100% SCAM You NEVER pay to get a grant and the government NEVER accepts Western Union payments. File a police report right away as it's a crime to impersonate a government official

Go to the western union such as VGs and find out to make sure. Ask them if this is correct. That shall be the only way to make sure. The only way to asnwer it is to ask and there is no dumb question espiecally when it comes to money. If it is a scam, I doubt the scammer would be able to go to so many people at once.Check the place you are supposed to go good luck. I hope it is not a scam.

Yes, it is a scam, absolutely - tons of those around. You should never pay in order to get a grant. Also, never send money through Western Union, for any kind of "business" or "qualification". Just ignore their calls from now on, several people fell victims for that already.

Just got off the phone, 9210.00 supposedly in grant money, I was skeptical and found this posting by searching. Thanks for posting, the people on the phone sound like they are in India, they probably are being used by someone who receives the 210.00 and don t know it is a scam. Which makes them sound convincing, plus they think you are getting the 210.00 back. I asked the obvious, why wouldn t the fed gov. just send a government check? If it sounds to good to be true, that s a big red flag. I personally am not that lucky!!!

Now they create a fake Facebook profile of someone you are already friends with and send a friend request and try to get you to call this number for this same scam.

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Grants are free, duh.