Many years ago I was scammed out of about $400. A very slick scam that burned a lot of other people in Boston.
I answered an ad in the paper for a company who ran firefighter exam prep classes.
The ad made it seem almost as if it was a critical part of the process and that they were sort of semi official.
They held actual classes in a rented space downtown. A total of maybe 8 classes over a few weeks with instructors who were former firefighters or so they said.
They had study booklets and everything. It wasn't useless info and maybe you came out of it better prepared, so they could legally get away with it in that way.
But for people who were desperate to get a FF job, they were selling hope and packaging it in a clever way.
Pre internet days made things harder to suss out and probably hundreds of people paid them for what we thought was an almost procedural inside track to a job.
But it was essentially a scam, even though I can't prove it.
I ended up scoring 96/100 but it wasn't high enough. Very few spots and thousands of wannabes.