A Bridgeport woman is warning people after she was almost swindled out of thousands of dollars in an online scam.

Bette Maxwell says she almost fell for the scam while looking for work. She says she has a profile on Care.com because she was looking for baby-sitting jobs. Maxwell started to get text messages and emails to her personal email account about opportunities that seemed too good to be true.

Maxwell says she got a check from a family for nearly $5,000. She was told to deposit it and then use $4,000 of it to pay for a wheelchair that the family's daughter allegedly needed to use while in Maxwell's care. She said that she knew it was all a scam when she went to the bank to find out that the check was bogus.

Care.com has some information posted on its website saying the scams are going around, and it wants to make sure people are aware.

The company's website explains how the scam works. The site says after the victim shares their full name and address, the scammer sends a check--often for a large sum of money--and requests that the victim cash it and wire a portion of the money back to them. They may tell the victim to keep the rest. But here's where the scam comes in: the check is fake. Unfortunately, the victim often doesn't learn that until after already sending a portion of the money back to the scammer. The victim is then responsible for repaying the bank, as well as additional fees associated with this type of fraud. In some cases this can amount to thousands of dollars of lost funds.

The company says if someone notices odd language with excessive spelling or grammar errors that's a red flag. Scammers also often use a sob story to try and get people to fall for their scam.

Maxwell says that she has received even more scamming offers and is warning people today to make sure that other people don't fall victim.