Beware the work-at-home scam
I get lots of e-mails from readers asking me about work-at-home offers that come to them via snail mail and e-mail, and my gut reaction is always: “Trash them.”
They promise you riches, and all you have to do is work a few hours every week from home.
Does this sound plausible to you? Come on.
We’ve all heard the saying, “too good to be true.” But alas, people keep pursuing false hopes.
I came across an animated short on the Federal Trade Commission’s Web site that deals with this very issue. It’s totally corny, but I think it’s worth a look because of its really, really, really basic “too-good-to-be-true” message. It’s a fairy tale including a princess, a prince and a frog that croaks “rip-off.”
Click here to view the video.
While you might be thinking, “Why the heck is our government wasting time creating second-rate, corny animation?” there is something to be said about making the message as basic as possible. Somehow we all lose our sense of reality when we’re promised a fast buck, especially if we’re in dire financial straits.
I wondered if business scam complaints were on the rise, so I asked the FTC.
This is when I wished they had a corny film instead of a public relations office.
I found data for 2003 through 2005, and it turns out the complaints about business opportunities and work-at-home plans rose significantly – from 13,995 to 16,511. When I tried to find numbers on 2006, that’s when I hit the proverbial bureaucratic wall. The numbers I got from the FTC PR department showed a significant drop, to 7,460.
I asked the PR person if the number was accurate because it seemed like such a big difference, and she e-mailed this response: “The difference in numbers is attributed to a change in coding the complaints by contributors.”
Huh? I called to find out what the heck this meant, but no one could tell me why the coding was changed, or who decided to change it.
“There’s not a whole lot more I can tell you,” the spokeswoman said.
She connected me with David Torok of the FTC’s division of planning and information, and he pretty much told me the same thing -- not a lot. But he stressed: “We have no statistics on whether or not complaints have increased or decreased.”
And, he added, the numbers are unimportant because they are just complaints, and the FTC has made no determination on whether they are real scams.
Why track them at all, I asked? “At least they provide a snapshot,” he answered.
Of what? I wonder.
Thank goodness a spokeswoman for the Better Business Bureau, Allison Preszler, was able to shed some light on the issue. Work-at-home scams, she says, are a perpetual problem, though some years are worse than others. Complaints to the BBB declined in 2004 and 2005 but rose more than 5 percent in 2006.
What she’s noticed lately is many of these scammers are putting ads in parenting magazines trying to nab stay-at-home moms who are looking to help supplement their family income.
Beware, moms!
How do you know when to run the other way? Check out the
BBB’s tips.
My favorite warning: “The only people who benefit from chain letters are the mysterious few at the top of the chain who constantly change names, addresses and post office boxes.” (I hate chain letters!)
Have you ever been taken?
