Work from Home Scams to Look Out For!

Work from home scams are easier to find today than any legitimate work from home job. Work at home sites always seem to be asking for "upfront payment" of some sort or a "fee". This alone should be a red flag. You should never have to pay anyone, to work, that sort of defeats the purpose. You can find ways to avoid being scammed and better tips at the Scam Busters organization website. There are many known scams out there today, and if you have gotten excited about a "work at home opportunity" or home based job but want to double check, there are many signs that you should look out for.

All of these "opportunities" seem to have you working from home doing craft assembly, envelope stuffing, data entry, mystery shopping, medical billing, mailings, or other tasks where they promise a decent pay for the job. Most of us are familiar with and know to avoid pyramid schemes, where you pay upfront money or fees only to be taught that your job is to do the same to others, scam, to get your money. Another the majority of us computer savvy folk known and avoid is email scams. Email scams are one of the older and more popular internet scam tactics. You receive an email that could be a chain letter, asking you to send money with it in return guaranteeing money to you, of course the money never comes, and yes it is illegal. Another popular email scam is called "email processing", it usually asks you for around fifty dollars or so in return to be a highly paid employee from home. Again, anything that asks for a start-up fee for you to be their employee is most likely a scam. Doing such pyramid schemes, email processing, or chain letters, is actually illegal, so even participating can get you in trouble for fraud.

Offers such as craft assembly, most people will only try it once! Sure you will get the crafts and instructions in the mail, and begin creating whatever crafts you are to be doing. Even if you do them perfect, most will soon hear that the work wasn't good enough, meaning they get the crafts and work done out of people without having to pay them a dime.Many people have come across ads in the paper as well as the internet for a work at home envelope stuffing job. This scam has been around for about ninety years and hasn't died out yet. Again, it asks you to pay an upfront fee to get started, you then receive instructions of the scam which only asks you to print off what they wrote and scam others. You are promised a certain amount of money per envelope, but really it is you just asking others in a scam to send you money in an envelope to get the instructions of the scam.

MLM (Multi-Level Marketing) companies do sometimes have legitimate businesses around, however some are not about the product they are trying to sell, but more so are about recruiting people. This should be a red flag. This soon becomes another pyramid scheme, and thus is illegal which you can be prosecuted for. If you are ever told or come across any ad that tells you to call a 1-900 number to receive more information on a job or anything, just keep in mind 900 numbers cost a lot of money by the minute or just for the initial call, it is a scam, the more people that call the number, the more the scammer makes. Some scammers may say they have a list of companies that are looking for and hiring stay at home workers and that you have to pay a fee to get this list of companies. You do receive a list of numbers, but they will either be out of date or not looking.

A couple scams that sound a little more on the legit side of working at home are medical billing or typing from home. There are some on both sides that are legit, however, if they ask you to pay an upfront fee of any sort, consider it a scam. You will receive an out of date clientele list that does you no good, or possibly be asked to scam others, another pyramid scheme.

These scams are not only for the most part illegal, but also unethical and should be reported to the BBB if you come across them, or if you are suckered into one. Check with the BBB on a company before you work at home, see if there is anything odd sounding about it such as paying upfront. Another good thing to look for to see if a company is legit is to see if they give full details of their company name, address, and phone number, and double check to make sure they are all real.

A.C. 2010

Cited Source: http://www.scambusters.org/work-at-home.html