Many people decide that they want work from home for the sake of convenience. It fits in with the dream of being independent, not having to answer to a boss, and setting your own hours. Other people need to work from home. They have small children and no way to get day care, or they are disabled, or they are caring for an elderly relative. And all of these people are targets for work from home scams.
The three most common types of these scams are: pyramid schemes, self-employment opportunities disguised as ads, chain letters and flat out fraud. Here’s what each of these looks like.
Pyramid schemes are designed so that you make money when you recruit other people into your “business”. Typically you have to buy some kind of product or inventory. Then you convince other people to join the organization under your sponsorship. And when they buy their inventory, you get paid a portion of it. Then they make money from convincing people to join the organization under their sponsorship, and both you and they receive money from the inventory that the new people buy. And so it goes. The people at the top of the “pyramid” make the most money from the people at the bottom of the “pyramid”. Many MLM (multi-level marketing) “opportunities” are really pyramid schemes, so you have to be careful.
Some dishonest people advertise work at home jobs that are really self-employment opportunities. These are often the ads that say you can make hundreds of dollars a day or thousands of dollars a month with no experience, and you only have to work a couple of hours. These ads make outlandish promises, but they are written to sound very convincing. By the time you finish reading them it’s easy to believe all of their hype. There are two ways to identify this kind of ad. First, if it sounds too good to be true, it’s probably not true. Second, if you need to buy a course or a kit, this is not an advertisement for a job.
Chain letters have been around for a really long time. Unfortunately, they’re not very easy to spot until after you’ve already lost your money. Basically these ads offer to send you a list of businesses offering jobs in exchange for a small fee. But what you get in exchange for your money is instructions on how to send the same kind of offer (including the request for money) to a number of other people. And you get paid when they respond by sending you all of their money. One way to identify a chain letter scam is to try and track down a phone number or physical address for the person who’s promoting it. If you can’t find any, or if no one ever answers the phone number that’s provided, don’t send your money.
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