The Kansas City Star
has compiled a list of work-at-home scams that seem to have grown
exponentially in the Great Recession. Beware of any of the following:
- Job offers that ask you to purchase a start-up kit.
- Multilevel
marketing pitches that require you to sell questionably priced or
unneeded products. In Clark's experience, the worst situations are
where the commissions come strictly from recruiting others into the
organization -- rather than from actual sales.
- Appeals to
earn money by filling out surveys, clicking on websites, doing data
entry or setting up your own e-commerce business. The latter "business
opportunity" typically comes with heavy fees and on-going maintenance
charges for your website.
- Promises of easy access to government grants. Grants.gov is the only official government grant site.
- Access
to a "hidden" job market for a fee. Clark recently read a disturbing
story about recent college graduates who are paying thousands of
dollars to get hooked up with an unpaid internship! That's the level of desperation out there among the young and unemployed.
- "Market
research" that asks you to enter personal information; they might be
identity thieves or they might be selling your contact information to
other organizations.
Remember the most important rule that runs like a common thread through all these rip-offs: Legitimate jobs
won't
ask you for serious money upfront. Be wary and be careful out there.
Someone recently came up to Clark and told him about a Craigslist job
offer that wanted your Social Security number, mother's maiden and
date of birth -- basically everything a crook would need for
full-blown identity theft!
21 Comment(s)
Recently rec'vd an email from an old
friend saying he had found the greatest job, he makes lots of money and
hardly works at all--telling me it's a work at home opportunity--ending
with, hey it doesn't hurt just to check this out. Because of listening
to Clark on the radio for the past 5 years or so, I sensed something
was wrong with this "pitch" he gave me. So, just for such instances as
this, when I want to inquire anonymously about something, I entered an
alias email account on the opening page of the website he sent me to.
And WOW! it didn't take long before I smelled a rat: Lots of
testimonials from people supposedly making outrageous salaries
($175,000) w/ little training & no education requirements. They
touted that the BBB gave them an A+ rating. Lots of typos. Had to buy a
$299.99 startup kit that gave me all the info I would need. As you
proceeded farther & farther into the pitch, the price for the kit
kept going lower & lower in price. Every few sentences they inserted
a "button" that takes you to the application. Ooooh and I loved this:
Not many positions left, you MUST inquire NOW before all the slots are
filled. As I proceeded, they finally revealed that all you had to do was
enter links into websites--for big companies that would rather not have
the overhead of a building of employees, and would prefer everyone work
from home. You get $15 per link you typed in. You get paid DAILY. And
oh yeah, by the way, they'll need your checking account number (!) in
order to direct deposit all the money you'll be making everyday. When I
finally clicked to close the site, a pop-up arrived that said oh we
didn't tell you we can offer you a discount today: you pay only $49.99!
THANKS CLARK for saving me from what surely would have been a horrible
nightmare, and an empty bank acc
