[¤¤¤å³n¥óªí CNapps LIST] Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)


As many of you may have notice public Usenet news server like news.ifcss.org have seen recent abuse by scammers. Please educate your fellow users by referring them to this page. Also if anyone is interested in translating this into Chinese, please contact me at <cyl@ifcss.org>.


HOW TO SPOT WORK-AT-HOME SCAMS (and others)?


Copyright (c) 1995, Steven E. Weigand

Author: Steven Weigand, (weigand@ssnet.com).
Date of this revision: November 10, 1995
HTML markup, AOL abuse contact info and bibliographic revision by Nelson Chin of The Monster Board, January 2, 1997
Copyright info: This document is freely distributable as long as there are no undocumented changes. It is not okay to make any money off of this document, in part or in whole, except from the cost it takes to reprint and distribute it. It is okay to quote sections of this document, provided it does not violate any of the previous rules. You may make changes to the document only if you have completely documented these changes in the revised version.

Note: This file is currently over 900 lines long. As such, your system may not be able to view all of it. If so, email me, and I'll send it to you in smaller pieces. If you have reached the end of the document, for help you will see the text, "END OF FILE."


[Specific scams revealed | Annotated Bibliography | Closing Remark]
I, and a lot of others, have recently noticed the upsurge of scams being misrepresented as legitimate job offers in the jobs.* newsgroups. I have created this document to educate people a little more on how to identify scams in general, including brief explanations of specific scams. If you are thinking about answering an ad for a work-at-home offer on the net, then you should read this report first. You might discover that your dreams of getting rich are being used by scammers to manipulate you into giving them money.

I have NOT seen a legitimate and "workable" work-at-home offer posted to any of the newsnet newsgroups AT ALL. Period. They are all either scams, or they are so difficult to do that no ordinary person can do them. Most of the work-at-home offers fall under the category of "scams", and the small amount of remaining offers are mostly just impossible to do or would result in little to no income. Scams typically deceive people about what it is they would be doing, take their money, and then give them something totally useless in return. The non-workable work-at-home offers try to deceive a person about how difficult it is to make money doing the work. They make their money off of selling you their information packages, but they could care less if you can put their information to use and actually make any money.

There just does not appear to be any legitimate and realistic work-at-home businesses being offered on the net. I could explain any one you want. And this is a serious offer: if you are in doubt of any work-at-home offer, email me the ad you saw, and ask me for my analysis of it. Any get-rich- quick scheme is also a scam. Don't fall for any of them. Always question yourself. Ask yourself why such a great offer exists, and what's so special about yourself that *you* would be given such a wonderful opportunity, (as opposed to the rest of the population that's still struggling to make a buck).

I've been posting about scams for a while now, telling everyone to mail me for more information. What I found to be somewhat interesting is that, of the people who responded, most were women. It could be that the men are too proud to ask for advice, for it would reveal their weakness. Women, on the other hand, may not be as concerned about their egos or insecurities and may find it easier to ask for help more often. I just found it odd that most of the people that are falling for these scams, *seemingly*, are women; in particular, women in college. So a message to all you concerned boyfriends and parents out there: Warn your girlfriends and daughters about these scams. Become aware of them and teach others. Throughout this document, I use the terms "scams" and "scammers." How I define a scam is as follows: A scam is anything that is used to get money from others by promising them something they want, deceiving them about what it is they are getting, and then giving them something useless or unrealistically difficult to do (more difficult than it was described to be). A scammer is anyone who is in charge of the scam. How I define "work-at-home offers" is as follows: A work-at-home offer is anything being offered to people whereby they would be able to make money at home doing it. This falls into 2 categories: Work-at-home JOB offers and work-at-home INFORMATION PACKAGES. The work-at-home job offers involve people actually working for a real company, making a salary or a commission, while the work-at-home information packages merely give people the information needed for them to start their own home businesses. A trend on the net is for scammers to pretend to give work-at-home job offers, but what people actually get for their money is nothing more than an information package which usually turns out to be useless.

The key word throughout this entire document is "deception". The scammers will try to deceive you about what it is they are offering you for your money. The best defense for deception is wisdom and being able to see things for what they are. This involves arming yourself with the knowledge contained in this document and being a good researcher. Always know exactly what it is you are getting for your money. You need to research these work-at-home offers thoroughly (or anything being sold on the net for that matter). Be relentless until you get all of your questions answered from these people. Never give anyone any of your money until you have an exact picture of what it is you are getting for your money. The following is a list of some things to look for that give away scams on the net. These are just things to look for and do not necessarily indicate that something is a scam or not. It's up to your intuition to determine if something is really a scam. Hopefully this list will provide you with some food for thought:

  • 0. General rule of thumb: Scammers will do EVERYTHING they can possibly do to dress up their scam in order to make it look legitimate. If it looks like a legitimate offer, it may just be that the scammer is adept at fooling people. Throughout this list, you will learn some of the techniques that scammers use to trick you. Pay attention! :-)

  1. The return email address is not present, and all you are given is a postal mail address with which to reply. If they have no return email address, it's like forging their names or sending anonymous postings. They can't be tracked down and held responsible for fraud if they have no return address. That way, they protect themselves.

  2. They are posting from an anonymous account. You may see on the bottom of the article: "This was posted using the anonymous service." Typically, the return email address will be something like, "an10202@anon.penet.fi", for example. Read #1. This is almost a dead give-away that it's a scam. They might explain their use of an anonymous mail server as, "Oh, I use an anonymous mail service because my regular account doesn't allow me to use email." Well, that's impossible, since, in order to have an anonymous email account, you FIRST need to have a normal email account!

    They might also say that their normal account doesn't allow them to post to newsgroups, so they have to go through an anonymous service. That's fine, and sometimes that is the case. But then, why don't they list their "real" name and email account? They usually just say that you should reply to the anonymous account and do not give you their real account addresses.

  3. They give a P.O. box for a physical address. While it is fairly normal for legitimate businesses to give you a P.O. box, it still raises suspicion. Since there is no REAL physical address given, you really have no idea where this guy lives in reality. He can't be tracked down. Anyone can get a P.O. box. It doesn't mean that the company really exists.

  4. They don't give a voice phone #. Often times, you will see a scam list a phone number of some sort. Most people don't even try it out to see if it's real or not. They just figure, "Oh, he lists a phone number I can call! Good to know, but I'll just send him email." OR, if you call the phone #, what you might find is a fax machine on the other side! This means that someone has setup a stupid little fax machine to take complaints/orders. So that means that you can't call the guy up and talk to him voice-to-voice and confront him about his scam. This way, he can ignore you if he wants. It's a scam!

    Another good possibility is that the phone number is a fake. If you call it, you may get someone on the other end who has no idea about what you are saying. In that case, the scammer just put any random phone number down on the ad so that he would look more legitimate.

  5. They will often tell you, "Send a SASE - self addressed stamped envelope - for FREE information!" This is certainly more attractive than telling you to send them money for a report on how to make money. You don't want to be sending any money, right? And they know it.

    But two things happen here:

    1. You will be sent back a short 3 page response saying something like, "This is a great deal! Lots of people are doing it, and you could make a TON of money! All you have to do is send us $25 to get you started, and we'll send you back all the software needed! Just $25!" Now, for most people, $25 is a pretty small investment, so they don't think twice about it. If it were $50, then that's another story. Most of these scammers, through trial-and-error, have determined that the threshold amount to ask for is about $25. So if you get a "contract" or something back asking for $25, you can automatically know that it's probably a scam. $25 isn't enough to make *most* people start to call the guy up on the phone or ask him about his offer, and the scammers know it.

    2. But let's take this further... They asked you for a SASE for their free information. Well, the most you can stuff in an envelope with only one U.S. stamp on it is about 3 pages. You need more stamps on your envelope if you want to send large amounts of stuff. So the total amount of information they're sending you is pretty small. Why, then, couldn't they simply just email you their documents? It's pretty simple to type up the documentation of only 3 pages, isn't it? They could just store it into a file and send people the file whenever they get a request over email. But they don't. They want you to mail them through the postal mail for one of 3 reasons:
      1. They don't expect their email accounts to be around for very long, because they realize that others are going to tell their system administrators about them, and they will be deleted soon.

      2. They realize that it's psychologically more appealing to people to send their SASE's away to a physical address, rather than just an email address, since it feels more legitimate.

      3. Although this is more rare, people like to collect the names and addresses of "suckers" and sell lists of these people to other advertisers/scammers; think about it: if you had a scam or some worthless product to sell, wouldn't you love to get your hands on a list of people that are identified as naive and easy to scam? Lists like these can be sold for as much as 10 cents per name! If you receive 1000 names, that's $100!

  6. What's becoming more frequent these days is that the scammers will forge their names as FEMALES instead of males. 99% of the time, the scammers are all males on the net (that's from personal observation, not from anything I can substantiate). But we're now starting to see *supposed* females offering these work-at-home scams. What you'll see is that the return email address will read something like, "work4u@aol.com (Mary Smith)". Well, if you know anything about computers, you can make up any name you want. I could change my name to "Elmer Fudd" if I wanted to. In this case, the person changed HIS name to "Mary Smith". And if HE lists a physical postal address or a phone number, he will say to address it to Mary Smith.

    Why? Why would they want to make you believe that a female was in charge of this "job offer"? Well, if you're like me, you believe that females are more trustworthy and truthful than males. It's instinctive and inherent in our programming to trust women -- it goes back to the whole mother-child relationship. These scammers know that if they give a male name, you are going to be more suspicious of them than if they give a female name! Don't let them play on your emotions / instincts. Treat every "job offer" as a male, even though it may list a female name. It may just turn out to be a female on he other side, but you shouldn't just trust it is so.

  7. They give company names, like "Scholar Technologies", for example. Now, 99% of the people aren't going to verify the existence of the company, but you should be one of those 1% that does. You can make a quick call to Long Distance Information, and ask the operator if he/she has a phone # for that particular company. If the operator can't provide any phone #, then the company does NOT exist. Another thing you can do is give a call to the BBB (Better Business Bureau) in the company's area to see if they have any complaints on the company. If they have no file for the company (ie, they don't even know that the company exists), then it may be bad, but you don't know.

  8. Beware of netnews postings that offer these work-at-home scams which have one posting RIGHT after it from another person saying, "Oh, this is a great offer! I did this a while ago, and I'm making good money!" It's usually from the same scammer or a collaborator of his, even though it's from a different email address. It gives you the idea that it must be legitimate, because someone else says it is; but you really don't know who that someone else is, do you? There may be dozens of "other people" following up to the original ad, all saying that it is a wonderful job, but they could all be forged articles! Inspect the articles further. Compare the styles of writing with the original ad, and if they match, you have to suspect a scam. Note: I have encountered this before, where there were almost a dozen follow-ups from the same scammer, each pretending to be someone else who just loved the job. In that particular case, I noticed that everyone who replied to the article was from AOL (aol.com). Furthermore, I noticed that all of the replies were written in the same style, often making the same spelling mistakes and capitalizing words inadvertently.

  9. Beware of postings on newsnet whereby you see the SAME work-at-home scam posted over and over daily. What you might see on your news reader is:

    misc.jobs.misc

           
    
            Mary Smith        Work at Home! 
    
            Mary Smith        !!! Work at Home ! 
    
            Mary Smith        Can You Start by 9/29? 
    
            Mary Smith        This is a GREAT Opportunity! 
    
    
    Notice that the same person has posted the same "offer" over and over again in the same news group, one right after the other. The only thing they changed was the title of the article, because they know that if they use the same title, then "threaded" news readers will just display:
            Mary Smith    4   Work at Home 
    
    
    (In other words, a threaded news reader will just explain that there are 4 letters from the same person, and it won't make much psychological impact on suckers.) This is the sign of a truly desperate scammer who knows nothing about netiquette. Anytime you see something like this, just realize it's a scam.

  10. Beware of postings on newsnet whereby you see the same work-at-home scam posted to DOZENS of newsgroups. This, combined with #9, is called "spamming". Spamming just means, "scamming people with amazing zeal across many newsgroups." Spammers are the worst kind of scammers. They can't take a hint. They will post multiple times daily to multiple newsgroups, even when they've been exposed as a scam by someone on the net. Just ignore them. I don't care how legitimate the "offer" sounds; if it's being "spammed", then it is a scam! What's worse is that they're learning now how NOT to cross-post. When you cross-post on netnews, you will see a bunch of newsgroups at the top of your news, representing all the newsgroups that the same article was posted to. If you are annoyed by the article, you can simply press just one key to junk the article in EVERY newsgroup, not just the one you're in currently. So they've learned NOT to cross-post. Instead, they'll post the article in each group discretely. That means that you, the annoyed reader of these newsgroups, has to see that scam OVER and OVER again in many newsgroups without being able to just press a key to make it go away.

  11. If you see something in the offer like, "This is NOT a scam!", then it's most likely a scam. It's like saying, "Trust me!" :-) Just because the guy says it's not a scam, it doesn't mean that you should believe him! It's the last resort of a truly desperate man. You'd be surprised at how many gullible, naive people there are who will erase all feelings of suspicion when they see, "This is not a scam! ... This is a LEGITIMATE offer!"

  12. Beware of AOL (aol.com), CompuServe (CompuServe.com), Prodigy, and Netcom (netcom.com) users. I have found that the majority of scams are coming from people on these services. Keep an eye out for them. Generally, ANY public internet service provider is capable of harboring many scammers. Be warned!

    On the other side of the coin, I have found that one *can* trust people from education (.edu) and government (.gov) sites much *more* than any commercial (.com, .org, or .net) site for the following reasons:

    1. Non-anonymity -- They don't just let ANYONE come onto their computers and use them if they have enough money, no questions asked. Instead, they HAVE to be students or on the faculty for ".edu" sites. And for ".gov" sites, they HAVE to be employees of the organization. This way, the system administrators at these sites ALWAYS know who their users are, where they are physically, and their phone #'s. This is not true for a lot of public internet service providers (like Netcom, for example), where all it takes is for you to fill out an on-line form and send in some money. On many public internet services, people can sign-on under aliases without the system administrators knowing, or even caring, about it.

    2. Accountability -- Folks from ".edu" and ".gov" sites have the most to lose when they try to pull scams from their sites. In the case of ".edu" sites, a student could be thrown out of school, or a faculty member could be fired. There was a case 4 years ago at the University of Delaware, my alma mater, whereby a student was thrown out of school after pulling a scam on someone through the internet. He also had to pay back the money he scammed off of others. If a professor tried to pull a scam, could you imagine how tough it would be for him/her to find another job after being fired, especially in such a tight job market? In the case of ".gov" sites, people can be fired and their security clearances could be revoked indefinitely. Whereas, in the case of commercial internet services, often times, the only thing that they can do is kick someone off their computers, but the scammers can usually get right back on the internet with another service. And good luck trying to get your money back from people on commercial internet services. At least in ".edu" and ".gov" sites, your chances of getting your money back are fairly high. Therefore, for these reasons, I feel that people from ".edu" and ".gov" sites are a *little* more trustworthy than the other sites. My hypothesis is verified by continuous scanning of the internet for scams; I only found the "Make Money Fast" scam being posted by ".edu" people, but then, most of them didn't know it was a scam to begin with, and this scam is much more benign than all the other ones. Mind you,
      "trust no one" is a good credo.

  13. Some people are "kind-hearted" scammers. These are scammers that don't know they are scammers. They might think they're doing something totally legitimate, but in fact, are pulling a scam. For example, in the case of that old "Make Money Fast" pyramid scheme that you've probably seen a dozen times before, some people don't know it's a scam and post it to a bunch of groups. These could even be people on ".edu" and ".gov" sites, so watch out! These people are just naive and don't know that what they're doing is a scam, so they'll be the ones that often seem most trustworthy and sincere. If what they're doing sounds like a scam, ask them why they don't think it is a scam. If they tell you something like, "It's not a scam, because the person I got it from said it wasn't a scam," then you have reason to be worried. Be warned!

  14. Any "job offer" which costs money up front is a scam. Anytime you hear the excuse, "We charge you $25, because that's to weed out those people who aren't serious about this," then you are being scammed. NO legitimate business offer will ask for $25 up front. If you're the one who's offering legitimate work-at-home work, you're not going to simply ask for $25 from your employees; you're going to call the people up and ask them for their references and resumes! If you're told to send money for this reason, then just tell the scammer that you're suspicious that he's trying to scam you, that you would gladly pay him $25, or even DOUBLE that, but only AFTER you've made the riches that he promises, and see what he says. If he's a scammer, you won't hear from him after that, or else he'll send you a letter back with lots of cuss words in it. If he's legitimate, he won't mind waiving the startup charge to you, because he's confident that he'll be getting double the money back.

    This goes back to the difference between "job offers" and "information packages." So many times I have seen scammers trying to pass information packages off as job offers. They just say that the $25 is to pay for start-up fees or to make sure that you are serious about it. Be warned about anyone that tries to do this to you if you think you're being offered a job. It's definitely not a job being offered. You wouldn't be working for anyone; instead, you'll get a useless information package for your money.

    True, you do need to invest money in any business that you want to start. But we're not talking about "starting your own home business." A lot of these scams aren't about that. Instead, they use phrases like, "Sign up with us, working at home, and you'll make tons of money." They're not trying to sell you a step-by-step guide to starting your own business at home. They know that people are generally too lazy to start their own home businesses, so instead, they try to make it sound like they're actually offering you a job whereby you can work at your home. But if they ask for money, it's usually a good tip-off that they're scamming you. If they were really offering you a job at home, then they'd be asking you for references, a resume, a phone interview, etc.

  15. There will be a sense of urgency in the job offer. The title of the message might be, "Can you start by 9/29??" It makes you think, "Oh, this can't be a scam, because a scam doesn't have time limits on it! So it must be legitimate." Wrong! It's just a device that the scammers use to prevent you from thinking hard about the scam. If you have no time to check the company out, then they've got you! Check back in another week, and you'll see the same scam posted, but this time it will read, "Can you start by 10/7?". Someone pointed out to me that the secret of making money is timing. "Timing is everything." From my experience, this tactic is used more often falsely than legitimately. Timing is hardly "everything" in a stable work-at-home business. Maybe in the stock-market, but not here. If timing is indeed involved, then it falls into the "Get Rich Quick" concept, and we all know that these things are usually scams.

  16. There will be a sense of popularity in the "job offer". As I already stated in item #8 (above), if you think that others are doing the work, too, then you'll be inclined to believe that it is not a scam. So you might see the following written in the job offer: "If you don't hear from us immediately, don't worry! We've been having so much trouble keeping up with the demand lately. But we will get to you!" It misleads you into thinking that tons of other people are doing this, so it must be legitimate. WRONG! Just assume that nobody but yourself has responded so far.

  17. There will be a sense that they want you, because YOU are special to them. For example, the scam might say: "We know you're smart, because you're one of the elite few who has figured out how to get onto the internet to read this message. That's why we're able to offer YOU this great deal!" They want you to be thinking to yourself that you are special, and that the reason why everyone else in the world isn't doing this wonderful job and making tons of money is because they aren't as smart as you. Hogwash! It's just another trick they're trying to pull on you to bypass your logical reasoning brain and get right to your emotional/irrational brain. Stay firmly grounded in reality. You are NOT special to any of these people. You are just a dollar sign to them.

  18. There's just a general vagueness about exactly *what* it is you'd be doing. Here's a typical example of something you might see:

    "Have you ever dreamed about making $1000, $2000, or even $3000 PER WEEK?! Well, stop dreaming about it and DO something about it! If you're in a dead-end job or you're unemployed, now is the perfect time to say YES to your future. Don't pass up this wonderful opportunity to better yourself. Send SASE for more information..."
    You can see that this ad says absolutely nothing to you about what it is you'd be doing. It's so vague that nobody can flame it for any reason. So you will NOT see people responding to the article with a thousand letters like, "This is scam! Don't fall for it!" These scammers are clever that way. This is exactly why you can assume it's nothing more than a scam. If the people who posted the ad thought it was something people might like to hear, then they wouldn't try to disguise it; they'd just come right out and tell you what it was they were selling. Instead, they are afraid that someone's going to be able to identify it as a scam. This way, they can send their scam offer directly to the suckers out there, and the suckers won't see anything negative about it.

  19. Beware of "Money Back Guarantees." This is another thing scammers use to mislead you into thinking that what they're doing is legitimate. If you get taken for $25, do you really think you'll get your money back even if the guy gave you a money back guarantee? And what are you going to do when he doesn't give you the money back? Are you going to spend $100 just to file a law suit for $25, not to mention off-time from your day job and lawyer fees? The scammers all know that you're not going to file a suit against them for a measly $25. Therefore, just pretend that you did not see the money back guarantee statement written on the ad.

  20. "Information Packages." Here, the idea is that if you come up with a good money-making idea, you will share your idea with others for a price. Again, the price is usually $25. The package is usually advertised as being a "complete system." It sometimes misleads people into believing that if they purchase the package, they will be able to start a business immediately, painlessly, and without any other help, when in fact, they are the ones who will have to do most of the work in setting up their own businesses. And sometimes it might mislead people into thinking that the package is just a startup kit used to facilitate their "employment" in some other company, when in fact, they're just being sold information. They make false claims that hundreds of people have used their packages to make money, when in fact, nobody has. When you get the package, you will find that you cannot utilize the information at all. In the end, you will have wasted your $25 for a package of perhaps 20 pages long which is absolutely useless.

  21. "No experience necessary. No resumes needed. No interviews neeeded. No references needed. No education requirements necessary. Etc." These are things you should beware of if someone is offering you a work-at-home job. I don't know of too many normal jobs that are given to just anyone without an interview, without a resume, without education, without references, etc. A big warning light should be going off in your mind whenever you encounter one of these "job offers". These job offers will often be accompanied by "start-up/membership fees." Now, if you were a legitimate company offering a job, which would you rather do:

    1. Ask your applicants for money to prove he/she is the right person for the job? or

    2. Ask your applicants for their references, an interview, etc.? After all, these job offers will almost always suggest that one could be making tons of money, and if that is so, I doubt an employer would want to give that money to some uneducated slob that he/she doesn't even know. If it were true that any uneducated slob could do the job, then why doesn't the employer merely hire a bunch of people at, say, $6.00 an hour to do the job, and then the employer could pocket the "tons of money" for him/herself?? It just doesn't make sense. What will normally happen is that you will pay your start-up fee, they will take it, and then give you an impossible task which will yield no income for you whatsoever.
Infinity...

In the future, I'll be adding to this list, but for now, that should suffice. You can start to see the patterns for yourself on your own.

SOME SPECIFIC SCAMS REVEALED:

Here is a very short list of scams that I've seen repeatedly popping up on the net, and I thought I'd expose them:

  1. "Make Money Fast": In this scam, you will see a message from someone, probably some guy named Dave Rhodes, who describes how he has never failed to make $50,000 per month doing this. Then he lists instructions for you to follow... You will see a list of 10 names and addresses listed on the bottom of the message. Your job is to first mail the first 5 people on the list, (#1, #2, #3, #4, and #5), a one-dollar-bill each. Then, you are supposed to bump up the list one slot. So #1 gets tossed out, #2 becomes #1, #3 becomes #2, and so on. Then you insert your own name and address as the new #10. Once you do that, you send the revised document to as many other people as you can. The instructions tell you to post it in as many newsgroups as you can and title it "Make Money Fast". Supposedly soon afterwards, you should be seeing thousands and thousands of dollars from people! YEAH, RIGHT!! First of all, this scam is illegal, even though it will specifically say it is not. I'm not quite sure about the specifics of it, but I think it's refered to as a "Ponzi Scheme" (a pyramid scheme where Ponzi was the name of the guy who first got caught doing this, I believe). It's under a chain mail / mail fraud statute somewhere, and if you get caught, then you're going to jail. [Maybe someone can fill me in on the exact specifics here.] It doesn't matter if you do it through the postal service or through email; it's still mail fraud.

    Besides the fact that it's illegal, do you honestly think it would work? Shaa! If you're like me, what's stopping you from just keeping your $5, not sending out ANY money, and just putting your name down as #5 on the list before sending it (instead of #10)?? Seriously, you'd have to be a complete moron to send any money to anyone on the list. There are many variations of this scam. Sometimes people call it a "mailing list" collection service, whereby you're just paying the first 5 names on the list $1 for their names, and others will pay you $1 a piece for your name. They go on to say that this is *why* it is legal. But make no mistake, it is illegal.

  2. "Work-At-Home with Your PC" (data entry / report generation)... These scams will tell you to send for FREE instructions on how you can be making TONS of money with just your home PC, printing reports, doing data entry, managing mailing lists, etc. You name it. It doesn't matter what service you'd be doing. It's just the fact that you're "using your PC at home"... In these scams, you send away for the FREE information, usually giving them a SASE, and they send you back a little, 2 to 3 page letter giving you some snow-job about the wonderful amounts of money you could be making, but you just have to send them $25 to get started! What you are promised for your $25 is usually a computer disk with all the software you need to get started in business, making money immediately. Well, you think it's a wonderful thing, and the $25 startup fee is really small, so you do it! After a few weeks, you get your disk back with little or no further instructions. So you look at what's on the disk, and low and behold, what you find there are a few text files. You read the text files, and as it turns out, the text files are just the same ad you responded to and the same "report" that you got back asking for your $25! In other words, you've been had! If it was advertised as "report generation", then you would be generating reports each time some other sucker sent you their SASE's for your "report" on how they can be making tons of money. In other words, you have to become another scammer to make your money! Most people just realize that they've been scammed and stop right there, but if you're contemplating becoming a scammer, stop. You could go to jail. Chances are, the person which sold you the scam in the first place has been doing this far longer than you have. He knows how to avoid getting caught. Do you? If you thought it was hard getting a job before, try it after you have a fellony on your permanent record! Not to mention that you might be going to jail for several years.

  3. "HUD Refund Tracer" scam. Well, this isn't really a scam, perse. It goes like this: The U.S. government has setup a program whereby you can make a commission on "refunds" owed to home-owners that took a loan out from the goverment a while back and paid it off. The deal was that if the home-owner paid the loan back on time, he/she could get a 10%(?) refund back from the government. The problem is that there's a lot of people who forgot to collect their refunds, so it's up to you, as a HUD refund tracer, to track these people down, tell them that they have $1000 to $3000 coming to them, and that you want 10-30% of that money for your services.

    The scammers put together a "package" telling you how to run this service. They say, "You can start this business without our help, but it's unlikely that you'll know how! For just $25, we will send you all of the info needed to be making money in this business right away!" What you'll probably get is a bunch of instructions, basically telling you what you would've been able to deduce after a short time talking with the government about it. The package might save you some time figuring out how to run the business, but that's where the benefits stop. After receiving your initial information package, you'll read somewhere that you need to pay them something like $50 for a list of names and addresses of people who are owed money in your state. So you pay it. Next, there is the problem of finding out their present phone numbers. You could spend money calling Information for those phone numbers, or for just $40 more, you can get their CD-ROM filled with names, addresses, and phone numbers of everyone living in your state. Now you've invested over $100 in their stuff. But that's a drop in the bucket according to them, compared to what you'll be making... Right?

    You have to ask yourself, if you were one of those home owners being owed $3000 back from the government, what would your reaction be to someone you don't even know telling you on the phone that he wants 30% of your money? If you're like me, you'd hang up on the guy and go to the government to collect your money directly. You MIGHT be able to ask for 1% to 3% of their money, but certainly NOT 30%. 1% of $3000 equates to $30. For ALL of your work, you get a measly $30 check. Oh boy! That's certainly not the $500 check that is advertised by the people selling this information package. And the amount of work involved in tracking these people down, doing the paper work, and the long distance telephone bills are not worth it for just $30. Besides that, why aren't the scammers all doing it if they could be making untold riches? Why are they fiddling around with this little "send us $25 for info" scheme? The answer is that they aren't making any money of the HUD Refund tracer program. Instead, they make their money by selling you their reports and software. So you think, "Well, what's wrong with that?" Answer: Imagine if you really had a business idea that could make you $1000 per week for as little as 10-15 hours of work (like they claim)? If you paid full-time employees $6.00 per hour to call these people up for you, then for paying them $60-$90 or so, you will be making $1000. That's a 1000% to 1600% return for your investment. Now, I don't know too much about business, but for that kind of return, wouldn't you have to be a complete idiot not to get into it? I have never heard of any business making that kind of a return. So why aren't these guys doing this program that they are offering? The answer, of course, is that the program does NOT generate anywhere near those kind of returns. I'd be surprised if anyone was able to make a living out of doing this, or even be able to make any profit whatsoever off of it.

    Generalizing:

    There are a lot of scams which offer you "information packages" for the low-low price of just $25 (or whatever they're asking). You're just paying for information, that's all. It's up to you to utilize that information, and often, you will find that it's not worth it. Your $25 will be wasted. And again, you have to ask yourself why the authors of those information packages aren't doing what they're writing about. If what they've written is true, (that you can make so much money in your spare time), then why aren't they doing it?

  4. "Earn $1800 weekly" (mailing circulars, stuffing envelopes, etc.) In this scam, you are promised to be making as much as you want for doing something suitably simple (so simple a child could do it). For example, going on right now is a scam offering "$1800/wk mailing circulars" (Sergei S*kolov, I think, is the name of the guy running the scam). Well, you really have to ask yourself why ANYONE would pay YOU $1800/week doing something so simple as mailing circulars. That's nearly $100,000 per year, about as much money as doctors and lawyers make. So why would just any poor, old, uneducated slob be able to make that kind of money doing something so easy a child could do it? Exactly. Something smells fishy here. Same thing goes for "stuffing envelopes": Often you'll hear something like, "Make $5.00 per envelope stuffing envelopes!" Or you'll hear, "Make money PROCESSING MAIL at home." Come on! $5.00 PER ENVELOPE THAT YOU STUFF? You think to yourself, "Oh m' gawd! I can stuff 50 envelopes per hour, so I could be making $250 per hour! Amazing!" Yeah, right! This is all the SAME scam, and it's linked to my second scam I explained (the report generation scam).

    Now, if you were a company, and you had circulars or bulk mailings to send out, why on earth would you pay someone you don't even know as much as $5.00 an envelope to simply stuff it and send it out? I've seen it as low as $1.00 per envelope and as much as $15.00 per envelope! If you're a smart company, you will do your own in-house bulk mailings, paying your secretaries/office-workers $5-$6 per HOUR to stuff envelopes. that would save you about $240 per hour per employee! But if the scammer makes up some story about how he just has so much mail to stuff, and that he doesn't have enough personnel to stuff the envelopes, ask him why he doesn't just bring his business to a direct mailing service. Direct mailing services SPECIALIZE in bulk mailings. They can generate over 5000 stuffed envelopes per hour!! They have machines that can do it real fast without the need for humans. And you can even rent a machine like their's for as little as $400 per day, or buy one for $15,000! That's a lot better than paying presumeably hundreds, maybe thousands, of people you don't even know a salary of $100,000 per year (a total of $100Million in advertising costs to you!). Now, think about it! If a company can afford to spend $100,000,000 to all of the people that are just stuffing envelopes or mailing circulars PER YEAR, then that company must be gigantic! But if it is a large company, then it could afford the bulk-mailing equipment, and it could afford hiring more personnel on a full-time basis to cover it, which would mean that it would have no need for home-workers stuffing their envelopes. Bzzzzt. Does not compute! It must be a scam.

    Here's how it works: You are told to send a SASE to the guy for FREE details. You get a little contract back, telling you to send them $25 to get you started or because they want to "weed out" those people that aren't serious. So you send in the $25. You get back a few "circulars" or "reports" which are just the same documents you saw when you replied to the scammer's offer through the mail. The idea is that, yes, you will be "stuffing envelopes", "processing mail" or "mailing our circulars", but those envelopes that you stuff are the SASE's that people send you asking for information on how to make money after YOU advertise that they can be making tons of money stuffing envelopes!! And "mailing our circulars" refers to the same thing: you will be stuffing envelopes with that same scam you got back from the scammer. Same thing with "processing mail" at home. It's all just the same scam. It's basically the same as the "report generation" scam I revealed above. If you read something like, "Make $5.00 per envelope THAT YOU SECURE," then you know what it means now.

    Read item "B" (above) for information on the consequences of becoming a scammer.

  5. "Assemble products at home" scam. This is becoming more popular. You are told that you can have a modest income by assembling toys or other consumer goods at home. This seems like such a "real" job that it couldn't be a scam. Guess again. Here's how the scam works: You send away for the FREE information, and you get a little contract back stating that you must send them $40 or so to get started. In turn, they are supposed to send you your first toy to assemble. So you send your $40 to them, and you soon get a small kit in the mail. The kit does indeed contain parts of a toy that you can assemble. After you assemble it, you're left wondering what to do next. You think that you're supposed to send it back to the original company and collect a paycheck or something, but in reality, what you're supposed to do is sell the toy YOURSELF! YOU must locate a buyer for the toy. And the toy probably doesn't look to be worth more than a few dollars! So you've been had. To recap, you purchased a $3 toy for $40, and to rub salt in the wound, YOU had to assemble it yourself. Another thing that they try to pull on you is that they will screw up the parts in some way, either by leaving parts out or by giving you parts that don't fit together. When you are unable to assemble the product, you are told that it's your fault, you will not get any refund, and you won't be able to submit the toy back to them for your commission.

    And I've heard of big-time scammers that used to do the following with this: They ask for $40 for your start-up kit. For that $40, you get your toy to assemble. Then they tell you to send the toy back, and they will send you a check for something like $50. So you've made $10. Next, you are told you can now purchase two toys to assemble for just $50, now that they know you're serious. So you send them $50, they send you two toys, you send the assembled toys back, and you collect $70. So now you're up $30. Then they make the big pitch to you, "Just think. If you purchase 100 toys from us for just $2000, you can make $1000!" So you send out your check for $2000, and what do you get back? You might get some toys back, but either they'll screw it up and blame it on you, or they might just take off with your money. If you try to track them down and make them pay you back, you might find that they have disappeared without a trace. Beware. Know who you're dealing business with and where they are.

  6. "MLM's - Multi-Level Management companies" (AMWAY, for example). These are usually not thought of as scams. AMWAY, for example, is a very old and legitimate MLM. Here's how an MLM works: Someone approaches you with an amazing way to make money part-time. It's usually your boss, a co-worker, a family member, or a friend that approaches you with it, so you're instantly lulled into a state of trust and acceptance. This person will explain to you that this is "multi-level" management, which means that there can usually be an infinite number of levels of management. So you might have someone managing you in the program, but you also might be managing one or more people, and those people under you (your "down-lines") can each manage their own people, etc. Each person in the "pyramid" is expected to sell products that the MLM offers. The products could be things like fruit baskets, VCR's, cuttlery, shoes, etc., but it can also be long distance telephone service or insurance, for example. When one of your down-lines makes a sale, your down-line will make something like a 10% commission on the sale, but YOU will make something like a 2% commission on the sale as well, even though you did nothing. This way, the profits trickle upwards in the pyramid. It may trickle as much as 5 levels upwards. You can imagine that if you have dozens of people under you, and they each have dozens of people under them, each making sales, then you're going to be a very wealthy person eventually, without getting up from your chair! This is usually why people join MLM's: the dream of untold riches by just sitting back and doing nothing. Now for the real story: Let's say you do join an MLM. You're making no money at first, you have to pay the MLM yearly "dues", and on top of this, you have a monthly quota to make in terms of sales that YOU have to make. I've seen the monthly quota as low as $25.00 and as high as $500 in certain MLM's. When you sign the contract, you are told that if you do not make that quota, you're out of the program, all of your down-lines become your manager's down-lines, and your yearly membership fee will not be refunded. What usually happens is that you're hyped up so much initially that you're able to make the first month's quotas by selling products to your friends, family, and co-workers. You have to harass these people in your life to be able to sell your stuff, and if you keep using them, you'll eventually alienate yourself from them. They aren't going to want to see you after a while, because they know you're gonna try to convince them all to become your down-lines or to buy your products. Eventually, you will run out of people to sell stuff to, and you probably have a few down-lines under you. Your manager says he understands your dilemma, but convinces you to stay with it, because you'll eventually see it start to pay off. Well, to make your monthly quota, you have to buy some products YOURSELF. And, when you're totally in denial, you fool yourself into believing that you actually needed the products that you bought, or that the products are better than any of the usual products you buy more cheaply from the supermarket. Thus, in the end, you are your best customer in these programs, and you'll be losing more money than making it. Of course your up-lines are going to try to convince you to stay, because they're the ones who have only to gain by you staying on. Mind you, that's what happens for the "average" MLM worker. I have heard stories of how others have been able to make as much as $50,000 per year off of an MLM like AMWAY. But those people have quit their day jobs, setup a regular office, placed ads in newspapers and magazines, etc. They've gone all-out. If you think that an MLM is an easy way to make lots of money, forget it. It's hard work, just like starting any other business which sells products. If you've got an extraordinary product which sells itself, then you'll have yourself some earnings for a while, until that product becomes trite. But if you just have a bunch of high priced garbage, then you'll find it very difficult trying to sell them.

    There are also some not-so-legitimate MLM's out there. I think I heard that there are about 2,000 new MLM's popping up every year. But there are also perhaps 1999 old ones dying every year as well. Be warned of the following situation, which is a REAL scam: Someone approaches you about a great new MLM. They say that there is NO selling whatsoever in it! They explain it to you. You pay a monthly due of $10. You find 10 other people to "manage" under yourself, each of them paying $10 monthly dues. You encourage your down-lines to go out and do the same. You will make 20% commission on each of your down-line's monthly dues. So if you have 10 down-lines, each paying $10/mo, then you're making $10/mo. (subtracting out the $10 that you have to pay in). You will also make a commission on each of their down-line's monthly dues. And so on... Eventually, this pyramid spreads out, and you begin to see lots of money, supposedly. It seems like such an amazing deal that nobody would pass it up. But the problems that occur are:

    1. This is illegal in the U.S. It's basically the same scam that was revealed in "A", above ("Make Money Fast" scam).

    2. Theoretically, the base of the pyramid becomes so broad that there would be no more people remaining in the world to become their down-lines, so the largest part of the pyramid is paying $10/mo and not getting anything in return. Eventually, the base of the pyramid falls out, and so does the "new" base, etc. The pyramid collapses, and in the end, the only ones that have made any money are at the top. The rest of the people have lost a considerable amount of money.

    3. You have to sign up at least 5 people or more to just break-even. To be making much more money, you need to have many others directly under you. Most of the $10 dues goes to the guy in charge of the scam directly, without trickling upwards. The rest of the people are promised money, but seldom receive any. It's basically like someone coming to you and saying, "Give me $10/mo."

Annotated Bibliography of
Internet Scam Information

The following is a list of scam-related information available on the net via WWW, gopher, FTP, email, etc. Currently, it's a small list, but will grow in the future:
The U.S. Postal Service's web site on consumer fraud:
<http://www.usps.gov/websites/depart/inspect/consmenu.htm>

This web site came as a pleasant surprise. It contains a wealth of information on such topics as mail fraud, MLM/Pyramid schemes, work-at-home scams, etc. It contains links to other web sites that have more information. It's definitely a MUST for further reading. They backed-up everything I said in this report, hitting most of the major points that I did.

The Consumer Law Page
<http://consumerlawpage.com/>

This web site provides information on many specific scams or categories of scams. If you think that someone's selling you a scam, first check here. For example, if you're thinking about joining a truck driving school, they have an article about it which explains what you should watch out for.

National Fraud Information Center
<http://www.fraud.com/>

CHECK THIS WEBSITE for daily alerts on new scams and helpful hints on how to avoid fraud. Look here for help on how to complete transactions on the Internet safely and with confidence.

If there are any attempts to defraud you on the Internet, or if anything you see on the Internet which leads you to believe that fraudulent activity is taking place, you can report the specific incident by calling NFIC at 1-800-876-7060, or 1-202-835-0159.

Alternatively, you may e-mail nfic@internetMCI.com or fill out the online incident report at <http://www.fraud.com/nficmail.htm>. NFIC will try to respond as quickly as possible. NFIC will not be able to respond if you have not included your e-mail address. If you wish to inform NFIC of an incident, please provide information about the company, the incident, your name and a snail mail address at which you can be reached. Thank you. Please, do not use this service to relay confidential information!

Home Business Scam Alert Network
<http://www.world-wide.com/Homebiz/Scams.htm>

This web site is offered to the consumers totally free as a service to the Internet providing latest information to Internet Citizens from being scammed.

Closing Remarks

Finally, if you KNOW that someone is posting a scam, send an email message to their system administrator to get their accounts deleted. They have no business being on the net, and it's your right, as a citizen of "the net", to get rid of them. For example, if the guy's address is "user21@bovine.moo.com", then you should send a message to "root@bovine.moo.com" and "postmaster@bovine.moo.com", as well as "root@moo.com" and "postmaster@moo.com". This way, you are ensured that your email message will go through. "root" is a special username on most systems meaning, "system administrator". And "postmaster" is the person who is in charge of netnews postings.

To report abuse of the USENET or Internet from AOL accounts, send future reports to abuse@aol.com. Include complete copies of the abusive article or e-mail, including all headers.

If you see a scam posted to a newsgroup, simply write a follow-up letter to the article, and insert the sentence, "This is a SCAM!" That's all you have to do. It takes no more than 20 seconds of your time. WARNING!! If you do something like this, you must prepare yourself for retaliation! If you have any personal information available on the net, remove it. If your ".plan" or ".signature" file reveals information about your real identity, where you live, your phone #, etc., then you might want to remove it temporarily. You wouldn't want a crazy scam-artist to get a hold of your home address or phone #.

I hope this file has helped... If you want to ask me any specific questions, I'm here. Fire away!

Ciao for now,

- Steve Weigand

(weigand@marlin.ssnet.com)

END OF FILE


1996(c) copyrighted and maintained by Nelson Chin, cyl@ifcss.org. Hosted by Chinese Community Info. Ctr.. Created: 1996.12.31 Updated: 1997.04.27