Recession Scams

There are many people that are using the economic downturn to make money in a dishonest way. One telltale sign of these scams is anything that sounds too good to be true (isn’t that always the case?). Most things that say “make millions INSERT LAME AT-HOME JOB HERE” probably is not true.

Many people swindle you into becoming a scammer yourself (thus the reason they will pay you so much). After giving you the tools to make CDs that contain information on how to make money at home, they will have you sell them to people that answer the same ad you did, or create spam on certain websites.

Another way is to sell you a kit to make crafts at home. Then, you are promised to be able to resell them for quite a large profit. However, the company will never accept the crafts you have made as “correct” or “good enough” no matter how crafty you are. Basically, they make money by selling you a bogus kit that contains a craft no one will buy. In the same sense, anything that is a 1-900 number will just make money off of your calling fee and will never result in anything worthwhile.

Stuffing envelopes to make a fortune is an oldie but a goodie. Companies ask you to send a few dollars to receive envelops to stuff that could make you thousands of dollars. However, the company will end up sending you a instructions on how to make a flyer that you are to put up. The point is for people to send a few dollars to you in an envelope in hopes of becoming an envelope stuffer themselves. Then, you send them back the same flyer they responded to. Not exactly honest and upstanding. If you are on the other end of this, you’ll be scammed out of two-three dollars. Not a terrible loss, but still a scam.

The chain letter scam is the most ridiculous in my opinion. There are many emails that are sent as chain letters for you to send on to ten other people after you send a certain amount of money to the top five people. Then, you are to add your name to the top so that you will get paid by the next person and eventually become a “millionaire”.