Another common scam often promoted in unsolicited email promises fabulous moneymaking opportunities that can be achieved at home with little effort. This type of scam is not new. Con artists originally perpetrated these scams using post office boxes and letters; today's scam artists use the reach of the Internet and the simplicity of email to reach more potential victims faster than ever before. This should give you yet another reason to avoid receiving, let alone reading, any unsolicited email (see Chapter 18 for more information about spam). This section lists some typical examples of these scams.
The most common work-at-home business scam claims that you can earn hundreds or thousands of dollars stuffing envelopes in your spare time.
First of all, who in his right mind would want to spend his life stuffing envelopes? If this prospect actually appeals to you and you send money for more information, you need to seriously examine your aspirations in life. If you send money, you'll probably receive the following:
A letter stating that, if you want to make money, you should just place your own ad in a magazine or newspaper offering to sell information to others about how they can make money by stuffing envelopes. There's no envelope-stuffing involved at all.
Information about contacting mail-order companies and offering to stuff their envelopes for them. Unfortunately, you'll soon find that stuffing envelopes pays less than Third World wages.
Another work-at-home business scam offers to sell you a kit (such as a greeting card kit). You're supposed to follow the kit's instructions to make custom greeting cards, Christmas wreaths, flyers, or other products and then sell the products yourself as a quick way to start your own business. The business may sound legitimate, but the kit is usually worthless, and always overpriced, and the products that it claims you can sell will rarely earn you enough to recoup the cost of your original investment.
Rather than start your own business making products from do-it-yourself kits, why not work as an independent contractor for a company that will take care of the hassles of marketing and selling for you? This scam claims that a company is willing to pay thousands of dollars a month to have you help it build something, like toy dolls or baby shoes. All you have to do is manufacture these items at home and sell them to the company.
If you're foolish enough to send money, you'll receive instructions and materials to build whatever product you're supposed to make. However, the materials are often cheap and easily obtainable for a fraction of the price at your local stores.
What usually happens is that the work is so boring that most people give up before they even get to the point of selling one batch of the product (often there is a high minimum purchase amount listed in the instructions). For those with greater perseverance, the company will often claim that the workmanship is of poor quality (whether it is or not) and thus refuse to pay you for your work. Either way, someone else now has your money.
People have been fooled into buying shoddy or nonexistent products for years. The Internet just provides one more avenue for con artists to peddle their snake oil. Scammers can reach a mass audience by spamming thousands of email addresses every day. Two popular types of fraudulent sales involve "miracle" health products and investments.
Miracle health products have been around for centuries, claiming to cure everything from impotence and indigestion to AIDS and cancer. Of course, if you buy one of these products, your malady doesn't get any better—and may actually get worse. In the meantime, you're stuck with a worthless product that may consist of nothing more than corn syrup and food coloring.
Investment swindles are nothing new either. The typical stock swindler dangles the promise of large profits and low risk, but only if you act right away (so the con artist can get your money sooner and keep you from researching the "bait," only to realize its true nature as a scam). Many stock swindlers visit investment forums or chat rooms, such as those on America Online, and scout these areas for people willing to believe their promises of "ground-floor" opportunities and to hand over money to complete strangers.
Like worthless miracle health products, investment scams may sell you stock certificates or bonds that have no real value whatsoever. Typically these investments focus on gold mines, oil wells, real estate, ostrich farms, or other exotic investments that seem exciting and interesting but prove to be nonexistent or worthless.