1. Home-Based Business Scams: What to Watchout for When
Starting a Home-Based Business
http://prestonschumacher.com/home-based-business-scams-w hat-to-w atchout-for-w hen-starting-a-home-based-business.html
September 17, 2012
The website selling home-based business
opportunities looks like a professional news
outlet, with a stock market ticker, video
footage, and a list of reader comments—
complete with typos. But it’s really baloney.
That ticker? An animation. The news
footage? An unrelated, pirated television
clip. And the testimonials? Internet-fraud
expert Christine Durst calls them
“testiphony-als”—all posted under fake
names within a few days’ time, by crooks
aiming to snare prospective entrepreneurs.
As the recovery plods along, many people who have lost jobs or are looking to
supplement downsized income are likely to come across such websites offering
big money for little work and no particular expertise. No one knows exactly how
many will be duped, but given the explosion of faux news sites during the past
year, the returns must be good, says Durst, chief executive officer of
Staffcentrix, a Woodstock, (Conn.)-based company that has been designing
career training programs for government and nonprofit agencies since 2001. She
estimates hundreds of such sites, many pirating content from each other, exist
online at any one time.
“Scammers rely on spam, paid ads, and posts to forums to drive traffic to their
sites in huge numbers and in a short period of time,” Durst says. “This is
important to them since, once word gets out that they are a scam, they will have
to shut the site down. Big, fast traffic ensures their success.” Many sites are
highly sophisticated, using tracking software to detect where visitors are and
then serving up “success stories” purporting to be from that visitor’s location.
They can also track repeat visitors and see what sites they come from and
where they go, the better to electronically sniff out sleuths like Durst.
Last week she found a work-at-home site and started researching it. “I left their
site to visit sites that would lead a trained eye to believe someone was
investigating them,” she recalls. When she went back to the original website

2. about 10 minutes later, it was gone. “They are very quick to hide, like
cockroaches in the light.” When Durst checked again a few days later, the site
had reappeared. “I guess they thought they shook me off. People really have no
idea how sophisticated these people have gotten,” she says.
Losses can range from a couple hundred dollars for work-at-home programs to
$20,000 or more for people who get hooked on worthless business coaching or
training materials that rely on pirated, decades-old books, including one Durst
got that was originally written by P.T. Barnum. Bethany Mooradian, a Seattle
blogger and author of I Got Scammed So You Don’t Have To!, says scammers
frequently post ads on websites such as Monster (MWW) and Craigslist. “I find
ads there claiming you can make money reading e-mails, sampling products, or
completing surveys. You might be told to pay $20 a month to get on a list where
you’ll get freelance work opportunities, but what you get is basic information you
could easily find for free yourself,” she says.
With today’s technology and a few minutes of due diligence, no one should fall
for such schemes. Many sites offer free research tools that can help check out
companies, individuals, and websites, such as: Whois.com, Copyscape.com,
TinEye.com, and Quantcast.com. To find out whether a company is legitimate,
type its name plus the word “scam” or “sucks” into a search engine and look to
see if it has been listed at consumer protection sites like Ripoff Report.
The main reason would-be entrepreneurs fall for scams is desperation, which
becomes more pronounced in poor economic times, Durst says. Mooradian
agrees: “People are in a position where they don’t want to wait and check
something out thoroughly. Desperation is never good for cash flow; you may
realize something is not logical, but you don’t stop and think about it because you
want to believe it’s true.”
Sales pitches that emphasize emotion and flashy promises but skimp on details
about the company or actual work should be red flags. So should any business
that describes itself generically as a “system” or “program,” Durst says. “Most of
these scams are a mile wide and an inch deep.” If you do fall for a fraud, don’t
expect to recoup your loss, but do take the time to warn others away by
reporting your experience to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, the Internet
Crime Complaint Center, and your state attorney general. “You can get revenge
by educating the marketplace and preventing these guys from getting other
victims,” Durst says. (original source)
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