Follow the money trail… July 22, 2006

I used to watch the Wizard of Oz growing up, and can still sing (as I imagine most Americans can) “Follow the Yellow Brick Road.” But in this case, it is “Follow the Money Trail.” Not quite as catchy, but much more applicable.

I hate scammers. Honestly, I just don’t understand them. I have been talking about this a lot on here lately, but it’s because this sort of thing strikes close to home, being in the work-from-home field like I am. It seems like almost every WAHM job out there is a scam. Luckily, the ratio isn’t quite that high, but it is pretty out of whack.

One favorite is the scam where they post an ad, telling you that you are going to make $300-500 per week doing data entry from home. You don’t need any training, they will train you online to do it, and all you need is to be honest and hard-working. They throw that in there hoping to throw you off the trail. After all, a scammer wouldn’t be advertising for an honest and hard-working person. This must be legit! Another favorite is a constant harping on being a stay-at-home mom themselves, or being a Christian. A really smart scammer (or just one wanting to cover all of his/her bases) will include all three in their ad. You respond to the ad, happy at the thought of making $300-500 a week working part-time at a really flexible job, and the scammer replies telling you that in order to make sure that you are really excited and serious about this job, they are going to charge you a small processing fee. Truly, they don’t want to do this, but they are forced to, because it costs them so much time and money and energy to have people ask for the job info and then never actually complete the job. They want to make sure you really want to do this. They are only going to charge you $5 or $10 or $20 for this information, but at $300-$500 a week, you can make that back in a day, very easily. I have even seen the ads go as high as $30. They stress that this is of course only a one time payment, but once you pay it, you don’t get your money back.

You pay them your money, and in return, you get an e-mail with a Word document attached. It tells you in the document that the data entry job that you just paid money for is simply that you take the ad that you just responded to, and post it yourself all over the internet. You are entering data, yes, and now you are going to make money off the poor, unsuspecting souls who were as naive as you to take the bait. Isn’t that just lovely? Simply marvelous.

I think that this scam started out with one person, posting this ad all over. Out of 100 people who took the bait and paid the money, 98 of them are upset and furious, but having no recourse, lick their wounds and slink away. 2 of them think well, I need to recoup the money that I spent, I better post this ad and at least get my money back. But then the money starts rolling in and the 2 people decide that instead, they are going to continue their scam. You now have 3 people posting these ads all over the place, and just a couple of their respondents think hey, I need to make my money back at least. The cycle just continues ad nauseum until now, if you go onto job boards like Craigslist, you will find 20-30 of these ads posted every single day, in every part of the country. It is like a bad disease that is spreading rapidly.

The medicine? Knowledge. Don’t ever spend money to get a job. Follow the money trail. If the company makes their money off of you, the employee, instead of the client, then you have just unwittingly become the client. And if you are the client, then that means you just got scammed.

So the next time you are haunting the job boards, looking for the perfect job, remember as you read the listings: You’ve got the follow the money trail. It will never lie to you. I wish to heaven I could say the same thing about people.

Havs

The $3000 check you should never cash July 15, 2006

Hey, my momma responded!!! Hey Mom! Everyone wave at my mom–she’s the one over there who looks an awful lot like me!!! She used to go to parent-teacher conferences and the teachers would come up to her, “Oh, you must be Havilah’s mom!” even though they had never even met her before. We just look that much alike.

Okay, enough waving at the mom, I’ve got a serious rant coming on. I belong to the WAHM forum (WAHM = Work-at-Home Mom) and it seems like every day, people are posting “leads” and asking if this is a genuine job. This is a “lead” that was posted last night:

“I Received a letter in the mail today with a check for over $3000.00 from Secret Shoppers. I am suppose to go to Walmart and send a MoneyGram for the amt of $2945.00 and the serv. chrg of 75.00. And I will be pd 200 for training.

“I have 48 hours to do this. Today is Friday , with a check that is over two thousand dollars it takes a few days to clear. Has anyone done this before? I have been called twice to check if I rec. the info. from someone from the company. She even gave me a suprevisor name and number.”

Wow. My jaw dropped when I read this. This jobs SCREAMS scam to me. There are so many things wrong with this, I don’t even know where to start.

First of all, I am assuming that since this was a job for a company called “Secret Shoppers,” I have to assume that you are supposed to do this job so you can evaluate the way that the Wal-Mart employees interacted with you. I have been looking at getting into mystery shopping, and let me tell you, there isn’t a chance on this green earth that any legitimate MS company was going to pay you this kind of money ($200) to do a shop that would take all of 10 minutes. Strike number one.

Strike number two: MS companies have contracted to do a shop for a company (in this case, it would be Wal-Mart.) They have to make sure that they have shoppers that can cover the shop. They would not blindly send out checks to people, hoping that these people can do the shops by the deadline. If this really was a legitimate check for $3000 (which it most assuredly is not) then why would they take the chance that you will actually be home to do the shop?? It’s the middle of summer. You could be gone for two weeks on vacation. They wouldn’t send the check, THEN call you to make sure you could do the shop. That simply doesn’t make any sense at all.

Strike number three: $2045 + $75 does not equal $3000. If the company cannot do even simple math like that, then they obviously have something wrong with them. I don’t do well with math, and I can see that there’s a problem there, sans a calculator. That really says something.

Strike number four: If the company really was going to pay you $200 to do a 10 minute shop (bwaahhhahahaha!!!!) then why wouldn’t they just send you a check for $200 and tell you to cash that? Why go through this whole elaborate shenanigan?

Why? Because this is a scam. Scams rely on one thing every time: People making hasty decisions. You get this check. It is staring you in the face. $3000 right there. An extremely easy way to make $200. Do it! Do it! Phone calls from people, “Are you going to do this? Here is my sup’s number. Call! We’re legit! We need to know if you’re going to do this! Tell us your decision!” A legitimate company would not need to pressure you like that.

No decision should ever be made hastily when it comes to $3000. The need for haste, the need for pressure, comes because the company knows that if you sit down and think about what is going on, think this through logically, then you are going to see all of the problems associated with this “job” and go running in the other direction. They don’t want to give you that chance to think. As I told my hubby last night, there is a better chance of aliens landing in our front yard, a tornado hitting our backyard, lightning hitting our house and an earthquake hitting our truck, simultaneously! than this being an actual job.

There is a happy ending. I posted my thoughts, and the original poster responded:

Thank you all for your help and comments. I plan on taking this check to the bank that it is endorsed from and take to my local police dept. this is so sad and unfortunately how many people have they hurt. We are all looking for legit jobs to feed our families and its companies and people like this that make us suffer the most. Thanks to having caring people such as you all to look out for one another.

THANKS SOOOOOOOOO MUCH…

At least this is one work-at-home mom who won’t be taken for a ride. The next time you think you might be on the receiving end of a scam, stop, put the check out of sight, turn off your phone, and just THINK. Think it through logically. Scams don’t stand up against the Think Test. It is my theory that there are 17 people in this world who have come up with all of these scams, and they are just perpetuating them all over the internet. There are thousands of scams out there, so you would think that there are thousands of scammers, but I really think there are only 17. I originally said 2, but Doug negotiated me up to 17. Don’t make those 17 people’s lives any easier.

Here’s to ridding the world of those 17 and going back to living in peace and prosperity!

Havs

I almost got sucked in June 22, 2006

I was reading a thread on a WAHM forum about a company called Tiny Details, a company that has you assemble products from home. I went to their site and checked them out, and they seemed very legit. I know, I know, how could there ever be an assembly job at home that was legit? But this one DID sound legit (famous last words).

They have these kits that they send in the mail to you (postage paid both ways!) for miniature items. These are those really tiny replications that you can buy to put into a dollhouse. I know that miniatures are really big, so it only made sense that this was a hot item that could do well. Also, since it a craft, most people want a “handmade” craft, so this company was providing their clients (stores) a way to offer that to the customer. This wasn’t a “assemble CD cases from home” sort of thing where the product could easily be done by a machine (and with higher quality), but was instead a large assortment of really cute items that could go into a dollhouse: books, Victorian calling cards, food items, magazine racks, etc. I read through the list and they seemed easy enough. I was reaching for the credit card, when I thought, “You know, I should just double-check this.”

Here are the BBB reports on this company:

BBB Report #1
BBB Report #2

Here are some threads that I found that discussed Tiny Details in more depth:

WAHM forum thread #1
WAHM forum thread #2

By this point, I felt pretty stupid. I am not one to fall for scams easily. I have been around the block a few times, and when I heard about people falling for a scam, I just shake my head and think, “How could you not tell that was a scam? It was so obvious!” And yet, I almost handed over my credit card to a company that (as far as I can tell) absolutely no one has made any money with!

If someone like me, who is fairly intelligent (or so I like to think! *wink*) and can usually spot a scam from 100 feet away, almost fell for this, how many other people out there are also being taken in by them?

*Sigh*

Havs