Avoiding Work at Home Fakes and Scams
BEWARE! Fake Google Cash, Home Job Placement and Other Work at Home Scams
Fake News Pages Can Trap Unwitting Work at Home Seekers into a Hefty Sign up Fee or Worse, Ever Renewing Monthly Subscriptions
These work at home sites are presenting themselves as independent news sources when they are everything but.
I respect the right of a business owner to use legitimate strategies to make their sites more trustworthy – getting listed in the Better Business Bureau, having eTrust seals on their pages, and the like, but creating false news sites to lure unwitting customers in, goes WAYYY beyond the acceptable.
I don’t like labelling any business a scam – IF it isn’t blatantly obvious – because I believe the word ’scam’ is too loosely used online. Many will label an opportunity a scam just because they haven’t made money with it – in spite of the fact that countless others have.
Some of these so called scam sites don’t check too much into the facts, before they jump to conclusions.
Anyway, I digress…
I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO PROBLEM ON CALLING THIS A SCAM AND ANY SITES LIKE THEM!
It’s sites like these false news sites, that give genuine online business owners like myself a bad name and make it all the more difficult to gain trust for our legitimate businesses.
Here’s an article from ABC news reporting on a similar scam:
Work From Home With Google? Not So Fast
By the looks of it these companies try to stay within the advertising laws by publishing disclaimers. If viewers look close enough they’ll see in small print the word ‘Advertisement’ at the top of the page(See image below). The point is that even with their disclaimers and small print, ordinary people are being lured into their opportunity by false advertising.
Their comments are obviously false as there is no link for anyone to leave a comment. The testimonials and check photo are likely to be false too.
Checking Them Out
I looked a little further into this particular scam for ‘Home Jobs Placement’ anyhow.
I went and entered my details into the ‘Search for Work at Home Jobs in Your Area’ form. So I put in the zip 90210 and miraculously there were indeed jobs available for Beverley Hills. What a surprise:-)!
This page look very professional with video, audio, testimonials, everything you’d expect to see on a legitimate site.
I clicked the ’sign up now’ link and was taken to a page to submit my application. I swear if I get rejected, I’ll eat my 40 inch flat screen, one piece at a time;-).
Hooray! I wasn’t rejected. Now on to the good bit! I’m on a page where I’m being asked to submit my payment details AND pay $197 but the good guys over there aren’t gonna take my payment for 3 months, while I check out the program. How nice of them!
OK, time to get out of there. I think I’ll decline to pay the $197.
I did enter my legitimate email address so it will be interesting to see how the follow up via email.
Similar Scams and Avoiding them In the Future
I’ve heard of similar sites where they have you enter your payment details for a free info pack. What most don’t notice in the fine print is that they’ll be charged $50 after a few days have passed and $50 every month after that with no channels to make an easy cancellation.
People taken in by these scams have had to go through banks and credit card companies to stop the payments and try to retrieve their lost cash.
This is a typical, ‘get paid a fortune’, for doing very little, type program. As I have said umpteen times on this site, you WILL NOT get paid much for doing little.
Here’s an article from ABC news on avoiding scamsters:
10 Telltale Signs of a Work-From-Home Scam
There are programs like Cash Crate where you can get paid a few dollars per month for filling out surveys, offers etc. but you are unlikely to ever make a full-time income.
You really need to get away from the idea that you’re gonna get rich quick. IT AINT GONNA HAPPEN UNLESS YOU WIN THE LOTTERY.
The Internet offers you a way to make money – and a lot of it – but realistically you MUST work to build a website, web presence and various marketing strategies.
Until you get and accept this reality you are going to be further susceptible to scamsters like these Fake News gangsters.
Here’s a screenshot of the ‘Home Jobs Placement’ scam in question:
“Let Me Know How I Can Help You Get Started Today”
http://www.freeadvertz.com/contact
Tagged with: scams
Filed under: Avoid Scam Opportunities
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Hey Mal,
Great info on scams and fakes. Really appreciate it. I almost fell for this particular offer. It’s a good thing I always read the ” terms and conditions ” before I commit to anything. It sure seems like there are alot more of these scams, with each day. They sure do make it a little bit tougher for us honest guys. I agree, researching your proposed business opportunity with the BBB, is a great place to start. Thanks for taking the time to expose, yet another, unethical online scam.
Best Regards,
William Botelho
http://workfromhomepassion.com
Hi Mal,
That’s a great article. Thanks for sharing. It is so easy to fake checks, testimonials, and other stuff on ones site. The numbers of scam artists, especially online, are growing and growing all the time and it is so scary.
Thanks,
Tal Fighel
Hi Tal
Great to hear from you again. You’re one of the guys who has stuck at this business to success, in spite of some tough times. Keep it up, mate
Mal
Hi Mal,
Another job well done on informing your readers of what to avoid. Thank you for this. I’d like to mention a few other things also. About all these “checks” that are displayed on sales pages/advertisements; I noticed you had one displayed on this post that you said was fake (and I’d be willing to bet that you are right). What many people may not realize is that anyone who is good with HTML code could create a fake check that looks exactly like a real one from any opportunity there is, put in any name and amount they desire, upload it to their website and voila, you have a fake check that looks like the real thing.
Now I’m starting to see 1099 forms on some of these pages. There again, if you live in the USA you can pick up blank 1099s anywhere income tax forms are distributed or any post office near our tax season or you can order them from the IRS or download them from the IRS website, print it, fill in any amount and names you want, scan it to a file on your computer and then upload it to your website or sales page and there again you have a fake 1099 form with some ridiculous yearly earnings on it. Now,I’m not saying that ALL these checks and 1099s are fake as some MAY be genuine but I would bet that those that are accompanied by ridiculous claims of instant riches for doing little to nothing are as fake as three dollar bills. (There may be three dollar bills in other countries but NOT here in USA.)
I would suggest steering away from anything that seems “too good to be true” regardless of how convincing the checks and or 1099s appear because anything that seems that way probably is a blatant lie.
AS William stated, these scum who perpetrate these scams are surely making it much tougher for us honest people to gain the trust of people who are looking for legitimate business opportunities. I also sincerely hope that some of these scum read this and feel that I have stepped all over your toes because that will make my day. As Clint Eastwood said in Dirty Harry; “Make my day Punk.”
Best regards to the honest people out there,
Eddie W Gillespie
Thanks Ed for your comments.
In a twist to the story I have received a threatening ‘Cease and Desist’ letter from the lawyers of Weekly Consumer Newsletter because what they have termed as ‘copyright infringement’ because they believe that I’ve copied content from their site – even though all of the above is a screenshot and not actual content copied over.
Anyway, I’ll be posting a copy of the letter here tomorrow with a note to my list to forward this info on to as many people as they can. If you disagree with these blatant attempts to mislead people by misrepresenting sites as mainstream news publications then please forward this link.
I look forward to your support. Please post your comments below.
Mal
Ooops. I misquoted Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry in my previous comment. Instead of “Make my day punk”, it was “Go ahead Punk, make my day.” My apologies to Mr.Eastwood, as well as all these blog readers. lol…
Regards,
Eddie W Gillespie
Hi mal
Thank you for your useful info. you have very useful blog and email program. I follow many of folks program and my email box is full of unwanted emails with a huge folk article!
I think your info can help to many people
again thank you!
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Home Job Placement