Top 4 Biggest Work from Home Scams

Envelope Stuffing
Most companies already have a mailing house that send out their literature for mere pennies. Therefore, it's not likely any company would offer more than that to have someone stuff envelopes for them. This is a scam where one is typically asked to pay a deposit for "office supplies" or the like only to receive a packet that shows how to rip someone else off in return. Not only is this NOT a legit work from home opportunity, it's bad karma. Bad, bad karma.

Medical Billing/Claims Processing
For legal reasons, the medical profession is very specific with their privacy practices. Therefore, it's not likely just anyone will be allowed to handle private medical information. (Honestly, would you want just anyone handling yours?) Billing services are typically handled by established companies with trained and certified workers at an onsite location.

Assembly Work

Whether it's assembling toys, jewelry or anything else, these are the types of jobs that typically end up in offshore factories. Why? Because the labor is cheap and can be done for pennies on the dollar. It's simply not financially feasible for a company to pay a worker thousands for assembling birdhouses from the comfort of home.

Refund Recovery Work

In this scam, one buys a "special software" to help track lost UPS and FedEx packages in order to get refunds for customers and make a commission from the recovered amount. In all reality, a customers who are due a refund can simply look up the information and call customer care by themselves on the UPS or FedEx website— and do it all for FREE.

Not sure if the work from home opportunity you just found is a scam?

Never, NEVER pay to work from home. While some legitimate telecommuting jobs require you to invest in equipment such as headsets or software, beware of anyone requiring a "down payment" or deposit for a "special packet of information". 

Do your research. Check the company out with the Better Business Bureau, the Federal Trade Commission and Fraud.org. 

Ask questions. A company offering a legitimate work from home opportunity should be able to easily answer what tasks will need to be performed, whether a salary or commission is paid, who does the paying and when the first check is sent out.

Use your intuition. If it doesn't feel right then listen to your inner voice, leave it behind and don't ever look back. The rule is: if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.  

What Happens When You Don't Play it Smart with Work from Home Opportunities

Because there are so many legitimate work from home opportunities out there, it's unfortunate that there is a tendency for individuals to look at work from home jobs with a suspicious eye. However, when things like this happen, it's definitely no wonder. 

When looking for that perfect work from home opportunity, it's very necessary to always do your research and protect yourself. Don't depend on anybody else to do it. You are responsible for you!

• DO YOUR RESEARCH—know who you are dealing with. Get references from others who have worked for the company! One of the biggest scams is to not employ you—only to sell you "training materials" or help find others to rip off.
• Forget the big profits or overnight millions. A work from home opportunity is like any other job or business. If you're serious, you'll start from the bottom and dedicate yourself to success.
• Unsolicited emails for work from home opportunities are typically scams. Regular employers don't go around knocking on doors to find out who needs a job, now do they?
• Get all the details before you pay. Any company offering a legitimate work from home opportunity will offer all the information you need freely before requiring you to purchase any equipment! Know the refund policy! And never pay anyone just for the opportunity to work for them!  
• Stay away from those offering advances in pay. You get the check, deposit it and are then told you've been given the wrong amount and to return a portion of the payment. Then you'll find out the check was fake and YOU are on the line for the money.

And when you do find the perfect work from home opportunity, it's very important not to mess it up, like this guy did!

Nailed by a Work from Home Scam? Who Me?

Article first published as Nailed by a Work from Home Scam? Who Me? on Technorati.


Work from home scams are definitely out there and most people don't want to admit it once they have been taken for a ride. If you've never been scammed, well, it's likely because you either really haven't-- or you're in major denial. They say the first step to healing is admitting the truth, learning from your mistakes and getting back in the search for legitimate online employment.

So let's do this together, shall we? Let's admit the reasons you got taken by work from home scams.

You didn't do your research. You jumped right into the work from home job hunt without any information whatsoever as to what's available and what will realistically get you where you want to be. You jumped on the first bright sparkly ad that promised you could make thousands of dollars overnight by only working a few hours a day. You got greedy. You got dollar signs in your eyes. So when you were asked for forty or fifty bucks for the privilege of working from home, it didn't seem so bad. After all, you'd make that back tenfold by next Tuesday, right?

If you had done your research into work from home opportunities, you would have learned the number one rule: no legitimate home-based job requires you to pay for the opportunity to work from home.

You were lazy. You decided to take a shortcut. Instead of investigating work from home job opportunities on your own, you decided to pay someone who had already done the work. You paid for a laundry list or membership to a site claiming to have secret knowledge of all the best work from home jobs on the internet. However, what you really got was a list of old, outdated prospects or a webpage filled with broken links.

The painful truth is any information you might want or need about online work from home jobs are freely listed on the internet. All you have to do is look. Sure, it may not all be in one place and it may take some time and effort-- but so does any job search.

You didn't research the company offering you a job. You got so excited at finding an online job with stellar benefits that you handed over all your personal information right away. Within a month, the feds were knocking on your door and wanting to hold you responsible for bank fraud when really you were just the victim of identity theft. 

Now you know internet thieves are extremely sophisticated and can create convincing 'here today, gone tomorrow' websites in the blink of an eye. Next time, stop to research all potential job offers and the companies they come from. Make phone calls. When it comes to work from home jobs, you won't regret being careful.

Work from Home Scams Can't Work if You Don't Fall for Them

Along with work from home websites that list jobs, there are plenty of websites that list work from home scams. These websites can be a valuable tool when it comes to protecting yourself from becoming a victim of internet fraudsters. With so many looking for work from home jobs thanks to the economy, you can bet there are a lot more scam artists on the net these days doing their best to target the naïve and unsuspecting. It used to be that a large percentage of those who got scammed were those who fell for the ‘make a million overnight’ claims. Nowadays, online scam artists are getting more and more sophisticated at every turn.

In addition to Nigerian email scams, work from home scams rank at the very top of internet fraud complaints with a number of law enforcement agencies. Keeping up with internet swindlers can be very difficult since they can easily shut down an operation in one spot and spring right back up in another within a very short amount of time. On top of this, there are millions of internet users around the world; and out of those millions, scammers only need a small percentage to fall victim to their ploys in order to make a quick buck or abscond with sensitive financial information.

The unfortunate thing about work from home scams is it makes people leery of any work from home opportunity. While it is a good idea to be wary, it gives a bad name to the legitimate work from home jobs that can be found on the internet. The internet is a wide, largely uncontrolled medium where you must be careful of anything you do. However, it can also be a wonderfully useful tool. It is a shame to think that there are people in real need that will miss out on great work from home opportunities because of bogus ads, listings and websites that litter the internet.

Whether it is online data entry, work from home customer service jobs or multi-level marketing, anything that is known to be legitimate has been turned into a work from home scam at one point or another. About the only work from home scams that are absolute are the work from home stuffing envelopes schemes. These ploys have been around for nearly one hundred years and somehow manage to live on even in this day and age. Most of the time, internet fraudsters are simply looking to play on the sensibilities of people from all walks of life with promises of wealth or good income without the requirement of effort or a higher education.

In the search for a legitimate work from home job, you will need to be vigilant and do your research before taking on any opportunity. A dead giveaway that a work from home job is a scam is that it asks or requires any kind of money or upfront fee just to work or even get information about the work. And there is also the old standby with work from home scams that if it is too good to be true, then it’s definitely a rip-off.

You're Too Smart for Work from Home Online Scams. Right?

You already know work from home online scams are out there. You know that those ads and listings that catch your attention with promises of making you an overnight millionaire can’t possibly be legitimate. That’s obvious. However, what’s important to understand is that those listings are the work of amateurs. There are scammers out there that are so sophisticated that many times, law enforcement agencies have a hard time keeping up with them. More often than not, it’s not even known which websites are work from home scams until the scammers are long gone with people’s money or sensitive financial information.

While it is true that there are task forces designed to spot and catch those posting work from home online scams, it is often a cat and mouse game as scammers become more and more refined at thwarting the measures of law enforcement agencies. Since work from homes scams tend to stay one step ahead of the law, the best way to make sure you don’t get taken in by bogus work from home opportunities is to get educated on the subject-and stay that way. Remember, the reason these guys don’t get caught is because they consistently change their modus operandi.

Most work from home online scams tend to be successful because they are so elaborate. Not only will they set up an intricate website using names and symbols similar to established and respected companies; they will sometimes even provide an address or a fake 1-800 number manned by a mock customer support specialist. This is because they know that there will be those looking to confirm that they are a legitimate business. If they are able to fool potential victims, it means that they can set up shop just a while longer. If not, they can shut down and start up a whole new scheme within a record period of time.

So how in the world will you ever be able to tell these work from home online scams from legitimate work from home opportunities? Simple. Money will always be of issue. If it is not money, then it will be your personal information such as bank account information or your social security number. Aside from work from home customer service jobs where you may have to buy a special type of headset, a legitimate work from home company does not and will not require you to pay them for the opportunity to work.

Some work from home online scams will ask for your bank account or Social Security number, saying that they are going to send you a payment. Then they say that they overpaid you and that you are to keep part of the payment and send the rest back. The money that they wire or send in a money order is either stolen or fake. This leaves you to pay back the bank and deal with fraud charges.

There are many good work from home companies that are given a bad name thanks to these work from home online scams but with a discerning eye it will be quite easy to keep these types of situations out of your lap.