The FTC just announced that it has brought actions against Shopper Systems, LLC, Revenue Works, LLC, The Veracity Group LP, American Business Builders LLC, ENF LLC, UMS Groupp LLC, The online Entrepreneur, Smart Tools LLC, The Zaken Corp and other companies for operating scams promising business opportunities as mystery shoppers, credit card processors, website operators and government insurance refund processors.  Unfortunately, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) alleges that all these companies were doing was stealing people’s money and providing them with worthless information.  The sad truth is that the actions by the FTC represent just the tip of the iceberg and as soon as one fraudulent enterprise is shut down, another springs up.  Particularly in hard economic times, people are particularly vulnerable to job scams out of desperation.

TIPS

Many of these job scams had the common theme of promises of large amounts of money for little effort.  Not quite “Money for nothing and chicks for free” as sung by the band Dire Straits, but pretty close.  You should always be skeptical of such promises.  If indeed these jobs were legitimate, why isn’t everyone doing it?  Before giving money to any company promising you an employment opportunity you should research the company with the FTC, your local state attorney general, the Better Business Bureau and even use the easy tactic of going to Google and typing in the name of the company along with the word “scam” and see what comes up.