Now that you have seen some examples of some work at home offers which are actually scams, you may be wondering what you need to watch out for when you look around for legitimate opportunities. Here are some elements that you will find in dodgy work at home programs:

Lots of testimonials from supposed happy participants.

Many sites include testimonials from people who have supposedly signed up for the opportunity and made tons of money with it. These are designed to give the visitor the impression that real people have made money with it. Now here’s the problem: very often, these testimonials are not real. They are simply made up by the site operators. As for the pictures, they are either generic stock photos found on the internet, or simply models that posed for a picture. What about video testimonials? These must be real, correct? Well… no. You can find plenty of people on the internet who would be more than happy to record a short video of themselves reading a script that you’ve prepared and acting all happy on camera for a few bucks. This is very often what happened here. Or they are simply friends of the owners posing as customers.

Proof of income and earnings.

You will often see pictures of checks, bank statements, Paypal screen shots, etc. These could be photoshopped in 5 minutes. Even if they are not fake, there is no way for you to know whether all this money was made by doing the things that the site promotes.

But the site gives a real address for their company and shows their business certificate! Must be real, no?

The address you see on scam sites is very often nothing more than a “virtual office” or mail forwarder. For a small sum each month, anyone can get a mail box at a prestigious office building in downtown Manhattan. This doesn’t mean they actually have an office there. Furthermore, just because a company is registered doesn’t mean that they are running a legitimate business. In many jurisdiction, all it takes to register a company and get a shiny certificate complete with a business registration number is to fill out a form or two and pay the registration fee.

If a work at home site is scamming people, why haven’t the authorities shut it down?

Many reasons. First, they have limited resources and can’t spend their time scouring every “make money online” site to determine whether it is legitimate or not. Also, add the fact that many of these scam sites are “fly by night” operators. They set up their site, collect the money and then when complaints start pouring in, simply shut it down and re open under a different name or slightly different approach. Furthermore, there is also the question of jurisdiction. Many of these operations are based offshore in locations where there is either little legislation regarding online businesses, or the government is simply too inept or corrupt to do anything to stop them.

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