Everyone is interested in money-making more and saving more. Unfortunately, there are plenty of scammers out there who try to take advantage of this, and if you’re not careful you could lose big. Work at Home scams are some of the biggest. Working from home has always been popular, but in these days of rising layoffs and grim economic forecasts, it’s become even more attractive. Here are some of the most popular scams and what you can do to avoid them:

Information Kits/Envelope Stuffing: The most general of these scams are ads promising to give you all info you need to know to make money from home. All you have to do is send money for an “information kit.” Well, more often than not the kit is either a collection of useless documents or information you could have easily found online yourself for free. Sometimes the kit simply tells you to post your own ads offering the same “information kit” you just bought! The envelope stuffing job is similar to the information kit scam mentioned above. When you answer the ad you’re asked to send in money for a training kit, which consists of a one page instruction sheet that tells you to post ads offering big money for stuffing envelopes! Yes, that’s right. When people send you money for the kit, you send them the same sheet telling them to post their own ads! The red flag here is asking for money. When you answer a job ad you should never be asked to pay any kind of fee. Legit companies won’t charge you for training or information.

Craft Making:These scams offer jobs making crafts or stuffing envelopes at home. These are probably the oldest type of work at home scam. With the craft one, you’ll send money for a kit containing everything you’ll need to make the crafts. The hitch is when you send them to the company they will always be rejected for one reason or another, meaning you’ll never make a dime! Remember, legit companies won’t charge you for the materials you need to do your job.

Payment Processing/Shipping Assistants: This work at home scam isn’t just a scam, it can land you in jail! This scam involves ads looking for “payment processors” or “shipping assistants” to work from home. In the case of the payment processor ad, the company tells you they are located overseas and need a payment processor to accept payments from their U.S. customers. They usually give a reason having to do with exchange rates or taxes. (This is also used in another popular scam, the Nigerian scam. In that one you get an email from someone claiming to be an heiress or a lawyer for a long lost relative who needs your help to get their millions out of their country.) It seems simple and straight forward. You’ll receive the payments, deposit them in your bank account, keep a percentage, and wire the remaining balance to them. The payments usually come via FedEx and are checks and money orders. This is called being a money mule-law enforcement calls it money laundering. A felony!

That’s right. The payments you are receiving are either fake checks or money orders, payments sent to them by people who won a fake auction they placed on Ebay, or payments received in other fraudulent ways. When the fake checks bounce or the ripped off customer comes looking for the money, the “company” (actually an overseas criminal organization) will be long gone and you’ll be left holding the bag. The shipping assistant variation involves receiving packages instead of payments. These packages are usually expensive electronics or designer goods. You’re told to simply repackage them and send them to an overseas address. Now there is a legit business that does this sort of thing, it’s called freight forwarding. This isn’t it however. In this case the goods you’re receiving were purchased with stolen credit cards or Paypal accounts. They are sent to you to help hide the thieves’ tracks. Law enforcement calls it receiving stolen goods, and it is also a felony. The red flag here is that legit companies never ever advertise job openings via spam, and most of them will never post an ad with grammatical errors or broken English.

Mult-Level Marketing: Not all MLM opportunities are scams but a large majority of them are. They work by offering you an opportunity to join a company and sell their exciting new products. They tell you it’s a chance to own your own business but many times it’s little more than a pyramid scheme. You’re expected to give a cut of what you make to the person that recruited you. This is called your upline. To make that cut back you’re expected to recruit people to join the company and sell too. These people will in turn give you a cut of their sales. This is your downline. On top of that you’re expected to buy an inventory of products up front. This is not something to enter into without a lot of research first. In most cases the only ones making money are the people at the top of the upline. The red flags to watch out for her are pressure to make a large investment in the company’s products, refusing to let you talk to others in the company to see how they like it, and pressure to decide quickly.

That said, there are legitimate work at home opportunities out there, such as freelance writing, blogging, and customer service. The key to protecting yourself from the scams is to be aware of the red flags, do plenty of research, and read the fine print. Get in the habit of running company names through Google-a wealth of information will be revealed. Don’t allow yourself to be pressured into making a decision, and above all, remember the old adage: If it seems too good to be true, it is!

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