Another Work-At-Home Scammer Revealed

Since I’ve been blabbing about work-at-home scams of late, I thought I’d touch on the subject again at least one more time.

I responded to another work-at-home ad on the craigslist.com web site. Again, this one was worded to sound like the person responsible for the ad was actually offering a job. And once again, this was, to put it simply, a lie.

To see the original ad, click here. I should point out that this scam stuff that is posted on craigslist.com should not be interpreted as a slam against craigslist.com, because I actually really like their site. It must be nearly impossible to keep the scammers from posting there since their system is so open and easy to use.

As I so often point out, there is always a minority of people waiting in the wings to come along and do their best to ruin a good thing for everyone else. One of the nice things about craigslist.com is that anyone who visits the site can essentially ‘vote’ on the listings there by flagging a particular listing as ‘Miscategorized,’ ‘Prohibited’ or ‘SPAM’. You can see that on the top right portion of the ad I linked to above.

I have just checked the craigslist.com site and I see that the ad in question has been removed. No doubt that is due to the number of people who have flagged it as ‘Prohibited’ or ‘SPAM,’ since that is obviously what it is.

This time the e-mail message I received in response to my inquiry was from someone claiming to be named ‘Ariel,’ but for all I know, it could be the same scammer I was in touch with a few days ago. The e-mail message was very basic and not worth posting since it was so brief, but for the record, it was from: priceprocessing@hotmail.com

The message included a link to a web site that had all the information I would need, or so I was told! I knew pretty much what to expect before I checked out the site, and sure enough, they are selling the usual ‘training’ materials, which are most likely quite useless.

If you’d like to check out this particular work-at-home scam web site, you can copy and paste this text into your browser: http://www.geocities.com/priceprocessing/

I did not make this a live link since I have no intention of providing them with a free link, which can help improve their ranking in the search engines.

I wouldn’t find these types of scams so offensive if their original advertisement was not so deceptive. As you can see, they include language like: ‘Must be serious about wanting to work from home.’ in order to lend a little credibility to the ad. Clearly, this ad was worded to make readers think it was an actual job offer.

And I must say, the free ‘GeoCities’ web site and free ‘HotMail’ e-mail address are a real professional touch. Come on, you can get your own domain and decent web hosting (with many e-mail addresses included) these days very cheaply. Perhaps they have not yet made enough money scamming people to afford their own domain and hosting package.

Seeing these free web sites and e-mail addresses is always a good indication that you are dealing with a typical work-at-home scam.

This one is very representative of the classic work-at-home scam, so it provides and excellent example of the kind of crap to avoid if you are seeking some kind of work-at-home job opportunity.