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Open Mic: Get Rich Quick Schemes and Scams Online

by Shai Coggins on September 10th, 2007

Have you ever encountered online “get rich quick schemes” or scams on the web? Have you been victimised by an online scammer?

There are so many going around on these things. You hear about them in the news… the “letters from Nigeria” scam is one of notorious ones.

Can you share anything else?

UPDATE: Just after I posted this, I received a tip from About.com about this interesting article from Alison Doyle - Work at Home Scams: Avoiding Employment and Work at Home Scams

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Alfa
Sep 10, 2007 at 9:50 pm

There’s this one that’s pretending to be a job opening for article writers but it’s actually an affiliate program of some sort for Helium. Craigslist has lots of these types of ads.
Money News
Sep 11, 2007 at 11:21 am

Kind of funny you mentioned this at the same time one of the other sites that I’ve been reading(IveTriedThat.com) posts an article about the nigeria scam e-mails.

There’s another one that targets owners of companies/people with general last names (like smith etc). We got one stating that someone with no relatives just past away with a huge inheritance, and since your last name is the same we can assign you as the next living heir etc etc. This e-mail came from a Barlow Cameron in UK. I couldn’t pull any other scam info from google cept for the lottery one towards the end of the search.
Mark Herpel
Sep 12, 2007 at 1:52 am

There are so many scams online. Those Nigerian 419s are pretty old now I think they have been able to educate the public on that method in recent years.

The most widespread scam in the digital currency world are the so called High Yield Investment Programs (HYIPs) I’ve been campaigning against these ponzi scams for years now. They steal $10s of million of dollars each year from ignorant Internet surfers.
Just last month Google Adwords announced they will no longer accept ads mentioning or pointing to web involved with e-gold, the primary means of moving funds through these scams.
Mark
Rose
Sep 12, 2007 at 2:03 pm

I saw a news story about the “Nigerian” scams - they followed it all the way to the person(s) that were implementing it and they were in some far off country!

A lot of it esapes me right now but the reporter posed as a “rich” person - it took quite a while to find the scammers - most people would have given up but they eventually tracked them down.

I have a “Working From Home” blog and more people just seem to want to be able to work from home - preferably using their computer and of course a lot of them want to be able to earn money as fast as they can - which is all fine and well if one can find a way to do it legitimately - but for the sake of speed they will want to find the fastest ways possible - legitimate or not
Mark Herpel
Sep 12, 2007 at 9:17 pm

Yes, I saw that story also, I believe. I seem to remember it was dateline and the scammer actually got up and gave the report back like $500 in cash. Good story.

e-currency trading and DXgold,DXinone,DXsynergy - this entire category of ‘work from home’ stuff is a total scam. They offer to get started with a little as $50-$300 so anyone can send their funds and try it, but its useless and everyone loses.
Mark
Jake
Sep 16, 2007 at 8:21 am

Yes, I have seen many get rich quick schemes out there. It’s surprising how convincing some of them are. I actually just started making money online with my site and blog. My site promotes the top three programs for making money online, no get rich quick schemes. If you want to check it out, its at http://free-websites-package.com/blog/. There are reviews and links to each program.
Shai Coggins
Sep 20, 2007 at 11:19 pm

Alfa: Didn’t even realise that was happening. I guess these are people trying to make money off Helium’s affiliate programme.

Money News, Mark, Jake, Rose: Thanks for sharing these stories. There are sooo many scams out there and it’ll be interesting to see if anyone actually tracks these down regularly.
Mitch
Sep 21, 2007 at 2:56 am

419Eater.com is known to prank with some Advance Fee scams. They actually get their site DOS attacked frequently since they expose/humiliate the scam sources. The forum section has quite a bit of an e-mail compilation. If you got a scam e-mail chances are its already listed in there.

The best thing to do is just take part of the e-mail and google it. Most of the times the e-mail will show up in a search.
Joe
Jan 26, 2008 at 4:19 am

I was really tired of so much scams out there.I been scammed so much times. Im glad that i bought the BANS. I believe that BANS is the best LEGIT money making Concept on internet. This success came from http://www.makemoneyshopper.net
Carla
Apr 22, 2008 at 12:23 am

I like making crafts so I “signed up” to make some angels, I paid $50.00 for the materials, the instructions said that it had to be prefectly do (the angel) or it would not be accepted, but with the materials given it was nearly impossible, and once I really thought about it I knew I was just scammed, I wouldn’t pay $5.00 for that angel ever! duh!.
My sil bought the kit also, even after I told her not to!, these guys are good.
Josh
May 11, 2008 at 8:40 am

Come on, everyone wants to be a millionaire!
Go to this site >

http://WWW. I can make you a million in 2 days, just give me $100 to show you how….. really!.com

lol, sure we’ve all been there some time or another.

I’ve been scammed more than my fair share.

I’ve triad litterally hundreds of ebooks on how to make money online and most were scams or just crap info.

But I have recently, to my delight, found a site that actually offers real online money making methods…. Oh and guess what,,,, these actually work,,,, ha ha,,, would you have every guessed it.. lol…

Check out my review of it here.
http://www.realhomebusinessreview.blogspot.com/

It’s not very often when I find legitimate online business opportunities, I’ll try to keep you posted if I find more.
I suggest before you try anything, read reviews and forums.
AND make sure they offer a money-back guarentee if you buy any kind of ebook.

All the best.