Work from home scams are popular

The concept of earning a living from home is an enticing one for a large number of individuals. People with small children may find it easier to keep an eye on them while working at home and saving money that might otherwise be spent on child care. There are a number of different reasons why a person might like to work at home, and they are all good ones. Many people just don't feel comfortable in a professional working environment.

There are some legitimate means of home employment; Jet Blue Airways, for example, uses reservation agents that work from home. A lot of solicitations to allow people to work from home are just attempts to steal your money. There are always crooks who try to profit from any situation, and work at home scams are relatively popular. True opportunities to work from home are fairly rare.

One would-be victim got an electronic mail message from a person in Another country advertising a job. The pay was good; the e-mailer was paying a few thousand dollars per week as a "distributor" of his company's products. As a show of honesty, the company sent the recipient several money orders, drawn from a large bank and totaling a few thousand dollars. The recipient was asked to deposit those money orders, and after accepting 10% as a fee, to transfer the rest of the money back to the person who sent it. The trouble is that the money orders are forgeries. American banking laws mandate that these types of checks and money orders be credited to the checking or savings account of the person depositing the money within ten days' time. Sometimes, though, it takes a good deal longer than ten days for the forgeries to be noticed. If the victim has transferred the money elsewhere in the meantime, he or she will be accountable for paying the bank back for the lost sum. Sellers who receive such an offer should ask themselves, "Why would someone send me a cashier's check to deposit when they might just cash it themselves?"
 

One recent home employment scam is a variation on a check overpayment crime that has been going on for some time. In that scheme, a person who is selling something, perhaps on eBay, receives a request to buy. The customer then mails a cashier's check for payment, but the check is for more money than the amount of the purchase. The sender asks the seller to cash the check and to send the difference back, along with the item purchased. The seller does so, only to learn at a later time that the check was fraudulent. He or she is forced to pay back the cash to the bank or credit union and they have also lost their merchandise.

As long as people are greedy, work from home crimes will flourish. Keep in mind, real employment opportunities don't mandate the employee to mail money to the employer. Work from home scams are showing up more and more often as Americans who cannot resist the notion of getting a lot of money for very little or no work find participation in these scams hard to avoid. Any person who is interested in finding honest home employment opportunities should do detailed research prior to applying with a company. The typical admonishments apply here; if it sounds too good to be real, it almost certainly is.