As the economy gets worse, the number of scams increases. These scams have dramatically increased in the last two years, some of which are directed at you and your family. You can protect yourself by knowing the signs and investigating any offer.
Here are the tell tail signs of some scams:
1. The scammer makes outrageous claims of financial success.
2. Scammer claims that he/she achieved the alleged multi-millions or huge success in a relatively short amount of time.
3. The scammer wants you to believe that you too can make a huge amount of money in a short time, if you just pay for the product or membership. Scammers use peer pressure to engage you as part of a society of outrageous claimants.
4. Scammer usually has left multiple versions of the outrageous claims on the internet, usually with facts that are different. (e.g. Jones made $$$ in one month on one site, and the same garbage is put on another site with different dollar amounts and different time frame).
5. The scam product or service makes you believe that you do not know the secret of making money.
6. The scammer generally jumps from business to business, when the outrageous claim is called into question by people.
7. The scammer is audited by the IRS for having made the outrageous claim.
8. The scammer hangs out with other friends who are also making outrageous claims and who are or were under IRS investigation. These friends all show up on sites giving testimonials which are not based on facts, but only are of opinion.
9. The scammer usually wants you to believe that the money you will be spending with him/her is an investment in yourself, or it will make you part of an elite group. (Remember Madoff?)
10. The scammer makes claims that just because many other people have fallen for it that you must, too, because all those people just simply can’t be wrong!?
11. Scammer asks that you commit to pay a monthly or weekly fee to use something which you can usually get free or hire a VA to do at a small charge, and which they claim was the source of their outrageous success.
12. Scammer makes you believe that you will get leads from the product if you just subscribe to the product or site.
13. Scams usually offer low cost products first, then slowly move you to higher priced products over time.
14. Scammers spam to try to get you excited about their outrageous claim.
15. Scammer will never agree to show you his/her tax returns as proof of income.
16. Scammer wants you to go borrow or to get a business loan to pay for plan or product and makes you believe that without borrowing, you can’t achieve success.
17. Scammer usually uses other scammer’s products and tries to sell them to his/her new found target audience.
Remember this: If it sounds too good to be true, it is.
