Why We Should Avoid “Make Money Quick” Systems:
We live in a world where the Internet is one of the most important communication and business tools. The convenience offered by the Internet is vast.
About ten years ago online businesses exploded and since then many people who wanted to make extra money have turned to the internet. Some are legitimate businesses that sell products and skills and some are scam sites that steal and harass people.
An example of such fraud schemes is the Make Money Fast or MMS schemes. This pattern looks a lot like chain letters passed on to people. Making Money Fast will often pretend it’s legal and promise huge sums of money in a short period of time. It will promise you things that are too good to be real investment opportunities.
People, especially those who are unlucky, are easily tricked into joining this type of fraud. So why do people believe such things? The only explanation is that they think these schemes are true and they can afford it.
People tend to think “what have I got to lose?” and another thing is that almost everyone would like to earn easy money.
Make Money Fast, projects usually come in the form of an email. The content of the letter states that you need to send money to some or all of the names on the list, then include your own name and send the email to other people.
Here is some basic content in Make Money Fast emails:
• It will usually start with a greeting from the person who created the letter.
• This feature will include testimonials from “investors” who will say it made them millionaires or made their lives easier.
• It will include a list of names and addresses.
• It will indicate that you need to send a specific amount of money (usually a small amount of money) to some or all of the people on the list.
• It asks you to forward the email to as many people as possible and change the list of names by placing your own name and address at the bottom and removing one at the top.
• It will usually claim it is legal and promise you a return on your investment.
There are several variations of this scheme. A common type is that it will ask you to send money to people as payment for reports.
It will always claim that it is legal and some will include a section of the law to confirm legality, when in fact the same law will state that it is illegal.
There are also websites that offer these programs, and often times it will look very attractive and legitimate to get people to invest. It will display photos of smiling people and include testimonials. Keep in mind that these are just photos that can be bought for pennies on various graphic sites and also be aware that anyone can give testimonials.
While some of these websites are legitimate and offer real business opportunities, most are fraudulent. Before investing, here are some tips for distinguishing scam sites from legitimate sites.
Scam sites often offer a return on investment and big profits that sound too good to be true. An example is that some will suggest that you convert your investment of $ 20.00 into $ 50,000.00 within days and even millions.
Find out if there is at least one reliable contact address on the website. If it is legitimate, it will include the person’s legitimate phone number and address. Call the phone number and wait for someone to answer to find out if this is in fact legitimate.
Look for the website on Internet forums to see if it is a legitimate website or it is blacklisted. You can also find out if the forums you have visited and the website are fraudulent by tracking the IP address. If the IP addresses are the same, it is fraud.