A self styled work at home scam "investigator" sets up a website with an anti-scam type of name: DontLetThemScamU.com or ScamNoMore.inf or something along those lines. Some even manage to work the word "authority" or "agency" into the site name to add credibility by implying they are part of a government department.
The website home page will have large headlines warning that the Internet is full of work at home scam programs and promises to reveal the truth about them. The page tells us how the author has been scammed repeatedly by work at home scam programs and has lost boatloads of money online. It goes on to describe how the scammers' prey turned into the hunter and is now able to unmask the frauds and unveil the legitimate work at home programs discovered during his crusade.
The details of the story vary a little and sometimes the "chief investigator" has a female sidekick helping with the undercover investigations. One current version of the investigator's story is that this serial scam victim set out on a one man mission to investigate Internet work at home programs and unmask the scammers for the benefit of humanity. After spending five years contacting every home business program owner he could find on the Internet, he is going to share (at no charge) the benefit of his vast experience with us - like a kind of virtual Robin Hood. Let's call our example investigator Robin from now on.
When you visit his website, Robin invites you to subscribe to his email series so that he can explain in detail what work at home scams are to be encountered on the Internet and how to avoid falling for them. Everyone wants to avoid scams, so it seems sensible to subscribe.
When the emails arrive, Robin explains at length how practically every money making online opportunity is a scam. He lumps together all sorts of different online businesses such as real estate investing, stock market investing, HYIP's, affiliate marketing, paid online surveys and data entry programs, declaring them all to be scams. For good measure, he also throws in all books and courses about building an Internet business and declares the authors of all of them to be frauds. In most instances the accusations remain vague and Robin never offers any evidence to substantiate his allegations.
Fortunately, so Robin tells us, he has managed to find treasure in the midst of all the trash and can recommend just three programs as being honest. These three programs get his seal of approval as being legitimate home business opportunities and offering a real chance to make honest money from a home based business. To help you further, Robin tells you to sign up to his selected programs quickly because they are filling up fast and you might miss the chance to join and start earning the money you've always dreamed of.
The truth is that the real scammer is our virtual Robin Hood, our hero is actually a bad guy in disguise. Robin has not really spent five years selflessly researching Internet work at home programs and losing money to scammers for the benefit of his fellow man. He just painted all those other programs black to make his whitewashed offerings look legitimate by comparison.
All sorts of things about Robin's claims raise questions such as: If he was getting scammed and losing money, what did he live on? Can it be true that out of all the thousands of work at home opportunities available, there are only three legitimate ones? Does this mean companies like Avon and Tupperware have turned into scams? Apart from the niggling questions, you should instinctively distrust anyone who attempts to make his choice of work at home program look better by making derogatory comments about all the other available programs. If a work at home program is legitimate, its members will promote it without needing to tarnish the reputation of its competitors.
Don't-get-scammed websites really tick me off and it just got worse. Most people have seen the "don't get scammed" and "this is the truth" websites that are all over the Internet like a bad case of acne. I have a real problem with these sites, they drive me nuts. I don't know why this should be as I am normally a patient non-violent individual and there are bigger evils in the world more deserving of attention than phoney websites. However, one glimpse of one of these fake scam-hunter websites and the red mist comes and takes me over.
For one thing their claims are so obviously bogus, it's an insult to be asked to take them seriously. They claim that their (usually one man) team of investigators have researched every get rich quick scheme on the Internet and found that 99% of them are scams. Fortunately, however, the very last get rich quick scheme to be sampled turned out to be a genuine, honest to goodness, straight up, legitimate gold mine of an opportunity to get indecently rich without expending too much effort. Hurrah, Yahoo (and other sounds of rejoicing). Wow, can you believe it - a get rich quick scheme that works? You'd better not believe it!
The claim about having investigated all the get rich quick schemes they could find is obviously untrue. There are just too many get rich quick schemes with new ones starting up all the time, no one person could possibly investigate each one in depth as they pretend. Here it is worth remembering that one of the first rules of avoiding scams is: beware of unrealistic claims.
Apart from the farcical claims that they have carried out an in depth undercover investigation to lay bare a truth anyone with half a brain could recognise, their style is nasty. Some people maintain it is a legitimate marketing tactic but I can't trust any business that seeks to promote itself merely by claiming that all its competitors are rubbish, scams or possibly both. If you need to rubbish all the competition, there must be something seriously wrong with your business.
The truth is that no get rich quick schemes work (online or off). You can make money online but you will have to work for it. The don't-get-scammed mob tend to lump all money making opportunities into the same class as the get rich quick schemes and this is just plain nonsense. When you make money online, you get back pretty much what you put in: if you work at a legitimate opportunity, you can earn money from your PC without ever leaving home (as the ads say). If you believe in one of the "make money online without doing any work" types of advertisement, you will be heading for disappointment. There are all sorts of ways to make money online. If you want to make some quick easy money, this is possible but you should not expect to make large amounts of money on a regular basis without having to work. If you want to make a large amount of money online, you will need to work at it. If you want to earn a good steady income online, you will need to continue working at it.
The don't-get-scammed-like-I-was brigade have recently taken their campaign to a new level and by that I mean up a few notches on the annoyance scale and down a few notches on the believability scale. We are now subjected by one of their number to boring video presentations on You Tube. One thing that makes the videos boring is that all you get to look at is a figure shown in silhouette. Another thing that makes them boring is the fact that all you get to listen to is a droning voice drivelling on and on about working under cover and offering to share secrets that will enable you to get rich quick. The videos, in fact, just narrowly miss being funny but there's only ever a very fine line between comedy and tragedy.
At least the video gave me something to think about - like what could have been in his mind when he selected The Jackal as his undercover name. He really should have guessed that to detractors he would be "The Jackass".