These days, the world is full of people offering get-rich-quick schemes aiming primarily at defrauding you of your hard-earned money. It can be hard to tell the difference between an honest business opportunity and such a scheme. This article offers several tips for separating the wheat from the chaff.



Watch a late-night infomercial or surf the web for a couple of hours and you're likely to come across a clever sales pitch telling you that you can make a lot of money with a small amount of work. Occasionally these pitches offer a real opportunity, but all too often they're just scams.

The worst scams often have something to do with getting grants from the federal, state or local government. Others encourage you to go out and purchase real estate or commercial property using as little cash down as possible. This is a tricky proposition, especially considering the current state of the economy and the real estate market.

It's critical to take steps to protect yourself and your family from these schemes. At a minimum, they are likely to cost you money. At worst, they might put you on the list of people intending to perpetrate crimes such as identity theft and impersonation. These crimes are on the rise, and they can cause a great deal of damage to a person's reputation and the ability to borrow money.

Any time you provide personal information to anyone via the phone or Internet, you're putting yourself at risk. Frequently, get-rich-quick schemes require you to pay money to receive information about a program. Alternately, they may not charge you money up front, choosing instead to invite you to some sort of sales pitch at a hotel or convention center.

Either way, it can be difficult for the average family to determine whether or not the opportunity is legitimate. Luckily, there are several things you can do to get more information and avoid problems.

Probably the simplest thing a family can do is simply to discard any such get-rich-quick schemes, since most of them are scams. The best advice here is to avoid anything that resembles a cold-call or a sales pitch. Often, after you pick up the phone, you'll find yourself talking to a typical sales person with a slick voice and a very well designed pitch. That's the problem -- it's often hard to say no to these people.

But for those consumers who want to get more information before rejecting an offer, a simple thing to do is use the phone number listed on the materials you receive. There exist several websites such as Phone Spam Filter and Telemarketer Catcher that you can use to check whether others have had a problem with the phone number.

That way, if someone has had trouble with them, you can learn from their experiences and avoid the scheme. There's no question that this will improve the quality of your life, as you will no longer have to worry about being hurt financially or personally by such scam artists.