If you’ve lost your job or just need a bigger income, starting a home-based business can be a good way to earn money. There are many legitimate work-at-home opportunities that can put cash in your pocket without a long commute. But watch out for offers that sound too good to be true or require you to pay money upfront. An article at AARP describes some common work-at-home scams to avoid.

—Bait-and-switch scams require you to pay for materials or client leads. The scammers either don’t send anything or send a few materials or supplies and ask for more money before they’ll send you the entire package. Some of the more common scams that use this tactic include envelope stuffing, medical billing, and data entry schemes.

—Check-forwarding schemes prey on many people’s desire to earn easy money with no work. With this scam you’ll receive a check and be asked to deposit it into your account, and then wire a portion of it back to the scammer. The deposited check ends up being counterfeit, leaving the victim footing the bill. Do not get involved with such offers because not only will you lose money, you could be charge with check fraud.

—Mentoring programs offer to help you start your own business. You’ll be asked to pay a fee to get the start-up kit. However, after you send the money, the start-up kit will require you to pay a larger fee to receive mentoring over the phone.

—Processing rebates sounds easy, but falling for such a scam could hurt your pocketbook. This scheme usually requires you to place ads on the Internet and to sell products. An upfront fee is required with a promise that the money will be returned if you’re not satisfied, but most people never see their money again.

If you’ve been the victim of a work-at-home scam you can file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 26th, 2008 at 5:21 pm and is filed under Reverse Mortgage . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.