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AUGUST 9, 2000

WORK & FAMILY
By Jill Hamburg Coplan

A Web of Work-at-Home Scams
Parents are being targeted, and fraud is more prevalent than ever, thanks to the Net

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I've received several letters from mothers interested in working from home who have been bombarded by questionable solicitations cleverly targeted at people eager to balance home and work. The readers want to know how to tell the real thing from the frauds. It's a good question. Even though get-rich-from-home schemes have always abounded, the Internet has fueled brisk growth. But genuine opportunities do exist, as do helpful resources.

If you're using the Web to start your search, don't rely on Web portals to screen for you, warns Jeanne Miller, whose "Home-Based Business Scams" can be found at the Every Woman's Business site. Well-designed, legitimate Web sites don't check out their every job advertisement or links (neither do well-established print magazines and newspapers).

Home-Based Working Moms, which one letter-writer used in her job hunt, links to dozens of unbelievable opportunities ("Your investment of $10 will reward you with $40,000 or more!") and apparently bogus deals where a mere $50 would get a "kit," "manual" or "registration fee" that would be instructive in "a FAIL-SAFE money-making program." I also found such suspect ads on eWork Exchange and JobsOnline.

There's a good chance a job is legit if skills are required, such as technical writing, software development, bookkeeping, accounting, or knowledge of software or hardware that would qualify you for phone-based tech support, says Rosalind Mays, the author of The Real Deal on Telecommuting. She has a self-promoting but still-useful site, Telejobs.cjb.net. You're also probably safe with ads that are soliciting telemarketers, travel agents, or typists to do data entry, especially if the rates sound reasonable.

Forget those ads promising money for reading e-mail or banner ads. You'll count your earnings in pennies. Dismiss anything that uses high-pressure tactics, urgency, or hyperbole, or anyone requesting a credit-card number or cash up front. Don't trust references -- con artists pay shills to recite phony success stories. Always get written material from the company, and a phone number and mailing address.

View with particular skepticism:

Multilevel marketing firms. A few are respectable -- very few. Will you get support and training? Are you a natural-born salesman? Is the product in demand?

Mystery shopping. It would be fun to buy products at stores and report back on the experience. These jobs exist, but fraud abounds today, and women especially are targeted.

Promises of big money for referring business from your Web site. You can make dollars, but probably not tens or hundreds, unless your traffic is up there with Amazon's.

Get help in your search for at-home work. Your first stop should be the Federal Trade Commission's National Fraud Information Center (800 876-7060). Then try these resources:

Business Opportunity Offices, which enforce business-opportunity laws. For a list of the 22 states that have such offices and their phone numbers, go to the Online Women's Business Center. You can also submit questions at this site.

U.S. Postal Inspector's Employment Schemes site. It monitors and exposes phony franchises and work-at-home scams.

The Better Business Bureau. Or phone your local BBB; some have 24-hour hotlines. Use them to report attempts to defraud.

Call your state attorney general's office -- and the AG's office in the state where the business is located.

Scambusters is full of great advice on avoiding fraud and has an ever-growing update on scams.

Internet Fraud Watch is a service of the National Consumers League's Fraud Watch.

On workathomecareers.com, try the Scams link.

Send your questions to frontierlife@businessweek.com

Jill Hamburg Coplan has covered work, family, business, and finance for the past decade as a writer and editor for newspapers, magazines, and wire services. She left Working Woman magazine, where she was senior editor, when her first child was born and now works solo from a home office in Brooklyn, N.Y. You can e-mail her at Jill Hamburg Coplan