Work from Home Scams
How 'work from home' scams work
Summary
A lot of spam advertises 'work from home opportunities', or tells you that you can 'make money in your spare time'. Like most things advertised by spam, these are almost certainly scams.
The common feature of 'work from home' scams is that they want you to pay something up front. This might be a 'processing fee' for reviewing your resume or a 'materials fee' (for example, 'envelope-stuffing' scams might require you to pay for the envelopes up front). Alternatively, you might have to pay for 'training', or pay a fee to belong to a 'network'.
The scammers always promise that if you pay their fee, you'll quickly make it back through all the work you'll get. You won't. Usually, you'll get very little - if any - work from these schemes. You should be particularly careful of any scheme that charges a 'membership fee'. These are often just a pretext for the scammer to keep charging you money and once they have your credit card or bank details, it can be almost impossible to stop them from continuing to charge you.
Variants
There are a large number of different forms of this scam. One claims that you can make money by 'processing judicial judgments'. The scammer makes their money by selling you a book or other 'training materials', but the chances of you earning anything this way are small.
"Envelope stuffing" schemes require you to pay upfront and ongoing fees to take part. In return, you're expected to act as a marketing and mass-mailing department, and you only get paid if someone buys the products you advertise. Some "envelope stuffing" schemes are actually pyramid schemes.
'Data entry' jobs promise you lots of work - and charge you an upfront or monthly fee to take part.
There are endless variants on this theme, but the common hook is the promise that you can make money 'from home' or 'in your spare time'. The reality is that it's the scammer who makes money by selling you 'required materials' or charging you fees to take part.
See also fake check scams.
How to detect this scam
You should be suspicious of any job that you see advertised by spam - legitimate companies don't send spam. Be very suspicious of any scheme that requires you to pay anything to take part.
If you want to find out whether a 'work-at-home' scheme is legitimate, contact your local Better Business Bureau or equivalent for information about the company.
What to do if you get a 'work at home' spam
Ignore it.
What to do if you've been scammed
You probably won't be able to get your money back: the scammer has usually sold you something, even if it's a worthless book or some useless 'training'. However, you should contact your bank to make sure that the scammer can't get any more money from your bank account or your credit card.
If you think that the scammer has actually defrauded you, contact the National Fraud Information Center or the equivalent in your country.