Why Business Opportunity Fraud is Flourishing in Arizona
In Arizona, easy-money [are] scams on the rise.
Business-opportunity and work-at-home scams are growing, and investigators say they're targeting anyone who's attracted by the prospect of making quick money."They're proliferating," said Nancy Anger, assistant attorney general in Arizona.
The scams are growing for a number of reasons, but fraud experts say the Internet in particular has made it easier for the businesses orchestrating the scams to reach more people.
Scammers often will use pop-up advertisements to direct consumers to Web sites where they provide contact information. A few days later, the scammers may call the person and pitch a business opportunity.
Not all business opportunities and home-based business offers are scams, but experts urge consumers to be extremely cautious when receiving a pitch that sounds too good to be true.
For many victims, the desire to earn extra money or be their own boss causes them to fall for illegitimate offers hook, line and sinker.
"These people who create these business opportunities are very strong," said Felicia Overton, spokeswoman for the Better Business Bureau of Central/Northern Arizona. "They want to appeal to people's emotions, and who doesn't want checks rolling in every week through the mail.
The entire article is worth reading for several reasons. First, the commentators reveal that they have no understanding of how frauds can convince - they are full of helpful hindsight bias advice. I would not want these people on my jury -they aren't the peers of the victims, the simply sneer at the victims.
Second, it is also revealing that according to the article,
Anger is involved in a case against another Arizona-based operation that the Attorney General's Office says has swindled money from people by getting them to launch Web sites selling prescription drugs.Arizona seems to be at this point in time a hotbed for these kinds of operations, just because they're easy to set up and we don't have any type of (business-opportunity) statute in the state, Anger said.
While there are warning signs with nearly all business-opportunity scams, many victims say the salespeople who present the offers are so convincing that it pushed their fears aside.
The use of the internet to collect personal information, broker it to fraudulent business opportunity sellers who will then cold call you, is simply going to increase. Just another reason why I recommend purchasing an answering machine.
