Last year, a friend forwarded an email she received on how to work from home and make easy money. As someone always tuned in to help others find meaningful employment, I checked it out only to find it was another one of those scams. Called “Google Easy Profits” or something similar, the page is disguised to look like a real newspaper, or even a broadcast news outlet. As a former TV journalist, I saw the red flags immediately. It was an obvious sales pitch, because CNBC, CNN, or any other network does not do blatant endorsements. That I learned early on in college.

Today, I listed an item for sale on Craigslist, and within hours had an email response to my ad. I sent back a quick email stating it was available for “local pickup.” Next, I got the following auto-response:
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Before you sell this, please hear me out and Avoid The Risk!

I used to sell stuff on CL to make some extra money just like you. It’s hard to make ends meet sometimes these days, the economy isn’t helping anyone right now that’s for sure. In my experiences with CL I ended up realizing that a lot of people get ripped off or scammed, and its really just Not Safe anymore to meet up with strangers from Craigslist. A friend of mine recommended a site for me to look at after I told him of my past experiences. Well I checked the site out, and I ended up making around $4000 from it last month. Right now I’m making more than I was at my previous job AND selling on CL on the side combined. If you interested and want to check it out, here’s the link to the news article http://bit.ly/cnbcjobs

Its really simple and strait forward, but if you need any help just let me know.

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I was a bit annoyed that the reader thinks I’m just like her/him trying to “make extra money during hard times.” Truth is, I just want to get rid of stuff I don’t need right now. What I do need is SPACE!

The bitly link took me to another one of these scams. I was actually kind of grateful because I was looking for an example to show my readers. When I tried to pull up those webpages that were forwarded to me last year they were gone. In fact, I’m confident that by the time you read this, it too will be gone. But I saved a screen capture this time.

It pays to check out each and every job. In this case, there are several other bloggers ahead of me who saved me a lot of leg work. The Work-At-Home-Mom went so far as to mention the lawsuits that CNN and Google filed against these scammers.

From now on, anything I place on Craiglist will contain the following disclaimer: Scammers Beware! Don’t even bother or you’ll be the subject of my next advice column.