Don,amp,#39,Let,Them,Take,Your DIY Don't Let Them Take Your Money and Run!

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;mso-style-noshow:yes;mso-style-parent:"";mso-padding-alt:0in When starting a new work at home business it is very easy to become consumed by it. We spend so much time trying to get the business up and running that we may end up becoming burned out and lose our motivation. There is so much to learn and

The Internet is full of scams and fraud. Many are in theform of "income opportunities" and "investment programs."Sometimes it's hard to tell if a company is legitimate ornot. Unfortunately, many of them aren't and people getscammed into losing hundreds, even thousands, of dollars.The Internet gives bogus companies the opportunity to "takethe money and run" with less chance of getting caught thanin the offline world. It's fairly easy to hide behind awebsite and an, oftentimes fake, e-mail address.I recently came upon this program, Invest With Gold,(http://www.investwithgold.com) when asked by one of mynewsletter subscribers to try and find out whether it waslegitimate. It only took me about 5 minutes to make mydecision on this one.Here's a direct quote from the main page:"Welcome to InvestWithGold.com, Consistantly paying out ourinvestors since 1998! The only site on the internetutilizing the currency exchange markets for our investors,and making them money. We offer you up to 800% PROFIT in 2weeks, GUARANTEED, and completly hands free! And best ofall, you are NEVER in danger of losing your investmentcapitol!"So they invest their clients money into foreign currenciesand make a profit. The profits, less a 1% service fee, goback to the clients, thus earning money on their investment.It sounds pretty good, doesn't it? 800% profit in 2 weeks?What a deal! And they've been in business for 6 years, sothey must be good, right?Not so fast! Keep reading before you hand over your money.The second paragraph on the page invites the website visitorto "Just look what our investors have to say" which is aclickable link to a message board for investors to addtheir comments.The problem is the message board is empty! I'd assume happyclients would post *something* there. (Well, maybe they'reworking on that page. I'll give them the benefit of thedoubt.)I continued reading the main page and saw this:"Although we can not "legally" say you will never lose anymoney, we can tell you that we have NEVER LOST MONEY inover 6 years! If you're interested, take a look at thetracking section, to see how other people's investments aredoing, and then read the message board, and comments fromour clients."I'd venture to say that "they" probably haven't lost anymoney, but their clients, if they have any, probably have.I already knew the message board was empty, so I decided tocheck out the tracking section.Here's where it got *really* good. I went to the page and,lo and behold, I found a list of e-mail addresses of thiscompany's clients! They didn't list the complete extension(.com, .net or whatever) but the rest was there.Wait a minute! Don't they have a privacy policy? I wouldn'twant to have *my* e-mail address plastered there for thewhole world to see. How unethical!I slowly scrolled down the page and certain things caughtmy attention. I recognized 10-15 names as Internet businessowners, several of whom are quite well-known. So I e-mailed8 of them to ask if they've really invested money with thiscompany and, if so, whether or not it was a good investment.I wasn't surprised to learn that, of the 4 people who havereplied to me so far, *none* of them has ever heard of thiscompany, much less invested money with them. (I e-mailedthem less than 48 hours prior to this writing, so hopefullythe remaining 4 will reply to me soon. But I don't expecttheir answers to be any different.)I also noticed as I scanned the listing of "clients" thatapproximately 75% of the e-mail addresses looked like this:admin@info@support@subscribe@webmaster@comments@orders@sales@newsletter@unsubscribe@Hold the boat! Why on earth would people use their websitecontact-type e-mail addresses for their investment program?It looked like the website owner bought or harvested e-mailaddresses to use as his "client" list.A lot of the addresses were for the same domain, but with adifferent "name" - i.e. admin@business, contact@business,help@business, etc. And many of the addresses listed wereautoresponders to subscribe to newsletters or receive otherinformation.Here a few e-mail addresses that I got a real kick out of:[email protected]@[email protected]@scambustersabuse@verisignBut the absolute *best* one is .... (drum roll please) .....dateline.consumeralert@nbcNow, what should I do with that one? You guessed it! I'msending them a copy of this article. I wonder what they'llthink when they see that they supposedly invested in thisprogram? What I really wonder is how fast they'll get itshut down so people don't lose money to such scam artists.In all fairness, I looked at the contact information at thewebsite. Here's what it says:"Unlike many 'businesses' on the internet, we do not 'hide'behind our website. You are free to contact us at any time,even the CEO if need be. All the information is listedbelow, or use our Live Help chat on the left."Unfortunately, the live chat was "temporarily down" so, ofcourse, I e-mailed the CEO with several questions and I'mwaiting for a reply. (But I do find it strange that hiscontact address is a hotmail account.)At the time of this writing, I checked the list of"clients" again. They've updated it and the e-mailaddresses I saw 2 days ago are no longer there. Neither arethe domain names for those that have taken their place. Andmost of the addresses now appear to be personal addresses,not those of business websites.They've also posted this message:"Sorry, but we had to remove the ending of the emailaddress because we received a ton of complaints aboutsomeone spamming our investors"I wonder if that's the *real* reason. My guess is that atleast one of the people I wrote to contacted them, probablythreatened legal action, and the website owner bought a newlist of e-mail addresses to post as his "clients."But wait! There's more! I decided to check the domainregistration information at WhoIs.com. And *that* gave meyet another clue that something might be rotten in Denmark.The website name, InvestWithGold.com, was registered onApril 19, 2004 - a mere 10 days before I discovered thewebsite and 12 days before I wrote this article. And yetthe company claims to have been in business since 1998!The dates the "clients" supposedly earned huge returns ontheir investments were from April 9th through 16th thefirst time I visited the site. Today's update shows profitsfor April 17th through 23rd.So, unless the owner changed the name of his company and/orregistered the new name with a different domain registrar,his "clients" made money *before* he even had his website!Granted, he could have had his business offline untilrecently. But the copyright at the bottom of the site says"2001-2004" which indicates that he's had the website since2001.Alas! A scammer's work is never done! They'll always find anew scam to run and con as many people as they can. Theyhave no integrity and they don't care who they rip off.Always do your homework before investing in any incomeopportunity. Don't let yourself get caught up in the bogus"get rich quick" aspects that can sound so good. You don'twant to learn the hard way that they aren't what they claimto be. Article Tags: Message Board, E-mail Addresses