NicheGeek:
No would-be entrepreneur should ever fall prey to a scam artist again, says Christine Durst, co-founder and chief executive officer of Staffcentrix, a training and development company that designs and delivers home-based career training programs to the U.S. State Dept. and the U.S. Armed Forces. Using free Internet tools and some common sense, she and her staff have developed detailed techniques for ferreting out fraudulent business opportunities. She shared some of her secrets recently with Smart Answers columnist Karen E. Klein. Edited excerpts of their conversation follow.
Your company does training and development. How did you develop expertise in investigating fraudulent business opportunities?
We help people find legitimate work-at-home employment or home-based entrepreneurial opportunities. We’ve trained or mentored more than 4,500 entrepreneurs in 65-plus countries around the world as part of our work for the government. When you’re sending job leads to the State Dept., you do not want to inadvertently send scams. So we developed a kind of sixth sense about what opportunities are legitimate and which are not, both in terms of home-based employment and work-at-home business leads.
What are some typical hallmarks of scams?
Fraudulent pitches are usually frantic and give you some sense of urgency. They’ll say there are only 10 more business opportunities available. They’ll tell you that you need to send an e-mail or make a phone call right away or else. They include promises of huge compensation for very little work. There’s very little detail about how much you’ll have to work, how much you’re going to make, and what exactly you’re going to do. They’ll all tell you that no experience is necessary.
Are there more scams now than there used to be, or about the same? Read on…
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