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Telework Movement Hobbled by Scammers By Christine Durst & Michael Haaren Feb. 9, 2012 If a plague of bank robberies swept the nation – and lasted, say, 10 years – politicians would be sacked en masse. The media would blaze with outrage, accusation and tales of tragedy. Law enforcement would get a blank check for manpower, the latest forensic tools and sophisticated expertise to cure the epidemic. The sad truth is, the robbery side of things has been the state of the online job world for more than 10 years, and little has been done. The ratio of scams to legitimate home-based jobs is now 60 to 1, its highest since we began tracking it in 2005. On sites like Craigslist the ratio exceeds 100 to 1. The scammers – more effective and numerous than bank robbers ever were – steal at will across the Internet, their bogus job leads swarming. Only a tiny fraction of con artists are caught, and fewer still prosecuted. Almost no one goes to jail. Fines, when levied at all, are frequently just a small share of the haul. In short, while homes are foreclosed, unemployment persists and the middle class continues to fray, Internet job crime is thriving. THE HIGH HIDDEN COSTS OF JOB SCAMS Job scams carry high hidden costs. Legitimate home-based jobs go unfilled longer than they should, slowing employment, corporate growth and the environmental benefits of reduced commuting. Job seekers who could be earning and spending – not to mention enjoying working from home – remain unemployed. How does this happen? When most job seekers hear the phrase “work at home,” they understandably think of scams. Yet hundreds of legitimate companies recruit home-based workers. But the job seekers are unaware of the jobs. IBM, American Express, UnitedHealth Group and JPMorgan Chase are just a few of the Fortune 500s who hire home-based workers. Smaller companies like Alpine Access, Arise, Support.com and over 70 others employ tens of thousands of home-based customer service agents in the trend known as homeshoring. We ourselves have posted over 16,000 legitimate home-based job leads and freelance projects to our website, RatRaceRebellion.com. These leads represent well over 100,000 openings. Some fill quickly, yet many do not. The economic, psychological and environmental cost of this artificial “lag time” is monumental. The entire telework movement suffers unnecessarily at the hands of a relatively small band of hooligans. NOT “BIG GOVERNMENT,” BUT CATCHING UP As entrepreneurs, we’re not generally enamored of “big government.” But we are enamored of reducing rampant theft and seeing the Earps visit Tombstone now and then. As it stands, the white hats are still en route, and the outlaws terrorize the citizens at will. The solution is simple. The FBI, the FTC, state consumer protection agencies and attorneys general need the budgets and the mandate to ramp up and root out the scammers, many of whom are right here in the US. Like other experts, we volunteer time each year to help the “watchdogs” investigate and unmask the bad guys. But staff training and new hires are needed in the ranks, and the talent doesn’t come cheap. Telework, not to mention innocent job seekers, has obstacles enough already. Given our environmental problems alone, we mustn’t let con artists build on the barricades, too. It’s past time to reorder allocations and let the Earps do their job. ---- Christine Durst and Michael Haaren are leaders in the work-at-home movement and advocates of de-rat-raced living. Their latest book is Work at Home Now, a guide to finding home-based jobs. They offer additional guidance on finding home-based work at www.RatRaceRebellion.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2012 BY STAFFCENTRIX, DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM |
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