The FTC is going after work-at-home scammers again. The agency will hold a press conference at its Washington, DC, HQ on Tuesday, Feb. 9, to discuss the initiative, an FTC press release announced yesterday.
"Also attending will be representatives of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, Monster.com, and Microsoft," the release notes.
The agency produced a video with anti-scam tips to accompany the press conference. "[It] can be downloaded at aperturefilms.com/ftc when the press conference begins."
We've been tracking the work-at-home job-lead "scam ratio" (see the Scam-o-Meter on our home page) for years, and at 59-to-1, it's never been higher. The recession and record unemployment have brought the con artists out en masse, and the FTC's actions couldn't come at a better time.
Even so, the authorities in general are overwhelmed with work-at-home and other Internet fraud, and the scammers themselves (many -- though hardly all -- operating beyond easy jurisdictional reach from Nigeria, Benin, Romania, etc.) grow ever more sophisticated.
For its part, the FTC is seeking broader consumer-protection powers, which, as the Internet continues to spread and build out internationally, it will surely need.
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