13 Work From Home Actual Scam Ads

Scam ads pointing to hacked sites!

(Actually, there were many more than 13!)

In this article about work from home scams to avoid, I first would like to share with you how I came across these ads. Why would I want to share  how I found these? Because - it's important to realize that money con artists are hacking legit sites to advertise work from home opportunities scams!

Just because we may find an ad on a legit site, doesn't mean those ads are legit, as they may not have been placed by the site owner!

Phew, say what? As if it's not difficult enough as it is, for good people to find legit work from home opportunities!

Recently, by conducting a simple online search I came across a legit business site which had been hacked by work at home money con artists!
It was by accident that I found these scam ads placed into plain html pages on a completely unrelated legit site. The industry of the legit business site is so unrelated to the so-called 'opportunities', that was why I had to check it out - as it was too obvious the ads had to be a scam!

Now don't miss out on this important information! Select 'Continue Reading' to take you to page 2!

To protect the legit business, I'll refrain from indicating who they are. The legit site was littered with work from home (scam) advertisements on plain html pages, which were not accessible from their front home page.

Their site had a professional business template for their front page and their other pages, making it all the more obvious the plain html pages were created by a hack.

The scam site had left their .com calling card: making it obvious they were most likely the site advertising the work from home money scams.

Although I initially found one page in search results, researching it further revealed the legit site had more than 20 hacked pages!

Due to the fact that the scam site left their dot com calling card, they were creating incoming back-links to their site. And, with the scam ads on those pages, it tied the keywords to the scammer's site they were wishing to rank high for. They were therefore also stealing link juice from the legit site!

With the decision to investigate further, I decided to visit the scam site and discovered they are (laughably) advertising that they're actually a 'legit work from home website' - yet all the while hacking other sites!

Did you catch that?
This is one of the ploys from scam sites in our world today:

Work from home money scam sites are claiming that they are a legitimate business!


All the pages of ads placed on the hacked legit site were on plain html pages, not using the professional template the legit business was using, so they stood out like a sore thumb!

From the front of the legit site there's no way either their business, or their customers would have seen the html scam ads. Those pages were only discovered by search terms completely unrelated to their business - that's again how I accidentally stumbled across them!

Keep in mind the fact that the hacked pages were plain html pages,
as we work toward the irony of it all...

After coming across the hacked site I decided to conduct another search for potential additional scam jobs the bad site may be advertising. You won't believe what I found - lol.

From an internet search, I came across an ad leading directly to the scam site, who left their dot com calling card on the hacked site.

The online search revealed they're advertising the need to hire html coders to 'make modifications' to existing sites! This was the ad page snippet that had me laughing! The irony of it all! Here they were hacking sites, and then from their own site - advertising the need for help (for hackers) - lol.

Work at Home Jobs Scam Ad  

Is it just me? In that I discovered they had hacked a site, are they not blatantly advertising - yeah you guessed it - to hire people to hack sites!?! Can they make it any more obvious than that? Nothing wrong with doing legit html coding, but totally wrong if it's for the purpose of hacking sites!

That's one work from home job you would want to avoid.
But, keep reading to see the other ads they used!
So what were the scam ads placed by the hackers?


Work from home scam jobs to avoid - including examples of money laundering...

At first glance, some may think these appear to possibly be 'legit' opportunities, but remember these were all ads placed to land on hacked pages!

Obviously, we wouldn't want to trust ads placed deceptively. And, as you read through the ads below, you'll see they're not legit.

Note - these are not all of the ads leading to the hacked site, as there were many of them!

To protect the legit site leading to the hacked pages, I erased their dot com in the ads.

I imagine these ads were/are placed on other sites, as again one of the strategies of the scam money con artists was to also steal the power of back-links to push their own site up higher with search engines.

Since the ads were a mess that were on the actual hacked site, I instead chose to share the snippets from search results.

Let's take a look at these and determine what's wrong with these so-called work from home opportunities scams!

In this first ad, they're advertising the old email processing work from home scam! Really, still? I first wrote about that here on Money Illusions way back in 2006! Yet, they're still using that same fake job opportunity!

Work from Home Reading Emails Scam 

In this next work from home scam ad, they're claiming you can write for magazines, and do other web work from home.

But, writing for magazines isn't something that just anyone can easily get hired to do! That's what legit media companies do as they have gained the trust of magazines to write for them. Gaining credibility to write for magazines as a work from home job would be tough.

Work from Home Writing for Magazines Scam 

Here we are again - another email processing work from home scam:

Email Processing Scam from Home 

In this next ad, if you look close you will notice it appears they are charging $1.00 to get information? May not sound like much, but think about how it adds up if they received hundreds or thousands of responses willing to pay them $1.00:

Part Time Work from Home Scam Requesting $1.00 to Provide Info? 

Then we have the old 'stuffing and mailing envelopes' scam, which has been going on for many long years! Seriously? Still?

Think about it - why would a business need to hire someone to stuff envelopes?

If they are doing that on a large scale, they simply lease or purchase equipment which automates that process in-house. They don't hire people to do so from their home.

Otherwise, a small business would be doing that by hand, and most likely not frequently enough to hire out help for just that responsibility!

The other problem with claiming they will hire a person to stuff and mail envelopes is the added cost for postage to send it out to somewhere else to have that done.

If it doesn't make economical sense for a business to do,
you know it's a scam job!

Work from Home Stuffing and Mailing Envelopes Scam 

Yet another old style scam ad for work from home! It's the old 'typing' scam! If you look for legit ads on a legit employers site, rarely would you ever see them advertising the need for someone to do 'typing'. It's not a term used much - unless it's a scam ad!

Although their ad states they are not going to charge 'registration fees' keep in mind that they wouldn't need that anyhow! All they need is your email address to 'sell', and/or your personal information from your application to steal your identity.

Work from Home Online Typing Scam 
By popular demand, the money con artists still like using the email processing work from home scam. They must get good results from those ads as it's been a lure for many long years!

Note the heading in this next scam advertises making money from an email processing system.

Then they make us laugh when they say, 'Are you tired of seeing all those online scams about working from home...'

My reply to that is a resounding 'Yes - we ARE tired of seeing all your scam ads! The nerve of them to claim their ad is not another scam!

Email Processing System Scam Work from Home 

The work from home scam ads didn't end there! Remember earlier I mentioned there were many of them, and too many to grab screen shots of.

Yet here's another one, and yes why of course - another work from home processing emails opportunity scam!

First off, the problem with this ad is their claim that a person can, 'Literally make 1,000's of dollars every week online!' from processing emails! Yeah, right!

Seriously? How obvious - it indeed is a scam! The fact they professed in their ad, 'No more Hype! No more scams!' What a joke! Legitimate employers don't need to proclaim no more hype or scams! Only a scammer wanting to hide behind those words would state that!

Again, the problem with their ad to process emails is the fact that auto-responders used by legit businesses don't need to hire humans to respond to many of their emails. Therefore, the automation process dramatically reduces the need for humans to individually handle so many emails!

The scammers make it sound as though there are lots of emails to process manually, and those ads often claim over-generous incomes by doing so.

Make $1,000's Weekly from Processing Emails Money Scam 

Would you like to learn from yet another actual scam ad? Here we go again! There were many ads attempting to harvest emails. Take a look at these three ads (grouped into one image below).

All three of these next ads shown wanted the person to respond by email to 'get email updates', when most likely they were wanting to just collect email addresses to sell to spammers.

Note: They not only had the ads posted on the site they hacked, but they also posted the advertisements on a legitimate career site, which I erased from the image below.

No work from home opportunities here, but only scams:



The list continues! Now here's a good laugh with this next one. It's yet again the old work from home email processing system scam, but with a new twist!

I guess they're running out of ideas? This ad offers the opportunity to junk cars as you process emails! Hmm, sounds like two scams rolled into one?

Email Processing System Work from Home Scam 

This could continue on, as I found many more examples of phony ads pointing to the hacked site, but I think 13 for now is enough - lol.

Remember, the hacked site also had the dot com calling card, which was hyperlinked to the scam site!

You most likely noticed that many of those were the email processing scams, which must still be a successful ad campaign for the money con artists to run! Steer clear of those as you look to find a legitimate work from home opportunity!

In closing:

The very least I could do was to report the hacked site to the legit business. They were thankful that I called them to inform them of their site status. I suggested they consider reporting the site that left their calling card, but I don't know if they were willing to do that.

At least by informing them that their site had been hacked, I had helped thus far. It would be up to them if they should report the site, since I'm just a third party and not associated with their business.

Keep an eye out for ads that are not legit! Still looking for the right work from home position? Check out our article with over 200 work from home jobs!

You may wish to also check this out for additional reading about the email processing system work at home scams.