Once in a Lifetime . . . is enough to find those once-in-a-lifetime opportunities cluttering your e-mail inbox. Where do they come from? Are they for real? Why are they targeting you? Here are the answers to those questions.

If you've been using the Internet for any length of time,there's a pretty good chance that one or two or 20 e-mailmessages bearing one of these teasers has landed in your in-box.The senders of these messages promise "financial freedom"or "independence from paychecks" with homebased businessopportunities ranging from envelope stuffing to designing Websites. And all that stands between you and freedom from your dulloffice job and mean-spirited boss is one small payment . . .

Financial freedom sounds great. But are these so-called businessopportunities too good to be true?

At first, Lesley Fountain didn't think so. After running asuccessful medical transcription service out of her Oceanside,California, home for 20 years, Fountain went looking for ahomebased business opportunity that would allow her to spend moretime with her young daughter. One day, she received an unsolicitede-mail message (a.k.a. spam) offering a seminar that would trainher to build lucrative e-commerce Web sites. Fountain spent nearly$3,000 to register for the seminar, only to find that the five daysof training left her ill-equipped to write the complex computercode required to build a working site.

The company was more than happy to give her the extra trainingshe needed-for an additional $2,000 paid upfront. Refused a refund,Fountain turned to the Web, where she found a number of newsgroupsand message boards filled with outraged comments about businessopportunity scams, some of which sounded very similar to theseminar she had attended. It was then that she realized shewasn't the first (or the last) person to be taken byunscrupulous Internet scammers. "After I got on the Net andsaw some of the complaints, I realized I wasn't as stupid as Ithought and that other people had suffered the same fate,"says Fountain, who has since started her own anti-scam informationsite (http://www.scams101.com).

So why would otherwise intelligent people give thousands ofdollars to unseen strangers promising wealth without work? Fountainattributes it to naiveté. "Everyone can use more money,and these scams are sold as being foolproof. Many people believe ifyou have a good product and do what you're supposed to do, youcan't fail, and that's why they get taken in."

From comments logged on her Web site, Fountain learned thatvictims often lose far more than money. They also lose hope.

"When people who are looking for a genuine homebasedbusiness get scammed, they sometimes decide it's just notrealistic to think they can do it-then they just give up on thewhole dream," says Fountain. "A lot of people just rollover and die. I know people who went bankrupt or got divorced . . .people actually told me they didn't see any other option thansuicide. It's an even bigger crime than stealing themoney."

To add insult to injury, scam victims get little sympathy fromfamily, friends or authorities. "A popularmisconception," says Fountain, "is that people who getscammed don't want to work-that they just want to lay out andhave money dropped on them and therefore deserve whatever theyget."

Historical Perspective

Of course, business opportunity scams are nothing new. Prior tothe dawn of the Internet Age, ads for envelope stuffing, homeelectronics assembly, multilevel vitamin sales and other dubiousopportunities could be found in the classified sections ofnewspapers and grocery store "throw-away" magazines. Thedifference is that, by advertising with spam and banner ads on Websites accessible from anywhere in the world, scammers are now ableto get their message out to a far larger segment of the populationthan ever before.

Frauds involving homebased business opportunity schemes areamong the most common consumer complaints made to the NationalConsumers League's Internet Fraud Watch, which offers victimsadvice and transmits complaints to law enforcement agencies.According to Susan Grant, director of the Internet Fraud Watch,many recent scams involve medical billing opportunities thatpromise people they can set up a lucrative home business providingbilling services for doctors and insurance companies. This sort ofopportunity is appealing because it seems plausible that companieswould contract out this type of work, but Grant says it justisn't so.

And unlike older schemes such as envelope stuffing, which canset victims back $50 to $100, some fraudulent medical billingsetups can cost the unwary thousands of dollars in outdatedsoftware and inadequate training materials.

How To Identify Scams

Distinguishing between a legitimate homebased businessopportunity and a scam (for instance, an on-the-level medicalbilling service and one of the scamming variety) designed toseparate you from your money is much easier than you'd think.While no two scams are exactly alike, a few common denominatorsshould raise immediate skepticism.

-Unrealistic Promises. Just as there's no suchthing as a free lunch, there's no such thing as a successfulhomebased business that requires little or no work. Turnkey scamsthat offer you "everything you need" to operate abusiness, including materials and training, often claim to have abuilt-in customer base. As anyone who has ever tried to run alegitimate business knows, finding and keeping customers requiresserious effort, and can make or break the business.

-Time Pressure. Act now before it's too late!Offer expires within 24 hours! Limited time offer! Often, thosebehind a business opportunity scam will demand that you send moneybefore you have time to think the deal through or research thecompany with your local chapter of the Better Business Bureau. Acompany offering a legitimate business opportunity won't askyou to make snap decisions involving large sums of money.

-Unusual Business Models. If it's not clearwhere or how the company offering the business opportunity makes aprofit, it's likely you, in fact, are that source of profit.For example, if a company sells you a starter kit containing aproduct and sales training manuals, and then offers you no othersupport (advice or additional training), it's becausethey've already made their profit off of you. They don'treally care if you succeed or fail because, either way, they gottheir money upfront.

You've Been Scammed! Now What?

Sadly, even if you report a business opportunity scam to anagency like the National Consumers League, there's very littlechance of getting your money back, according to Grant. "Wedon't make any promises about getting money back fromthem," she explains. "We do stress the importance ofreporting actual fraud whether or not they get the money back,because that's what law enforcement needs to take actionagainst the scammer and make sure it doesn't happen to someoneelse. And most consumers are happy to give thatinformation."

Of course, documenting your interaction with the scammer is thebest way to increase your chances of recovering money from them andprovide the FTC and law enforcement with evidence that may be vitalto their investigation, says Fountain. "Every conversation,everything you do, document it with notes. Whenever I interact witha company, I write down what took place and put it into aregistered letter and send it to them, saying, 'This is toconfirm the conversation in which you said so and so.'"

Fountain also suggests organizing with other victims."There's power in numbers. It's important to findothers who have been scammed and organize if you really want totake action. The Internet is a good forum for that."

Perhaps the best advice on dealing with scams comes from Jeff, ahomebased business owner who lost nearly $6,000 in a 15-monthperiod to a multilevel marketing scheme promoted by one schemingcompany. "You should think the opportunity through morethoroughly then I did," says Jeff, who declined to give hislast name for this article. "I wanted to believe theirpromises because they just sounded so good, even though myintuition was telling me something wasn't right."

The company that gave Jeff problems was eventually investigatedby the FTC, and declared bankruptcy in late 1999. The lesson? Trustyour instincts.

Scam Stoppers

The FTC takes complaints about suspicious or fraudulentbusiness-opportunity schemes. Although the Commission can'tresolve individual problems for consumers, it can act against acompany if it sees a pattern of possible law violations. File acomplaint with the FTC by contacting the Consumer Response Centerat (877) 382-4357; or by writing Consumer Response Center, FederalTrade Commission, 600 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., Washington, DC20580. Or simply visit their Web site at http://www.ftc.gov.

The Web site of the National Consumers League's InternetFraud Watch division (http://www.fraud.org) offers tips on howto spot possible scams, links to other scam-related sites andonline incident report forms that allow the League to transmit yourcomplaint to the appropriate law enforcement agency.

Lesley Fountain's Scam 101 Web site (http://www.scams101.com) discussesher experiences at the hands of Internet scammers, and givesupdates on the latest scams to hit consumers. There's also amessage board where you can complain or commiserate with other scamvictims.

While it doesn't focus exclusively on Internet-based scams,the Web page of the Council of Better Business Bureaus (BBB),http://www.bbb.com, has links tolocal chapters of the BBB, allowing you to check the names ofcompanies you're considering doing business with against onlinedatabases of consumer complaints. Still, just because a companyisn't on file with the BBB doesn't guarantee it'slegitimate.