“In other words, spam the internet with the same sales pitch you fell for and lure other unsuspecting folks into the pyramid scheme.”
During my 14 years having been affiliated with the military, I have seen some pretty outlandish “business opportunities” circulating on social media. I’m not talking about the less-than-appealing posts promising financial freedom and riches beyond your wildest desires if you sign up to sell diet pills. I’m not even talking about the general who e-mails randomly from overseas spinning tales of finding millions of dollars that he needs you to hold in exchange for a cut.
One of the challenges military spouses face is employment security. It can be a struggle finding employment for a number of reasons, from childcare to issues obtaining licenses to perform jobs in different states. Many spouses use the internet as a resource for income. While there are amazing opportunities to be had working from home, there are dangers and threats that many military spouses aren’t thinking through before they plunge in.
As I scrolled through my social media news feed earlier, I came across an advertisement in a local military yard sale group on Facebook promising unlimited income. My investigative—and nosey—instincts kicked in, so I made an inquiry with the poster, who was an average military spouse just trying to make some extra money.
She bombarded me with links to YouTube videos featuring testimonials from people who were super excited about finding a way to earn income from home using this “system.” What was the system, though? All this lady could tell me is that I would make money posting “ads” to Craigslist, Facebook, and Backpage (hard pass). When I inquired further, the woman told me that she isn’t too sure about specifics because she just started this “job” today.
So I did some digging and discovered that she was involved in something called an E-mail Processing System. Their method of operation is to recruit people to pay $25 to join. In exchange for that, they promise training materials to get you started earning your way to financial freedom for simply copying and pasting ads to various platforms and “processing” any hits.
In other words, spam the internet with the same sales pitch you fell for and lure other unsuspecting folks into the pyramid scheme. They don’t offer a product or service, and they even sell you a free website for $10. Whoever is at the top of the pyramid takes a cut of the $25 that is earned from recruiting individuals.
One scary aspect of this type of scam is that someone somewhere is receiving the personal information of people who have signed up, thinking it’s a legitimate way to earn money. It also isn’t clear exactly who is running this scam. Someone is making a sizable profit from selling nothing more than a sack of promises.
It’s concerning because in the times we are living in, ruling out bad guys as receiving these funds is impossible. Terrorist organizations and other criminal elements know that their targets and military spouses are vulnerable. The bottom line is that if something sounds too good to be true, it almost certainly is.
