Everyone knows what the oldest profession in the world is.\u00a0 Well, the second oldest profession must be the con-artist.\u00a0 There are always people who want to cut corners on the way to wealth.\u00a0 And the shortest corner to cut is to take advantage of someone else.<\/p>\n
20 years ago it was the sweepstakes scams that conned many elder Americans out of their nest eggs.\u00a0 Then came the internet bubble and many scams moved online.\u00a0 There were penny stock scams, where official looking newsletters would be spammed touting the rise of a new stock.\u00a0 The promoters would pump up the price, then dump their shares before people realized that the stock was worthless.\u00a0 Then there were the 1001 internet store in a box deals.\u00a0 Some may have been legit, but were never a chance to make real money.\u00a0\u00a0 Next came the Multi-Level-Marketing scams, pyramid schemes for the 21st century.<\/p>\n
There was a time, and not that long ago, that I couldn’t turn on my radio without hearing one ad or another for a debt settlement company.\u00a0 The ads usually promised fast results and claimed to be operating on some Mandate from President Obama.\u00a0 Many of these companies have now folded.\u00a0 Chased out of the market by the few legitimate firms doing the work and by countless lawsuits.\u00a0 Unfortunately, many legitimate firms were chased or nearly chased out of the market as well by these suits.\u00a0 The settlement scams are still around, but not as numerous as before.\u00a0 What they offer is attractive.\u00a0 A way to get out of debt without you having to do all of the hard work, and avoiding bankruptcy.\u00a0 You save money and pay this company fees (usually a lot and up front) and they will negotiate with your creditors, striking deals with the money you have in savings.\u00a0 But, when you don’t pay your creditors, you will sometimes get sued.\u00a0 Many of these companies would try to shuffle you on down the road when this happened.<\/p>\n
So, what’s happened now that many of these companies folded up shop?\u00a0 Did they go away and stop running their scams?\u00a0 No.\u00a0 Now they’re all trying to capitalize on the next bubble.\u00a0 In this case it’s mortgage modifications and student loans.\u00a0 These “services” charge large up front fees to basically gather your paperwork and submit it to other agencies.\u00a0 They do no real negotiation on your behalf.\u00a0 They just take whatever program is already out there (that you could take advantage of all by yourself) and they charge you for “guiding you” through the process.\u00a0 Look, there is some value to that.\u00a0 Unfortunately, these guys are charging a lot more than these services are worth and making huge promises to get you to pay.<\/p>\n