Several Red Flags for Spotting a Phony or Scam
The world is full of phonies and scammers these days. They use
various mediums such as phone solicitation, spam email, magazine
and newspapers ads, TV infomercials, and plain old snail mail.
They are constantly searching for their next victim. Like P.T.
Barnum once said, "there's a sucker born every minute", so
there's a plenteous pool. To all of those potential victims, I
offer some tips for spotting phonies and scams. There are
several red flags you need to watch out for. Any of the
following is almost always a dead giveaway that you have
encountered a potential phony or scammer: 1) Someone claims to
possess "secret" information. In today's world there are very
few true secrets left. The news media is all over just about
everything that goes on. Any information that someone tries to
keep secret quickly gets exposed and reported to the world.
Also, ask yourself, "why isn't the mainstream media interested
in that 'secret'?" 2) A person repeatedly states that his/her
extraordinary claims are "absolutely true", "not a joke",
"completely accurate", or something else along those lines. If
their claims are genuine, then those claims should stand on
their own merit. Constant repetition of statements meant to
reinforce the validity of their claims would not be necessary.
3) Someone's claim is not realistic and doesn't make sense.
Remember what they say about things being too good to be true?
Someone once showed me an ad in which a "home developer" was
looking for people to build homes for and only wanted $500 up
front. Curiously, he said he preferred those with bad credit
over those with good credit. Obviously, he knew that people with
bad credit are often the most desperate and gullible. He was
eventually prosecuted for running away with more than $ 1
million in stolen "down payments." 4) Someone is spouting
conspiracy theories. First, take a look at those people who
believe in conspiracy theories. They are the same ones who
believe pro wrestling is real. Do you want to be grouped with
them? Second, as is the case with so-called secrets, any real
conspiracies would be exposed by the media in a very short time.
Major conspiracies such as those that some people are constantly
alleging could never be kept secret for very long. At a minimum,
the media would be interested in following up on that person's
conspiracy claim, if it indeed it had some semblance of
validity. 5) A person uses religion to try to convince you that
they can be trusted. Their sales pitch consists of the
repetitious use of words and phrases like "praise the Lord",
"hallelujah", "God bless you", "glory to God", etc. If you ever
encounter someone like this, hold on to your wallet and run the
other way as fast as you can. True Christians would never use
their religion as an advantage to try to increase their sales.
6) Someone claims that his/her get-rich-quick scheme,
weight-loss program, etc. is "easy." Anything worthwhile in life
requires effort and is never really easy. Besides, if it were
easy, everyone would be doing it and people wouldn't be
struggling to make a living and/or lose weight, for example. 7)
A person makes wild-eyed claims that his/her product (that you
have never heard of before) is "amazing" or "revolutionary." If
it were actually "amazing" or "revolutionary", someone other
that person and his/her minions would also be making that claim
about the product. 8) Someone wants to sell you their "system"
for making money that will make you rich. The obvious problem
here is that if their system is so good, why are they wasting
time telling you about it and trying to sell it to you? Why
aren't they using that great system to make money for
themselves? The truth is that their system for making money
consists solely of selling suckers their system for making
money!