Just because a “work at home” opportunity is on Monster.com, it doesn’t mean it’s legitimate. Here’s how several people got snookered by a work at home scam that sounded oh so real. It’s not only proven financially devastating to many, it’s broken up families in the process.
From EastBayExpress
When Bill Gluth saw the work-from-home sales job with steady salary and generous commissions listed on Monster.com, he could scarcely believe his good fortune. With his entrepreneurial efforts flagging and four-year marriage increasingly strained by his unpredictable income, the 56-year-old figured a reliable paycheck would be his ticket to stability.
And so, in late October, Gluth signed on with National Expo Group, a self-described “major tradeshow company” run by an Oakland woman named Kristen Yvette Martin, who goes by various aliases. National Expo boasts on its Web site of staging 250 events a year. Gluth, who lives just outside Phoenix, was hired to sell exhibitor packages to colleges and universities for National College Day, a show “designed to connect College-Bound High School Students with schools of their interest,” the event’s Web site states.
Evangeline Allen, a single mother who lives in Louisville, Kentucky, worked to sell National Home Expo booths for about three weeks in October and November. Before contacting the Express, she filed a complaint online at RipoffReport.com. Because she has not been paid, she said, she has been unable to buy Christmas presents for her daughter. And although she sold no booths during that time, she sees her former employer as a threat to any potential customers. “She is really running a scam out of this office,” Allen says of the woman she knows as Kristen Jones. “She is misleading businesses, getting them to buy booths. I don’t want her to keep victimizing people.”
Neil-Terrell, who sold two National College Day packages, says the missing paycheck is frustrating, but the damage to her good name is worse. “My reputation means a lot to me,” the Houston-area saleswoman said. “I’m calling in Texas. I called 360 schools. I’m glad that I didn’t sign up more schools than I did. I don’t want to be a part of that.”
Gluth, meanwhile, has started a new business, a consultancy called Creating Words That Sell. The lost income from his National Expo stint, he says, put him behind on his mortgage and his bills. It has also had more personal ramifications. “I took this job to solidify,” he said. “When it fell through, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I lost my marriage over it.”
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