Anyone familiar with privatized healthcare probably knows from experience that the Hippocratic Oath often gives way to hypocrisy in the form of surprisingly high medical bills for simple procedures. But sometimes, healthcare professionals also succumb to the temptation to sidestep government regulations and rake in millions of illegal dollars. And when exploitation becomes that profitable, it can inspire shockingly villainous levels of dishonesty—sometimes even blatant patient endangerment.

10Changing The Definition Of “Sick” To Admit More Patients

With the constant barrage of news stories about all the food additives and household objects that can give us cancer or otherwise damage our health, the last thing we need as a society is another excuse to descend into hypochondria. But even when we do succumb to the urge to treat every itch and hiccup as a symptom of the plague, we should still be able to trust nurses and physicians to set us straight with the proper diagnosis.

Florida-based Health Management Associates saw it differently. With the aid of complex software and a little old-fashioned strong-arming, the for-profit hospital admitted an excess of patients who needed little or no medical attention in order to bill Medicare. Hospital staffers were so eager to treat visitors that an infant whose body temperature registered at 37.1 degrees Celsius (98.7 °F)—one-tenth of a degree higher than the average temperature of 37 degrees (98.6 °F)—was documented as having a fever, resulting in needless and costly medical tests.

But not everyone involved in the hospital ruse was a willing participant. According to a whistle-blower lawsuit filed against the company, it was standard practice to fire physicians who refused to play ball, and administrators with ethical concerns about excessive hospital admissions suffered similar fates. Unfortunately, because of the increasingly convoluted financial affiliations and colossal scales that are coming to characterize groups like Health Management Associates, these kinds of abuses will likely be a persisting nightmare for regulators.

9Delegating Medical Treatments To Unqualified Staffers

Dr. Ravi Sharma was a certified thoracic surgeon who sought to help people lose weight through his Florida-based Life’s Image weight-loss center. And while one might not think of a chest doctor as the first person to run to with a severe case of glut-gut, it’s perfectly reasonable to expect the clinic to at least be staffed with professionals who know how to treat weight-related medical problems.

Unfortunately, Dr. Sharma was too busy being courted by dollar bills to worry about whether the people tending to his patients had any real clue what they were doing. Instead of recruiting certified professionals to perform vein injections and other invasive procedures, Sharma relied on untrained staffers—including an office manager—to do the work. The thoracic surgeon not only didn’t perform the procedures, he wasn’t even present to oversee them. Instead, he often texted the instructions for performing ultrasounds and varicose vein injections to his staff, according to one complaint against him.

To make matters worse, many of the invasive procedures were unnecessary, performed only for the purpose of charging extra money. Sharma, who only saw a few patients himself, sought Medicare payments for the procedures that his untrained assistants performed as well. But everything fell apart when he fired office manager Patti Lovell, who repaid the gesture by exposing Sharma’s indiscretions in a whistle-blower lawsuit. Sharma, however, having learned that money is the best medicine, simply made his troubles disappear by paying the government $400,000 and has since continued to practice medicine without further punishment.

8Exploiting Workers’ Compensation Claims

For the average Joe just looking to make ends meet, a severe workplace injury offers little more than physical agony and the dire prospect of being unable to provide for your family, not to mention the crippling debt of hospital bills. Thankfully, society has provided an invaluable safety net in the form of workers’ compensation, which covers the cost of recuperation from job-related accidents.

However, for orthopedic hospital owner Michael Drobot, workers’ compensation insurance was the unwitting inspiration for a 16-year, $500 million fraud. Through a series of bribes issued to doctors, chiropractors, and other professionals, Drobot’s clinic pulled in scores of patients who were undergoing surgery for work-related spinal injuries. Thanks to this scheme, many injured workers were sometimes sent hundreds of miles away from their homes for their operations instead of being scheduled for surgeries at the most convenient locations.

To ensure that his chicanery went unchecked, Drobot ingratiated himself with California state senator Ronald S. Calderon with the help of $100,000 in blatant bribe money. But since being apprehended, the corrupt hospital owner has done nothing but talk in attempts to reduce his punishment, dragging down Calderon and others in the process.

7Pretending Patients Are Terminally Ill To Get Medicare Funding

Hospices are essentially healthcare purgatories where the terminally ill wait out their final months under the care of staff trained to make their exit as painless as possible. They also happen to reduce hospital expenses and place a smaller financial burden on the Medicare program, which only covers expenses for hospice patients who are diagnosed with six or fewer months to live. Accordingly, hospitals and hospices have a large incentive to identify dying patients who no longer wish to extend their lives.

But between 2001 and 2013, Vistas Hospice Services, America’s largest privatized palliative care service, squandered millions of dollars in Medicare reimbursements on healthy and otherwise ineligible individuals. To promote these deceptive hospice enrollments, Vistas paid bonuses to staffers who played along, all while ignoring doctors’ and nurses’ concerns about the suitability of the care being administered. And in addition to this blatant subsidy abuse, Vistas also improperly identified some patients as suitable for crisis care, a highly expensive recourse reserved for patients who are severely impaired by illness. These bogus expenses were in turn passed off to taxpayers through Medicare reimbursements.

In one of the most telling cases, Vistas charged Medicare $170,000 to provide intensive nursing assistance to a woman who was not only not critically ill, but healthy enough to live on her own and perform household chores. Other patients who were supposedly knocking on death’s door were going to church and attending bingo halls. Because of such wholesale dishonesty, Vistas’s crisis care costs were almost six times that of the national average. These kinds of aberrations tend to attract the attention of the US government, which busted Vistas as part of a multibillion-dollar Medicare fraud investigation.

6Profiting From Dying Patients And Then Abandoning Them To Avoid Associated Costs

As we just observed, the best interests of the sick and dying sometimes take a backseat to the appeal of extended Medicare reimbursements. However, rather than blatantly lying about the condition of their patients like Vistas, many for-profit hospices opt for the more subtle approach of enrolling disproportionately high numbers of dementia sufferers, who sometimes live years longer than expected and—on average—require less care than other typical hospice patients.

The US government attempted to clamp down on this clandestine corruption by setting a $25,000 limit on the amount of money that hospices can receive without having to repay the government. However, numerous for-profit hospices nonetheless exceed their reimbursement caps by 50 percent or more. If they’re still in hot water, they can simply declare bankruptcy to avoid paying large debts, leaving ailing patients and their families to scramble for new providers while taxpayers foot the bill.

In a particularly striking case of this systematic abuse, Sojourn Care Inc. chose to close down after accruing $27 million in debt, then turned around and reopened under a different name. Consequently, the company was able to relinquish all previous legal obligations—which remained with the now defunct Sojourn Care—and then recruited the healthiest patients from its former incarnation in order to profit off them a bit longer. As a result, 180 of Sojourn Care’s 280 former patients were left to struggle, some dying in uncomfortable conditions as a result. The only thing more dispiriting is the fact that all of this is technically legal, meaning that for scores of families, justice may never be served.

5Conning Drug Addicts Into Entering Psychiatric Lockdown

Hardcore drug addicts are among the most desperate souls one can encounter in any society. Whether you sympathize with their struggles or chide them as harbingers of crime and social decay, there’s no denying that they lead lives of physical and mental enslavement at the hands of often deadly substances. So any efforts to help them break the chains of drug dependence should, in theory, be hailed as laudable endeavors.

But in Broward County, Florida, a group of executives overseeing a psychiatric hospital saw fit to provide a different kind of help for substance abusers. Over the course of nine years, the executives paid bribes and doctored documents all in the name of luring drug addicts to their hospital, the Hollywood Pavilion, where the addicts remained locked for weeks on end. But despite the glamorous connotations of its name, the Hollywood Pavilion was far from posh. Instead, patients were stuffed into insect-ridden rooms where they received little or no treatment and were kicked out as soon as their Medicare benefits had been exhausted.

After racking up $67 million in bogus reimbursements by offering empty promises of rehabilitation, the owners, Karen Kallen-Zury and Christian Coloma, received jail terms ranging from 12 to 25 years and were forced to pay millions in restitution. While none of these consequences can undo the injustices wrought against their victims, one can take some comfort in knowing that others in need of rehabilitation can’t be roped in by this toxic deception.

4Performing Fake Surgeries

One of the truly nightmarish aspects of surgery is the abject vulnerability of it. A patient must submit to drug-induced slumber so that a group of strangers can slice them open and proceed to poke, prod, and jostle their delicate innards. Were it not for the fact that this task was left up to highly trained experts, the surgeries would seem like blatant felonies. Unfortunately, some highly trained experts aren’t above behaving like felons.

Take, for example, Dr. Spyros Panos, an orthopedic surgeon at Saint Francis Hospital in Poughkeepsie, New York. Despite supposedly being fully capable of performing legitimate surgeries on his patients, it appears that the doctor opted to feign operations or perform them with the shoddiest of workmanship. A collection of 250 lawsuits filed by Panos’s former patients details how the surgeon performed excessive surgeries on some patients while not properly completing operations on others. In some cases, he sedated and opened up patients to give the illusion of surgery before sealing them right back up without making a single alteration.

Spanos’s exploits allowed him to schedule up to 22 surgeries per day, nearly 20 times the monthly average of his colleagues. And at least one of his dubious undertakings appears to have led to the death of a patient. While Panos has remained reticent about charges against him, his social media posts and personal blog ironically paint the picture of a doctor who takes patient care seriously. Fortunately for everyone, Spanos has since been convicted and has made a full confession.

3Recruiting The Homeless For Unnecessary Medical Treatment

By now, it’s abundantly clear that medical practitioners will sometimes travel great lengths down the path of dishonesty to make a few extra bucks. But we often expect that people who have dedicated themselves to saving lives will only go so far before succumbing to the pull of the angels on their shoulders. But if such a thing does occur, it certainly didn’t happen in California, where some of its most vulnerable citizens have been turned into fleshly ATM cards by hospital administrators.

A chain of Los Angeles-based medical facilities was caught enticing homeless people to submit to unnecessary medical testing. Lassoed in with miniscule bribes, homeless people were carted off to the hospital to receive second-rate treatment—or no treatment at all—before being loaded into ambulances and dumped in the famously seedy Skid Row. The bogus treatments were in turn billed to Medicaid. In one particularly horrifying instance, a homeless woman received a nitroglycerin patch for a fabricated illness, resulting in a dangerous drop in blood pressure.

All of this was made possible through a series of paid runners who collected and redeposited the homeless “patients.” The impromptu hospital visits accrued more than $16 million for the hospital chain. But the observant eye of Scott Johnson, an employee of Union Rescue Mission, caught on to the bizarre back-and-forth of makeshift homeless shuttles. After Johnson informed the police of the suspicious activity, a lengthy investigation busted the scheme wide open and led to a $16.5 million settlement.

2Unnecessary Chemo Treatments

Anyone with a passing knowledge of chemotherapy probably understands two things: It’s supposed to kill cancer, and the treatment’s side effects include hair loss and general anatomical misery. Because some chemo drugs can cause problems as severe as lung damage and permanent deafness, it’s imperative that the treatment only be administered when necessary.

But we live in a world rife with avoidable suffering, thanks in no small part to oncologist Farid Fata, whose litany of lies includes administering cancer drugs to people who didn’t have cancer. According to a complaint filed by the US government after a thorough FBI investigation, Dr. Fata issued $150 million worth of partially fraudulent Medicare bills over a three-year period. His chosen method of deception was to simply treat patients for the wrong illness or withhold valuable information about less costly alternatives. A nurse employed under Fata reported examining a chart of 40 of his patients and discovering that 95 percent of them were being improperly treated.

In some cases, Fata would write prescriptions for lifelong drug treatment even though curative surgeries were available. But the most shocking infractions involved his willingness to falsely diagnose patients with cancer in order to profit off the ensuing tests and chemotherapy. After finally being apprehended by authorities in 2013, Fata faces massive fines and a decade-long prison sentence.

1Performing Unnecessary, Life-Threatening Surgeries On The Elderly

Like all of the other facilities on this list, Sacred Heart was the site of systematic Medicare fraud at the expense of patients. To perpetrate this multimillion-dollar fraud, hospital administrators not only paid kickbacks to have patients artificially referred to them, but also had ambulances deliver patients to the emergency room to force automatic Medicare billing. They also artificially extended hospital stays and subjected elderly patients to unnecessary operations—sometimes with fatal results.

One of the hospital’s most wanton offenders, Dr. Vittorio Guerriero, reportedly induced breathing complications in at least 28 patients, at which point tracheotomies were required. In the course of performing these invasive procedures, which required holes to be drilled into the victims’ throats, five people died. The entire operation was so corrupt that Sacred Heart was forced to shut down after the authorities seized its financial assets.

A.C. Grimes is not a healthcare professional and can therefore be trusted. Feel free to check out some of his other writings on Cracked.com .

China is known for many things, but they’re perhaps most infamous for their counterfeit items. From clothes to bags to electronics—even whole towns—China has it all. However, they’ve recently taken the counterfeit business a little further and have entered the disturbing realm of counterfeit foods.

10Plastic Rice

If there’s one food that should be impossible to counterfeit, it would be rice. But the Chinese did it anyway. China’s fake rice is also called plastic rice. It’s made from potatoes, sweet potatoes, and synthetic resin molded into the shape of real rice. The faux rice was commonly sold in Chinese markets, especially in Taiyuan in Shaanxi Province. The rice remained as hard as stone even after it was cooked and did not digest easily. It’s also pretty dangerous, since consuming three bowls of it is equal to consuming one bag of vinyl, or one plastic bag.

Aside from producing artificial rice, dishonest Chinese rice sellers also add flavors to ordinary rice and sell them to the unsuspecting public as “Wuchang rice,” which is more costly and generally considered one of the better brands of rice sold in Chinese markets. Only 800,000 tons of this Wuchang rice are produced annually, while about 10 million tons are sold. In other words, more than 9 million tons are fake.

9Rat Mutton

When they’re not tampering with rice, dishonest Chinese food sellers are adding chemicals to meat from rats, minks, and foxes and selling them as mutton. The scheme was so popular and successful that the police arrested more than 900 people and seized about 20,000 tons of this meat, all within three months. One of the sellers, a man named Wei, even raked in more than £1 million from sales alone. He mixed fox, rat, and mink meat with nitrate, gelatin, and carmine before selling it in markets to unsuspecting buyers.

Chinese police posted a tutorial on Sina Weibo, China’s biggest microblogging site, to teach people how to differentiate between real and fake mutton. While the difference between them is hard to tell at first glance, the white and red parts of real mutton don’t separate after getting thawed, torn by hand, or boiled, while the fake meat does.

8Chemical Tofu

Tofu, also called soya curd, is a cheese-like food made from a mixture of soy milk and a coagulant. Chinese authorities recently closed down two factories in Wuhan, Hubei Province for selling fake tofu, which was made by mixing various chemicals together. One worker confessed that they combined soy protein with flour, monosodium glutamate, pigment, and ice to make the fake tofu before packaging it and selling it under the name of another company that was producing real tofu.

Using soy protein to make tofu isn’t the most dastardly of deeds, but not all the schemes were so innocent. Another criminal gang made counterfeit tofu by adding rongalite, an industrial bleaching agent that’s been linked to cancer. Supposedly, the chemical made their tofu chewier and brighter. The syndicate was headed by three cousins who sold about 100 tons of the tainted product to the unsuspecting public. When police raided their factory, they found employees making the counterfeit food with grimy, unwashed equipment.

7Formaldehyde And Duck Blood

Duck blood tofu is a delicacy in China. It’s made from blood extracted from slaughtered ducks. The blood is then heated until it thickens, allowing it to be cut into squares and sold. That’s strange already, but it gets worse: Sellers have been known to mix deadly ingredients like formaldehyde with much cheaper pig or buffalo blood, then sell the concoction as duck blood.

Chinese authorities once broke a fake duck-blood ring that was being run by a couple in Jiangsu Province. In this instance, the couple wasn’t using pig or buffalo meat. Instead, they used chicken blood mixed with inedible dye and materials used for printing. One ton of fake duck blood was confiscated. The use of fake duck blood for duck blood tofu is so prevalent in China today that customers have become pretty good at spotting the difference between the real stuff and the fake stuff.

6Adulterated Honey

There are two types of counterfeit honey: the adulterated one, which is a mixture of real honey and sugar syrup, beetroot syrup, or rice syrup, and the fake honey, which looks more like real honey than real honey itself. It is made from a mixture of water, sugar, alum, and coloring.

One kilogram (2.2 lb) of fake honey can be produced for just 10 yuan (about $1.60) and sold for as much as 60 yuan ($9.50). About 70 percent of the honey sold in China’s Jinan Province is fake and, as usual, Chinese newspapers have offered instructions on how to differentiate between real and fake honey.

Police raided several fake honey production sites where 38 buckets of honey were seized. China is the world’s biggest producer of honey, which it exports to other countries. A study revealed that 10 percent of the honey sold in France was fake and most likely originated in either East Europe or China. US Customs also busted a fake honey-smuggling ring made up of US honey producers. It was discovered that they had been bringing fake honey into the US from China via Australia.

5Contaminated Bottled Water

Selling fake honey is one thing; messing with people’s water supplies is a whole other criminal ballpark. Police have recently uncovered a scam in which plastic bottles are filled with tap water or poorly treated water and sealed with quality standard seals—the same used by genuine bottled water companies. Among other things, the bottles have been found to contain E. coli and a stew of harmful fungi. More than 100 million bottles of this bacterial soup are sold annually, with the sellers raking in more than 1 billion yuan (about $120 million). For comparison, about 200 million bottles of water (both genuine and counterfeit) are produced in Beijing annually.

The bottled water scam is not new and has been going on since at least 2002. It costs producers about three yuan to produce fake water, which can then be sold for nearly 10 yuan. Real bottled water costs six yuan to produce.

4Rotten Rice Noodles

China’s counterfeit rice noodles are made from rotten, stale, and moldy grains which are usually used as animal feed. These are then mixed with cancer-causing additives such as sulfur dioxide to get the final product. And this isn’t a one-man show—almost 50 factories in Dongguan city were found to be in on the scheme, churning out 500,000 kilograms (1.1 million lb) of counterfeited rice noodles per day. Another inspection of 35 other factories showed that 30 of them were producing substandard rice noodles. Producers bleached spoiled rice and mixed it with additives to get triple the amount of rice noodles.

Aside from using stale rice, some producers use flour, starch, and corn powders instead. These noodles usually have a very low protein content—as low as 1 percent compared to 7 percent for pure rice noodles and 4.5 percent for mixed rice noodles. Some pigs that were fed these fake rice noodles ended up with weak limbs and several other problems.

3Clenbuterol-Laced Pork

Clenbuterol, also called “lean meat powder,” is an additive added to animal feed. It burns fat in the animals but can cause sickness, heart problems, unnecessary sweating, and dizziness in humans. Its use in animal feed began in the 1980s, but was banned in 2002 because of its health risks. However, some meat-processing companies still give it to their pigs because it makes their pork leaner, and leaner pork fetches more money on the market.

To make matters worse, one of the companies involved is China’s largest meat processor and a subsidiary of Henan Shuanghui Investment and Development Company. The company issued an apology for the act, then recalled more than 2,000 tons of their pork. Twenty-four workers were sacked or suspended.

In an attempt to minimize losses, the company’s shares were suspended to stop the scandal from affecting its stock price. The China Meat Association also tried to downplay the incident so that it would not damage the Chinese meat market. Between 1998 and 2007, China witnessed 18 outbreaks of banned clenbuterol, during which one person died and more than 1,700 people became sick.

2Fake Wine

Fake and counterfeited wine is a big problem in China. China Central Television (CTV) reported that half of all the wine sold in China is fake. A lot of people in China’s wine industry also believe that about 90 percent of premium wines sold in China are fake as well. To counter the sales of fake wine, the Guangdong Provincial Wine Testing Center was founded to determine the authenticity of wines. Wine producers have joined forces with the government to produce an app meant to track wine bottles and cartons to determine whether they’re original or fake.

The scam was simple: Counterfeit wine makers would use the original name, label, and design from expensive wine bottles, but would slightly alter the names and logos on theirs to differentiate them. Others would simply collect empty bottles from expensive wines and then refill them with dirt-cheap wine.

Today, big hotels, restaurants, and auction houses break wine bottles after use to prevent them from being reused. During a raid on a fake wine-making syndicate in China, police recovered more than 40,000 bottles of counterfeited wine worth more than $32 million. The group had been buying cheap wine and dumping it into fake bottles from expensive wine brands. In 2012, police also recovered more than 350 cases of counterfeited wine in Shanghai. The total haul was worth about $1.6 million.

1Yangcheng Hairy Crabs

Yangcheng hairy crabs are the most expensive crabs in China, so it’s no surprise that people would try to pass off regular crabs as the pricier breed. The real deal comes exclusively from Yangcheng Lake, but there are a few sneaky ways around that. For example, some sellers take water from Yangcheng Lake and put other crabs in it for several hours before selling them as Yangchengs. Others use chemicals on the crabs to make them look like Yangcheng crabs.

Only 1 in every 300 Yangcheng hairy crabs sold is real. The total number of crabs produced from Yangcheng is less than 3,000 tons annually, but more than 100,000 tons of crabs are sold. To counter the fake crabs, the Suzhou Crab Business Association demanded that a plastic ring with a special numerical code be attached to one of the claws of each original Yangcheng hairy crab. That plan soon failed when sellers of the real Yangcheng hairy crabs sold their tags to those selling fakes.

+Cardboard Buns

Cardboard buns are made from cut cardboard mixed with chemicals and pork flavors. An investigation carried out by CTV showed a video of a seller making the buns, commonly called baozi, out of cardboard. The cardboard is first mixed with caustic soda—which is used in the production of soap and paper—and then cut before being mixed with pork and seasoning.

The video went viral and was picked up by several international media organizations. The Chinese government responded this time, saying that the foreign media organizations had taken the news too far and that the fake buns were actually a hoax. The reporter who filmed the video was also arrested. The government said that he had done it to earn more audience ratings for the station.

Elizabeth is an aspiring writer and blogger. She enjoys reading your comments. You can also email her at [email protected].

There have always been scammers. But with the internet, scammers easily access their victims and often present themselves as legitimate businesses. As people have come to recognize the more obvious scams, scammers have become more sophisticated, and it can now be difficult to tell the real from the fake.

When online:

• Be wary of websites that use “http” rather than “https” at the beginning of the site URL.
• Check to see that there is a padlock icon next to the URL.
• Watch out for deals that are too good to be true, a sense of urgency (only 6 hours left to take advantage of this opportunity), and being asked to pay through a non-secure method such as a money order or transfer.

If you are interested in partnering or purchasing with a business, do a little digging around to ensure they are legit. With that in mind, let’s look at 10 legitimate business industries that seem like scams.

10 Antiques

The antique business is not logical. After all, why buy a 100-year-old table for a thousand bucks when you can get a trendier one at the local furniture store for much less?

Setting a price for an antique or collectible doesn’t depend on practical concerns such as usefulness; it depends on nebulous qualities such as rarity and what the market will pay. The market for antiques and collectibles is worth some $1.7 billion annually in the U.S. Antique dealers are not usually scammers – although they are naturally trying to get the best possible price.

If you have decided to buy antiques or collectibles, perhaps as an investment, you need to do a lot of research and discover what similar items are selling for on sites such as eBay or from auction catalogs.

9 Used Car Sales

Used car salespeople have a terrible reputation. They often work on commission and need to sell vehicles quickly and for the highest possible price. But this doesn’t mean that the business is a scam. A salesperson would probably be surprised if you accepted the posted price without bargaining. This is not a scam; it’s part of the game.

If you buy a used car privately, you know the seller is trying to get the best possible price, and some back-and-forth negotiations might be involved. It’s no different on a car lot or the internet. A number of websites will give you price comparisons so that you know if the price is reasonable for the year and model you want to buy.

Even if you know cars, it’s always a good idea to have a friend with you who can point out obvious problems you may have missed.

8 Content Creation

There are countless websites out there, hoping to grab your attention for more than a few seconds. To do this, businesses need good content that is interesting and informative. An industry has developed to meet the demand for attractive content.

Content providers promise to provide well-written articles that meet their client’s needs. Competition between providers is fierce, and writers are not usually paid much for their articles. Many people believe that these providers are scammers and that writers will do their work and never be paid for it—this is not true.

While some providers may not be entirely trustworthy, the majority understand that their writing team is their best asset. If you are thinking of writing for one of these sites, there are various review sites on the web that will give you a good idea of what to expect.

Many disgruntled writers leave negative reviews on forums, but perhaps these people have not understood the terms and conditions of their firms. The vast majority of content providers are perfectly legitimate.

7 Health and Wellness Items

The worldwide market for health and wellness food products is worth around $841 billion, and that’s just food. Add on supplements and treatments, and the market is enormous.

Everyone wants to live longer and healthier lives, and many of us are willing to spend a lot of money to help us achieve our goals. This allows scammers to exploit our vulnerabilities and sell us products or treatments that are of dubious benefit or, sometimes, downright dangerous. This is a headache for the many genuine companies that market carefully-prepared goods that meet a real need.

You should carefully research both the product and the seller. The golden rule is that if it looks too good to be true, it probably is. Before taking supplements, it’s a good idea to consult your medical provider.

6 Recruitment Agencies

A professional recruitment agency wants to place the right person in the right job. The company the agency represents is paying a fee whether the job is part-time or full-time, temporary or permanent. It’s a legitimate business that can save an employer time and effort and find a job-seeker the position that suits their needs. Unfortunately, some scammers also work in this field.

Fake recruitment agencies might offer jobs on social media or contact you directly through email. These are after your personal information—do not respond if you don’t know the agency. Some job-placement agencies ask you to pay a registration fee. This is a red flag; a genuine agency will charge the company, not the job seeker.

Once more, it’s a question of doing a little homework to find out if the recruitment agency is genuine.

5 Technical Support

A genuine technical support team works under a strict code of conduct. Take Microsoft as an example. Microsoft will never send you an email out of the blue that tells you your computer has a problem. The company will not phone you to ask for financial or personal information. If your computer displays a pop-up asking you to call a number, no matter what it claims, it isn’t from Microsoft. In other words, they won’t contact you if you don’t contact them.

Scammers who pretend to be technical support staff might ask you to pay for a repair you don’t need or try to scam you out of personal information.

You should report any suspicious messages directly to the real company (eBay, Amazon, Walmart, etc.) and consider telling local law enforcement. These scammers are giving real technical support teams a bad name.

4 Online Coaching

You might have decided to work for yourself and try a new profession. Perhaps you don’t have the necessary experience and want to learn a little more before you take the plunge. Check out online providers such as edX or Coursera that offer a wide range of courses that might be just what you are looking for. These platforms offer well-designed courses that are sometimes free to access but will charge you a fee if you want to earn a certificate.

If you don’t find what you are looking for on these reputable sites, you could contact a professional brand in your chosen field and see which training courses they suggest.

Unfortunately, scammers have moved into the field with promises of guaranteed income and untold riches. Carefully vet these providers before you part with your money.

3 Real Estate

You can make good money in real estate, but it demands training, and plenty of courses offer the necessary preparation. An online course can allow you to continue in your present job while you are getting ready to change professions. Most of these are legitimate, but there are some shady ones out there.

Your course should meet your state’s licensing requirements, and your state should certify or approve the course. Having a word with a local realtor is not a bad idea to see what they would recommend. Online seminars that charge a fee but are not full courses can be a rip-off.

2 Charity

If there’s one area where scammers show what a cruel business they are in, it is charity. And it’s no wonder because there’s a lot of money in the charity business. In 2020, Americans donated an amazing $471 billion to worthy causes. Or they believed that they were worthy causes.

Most charities are perfectly legitimate, but some are criminal. After a natural disaster, for example, “charities” immediately appear, appealing for immediate financial help for the affected. A few of them are simply after your cash and disappear as quickly as they came. And, sometimes, even genuine charities can be mismanaged.

It would be a shame if all charities fell under suspicion just because a few are scams. You should always check before donating, especially if you’re unfamiliar with the charity. The Better Business Bureau, Charity Navigator, and CharityWatch all monitor charities.

Because of the scammers, people might be wary of giving to genuine charities. Whichever one you choose to support, be dire to do your homework before handing over your hard-earned money.

1 Debt Collection

Nobody likes debt collection agencies, but they do a difficult and necessary job. A code of ethics and federal legislation govern what a debt collector can do in the legitimate recovery of money owed. They must deal with people respectfully, register complaints about the validity of a debt, and never use threatening behavior when attempting to collect.

All genuine collectors adhere to the regulations and code of conduct that apply to their activity.

Because many people are naturally frightened of debt collectors, scammers have moved into the field, hoping that some of their victims will pay up to avoid threatened repercussions. A professional agency will never use threats either in writing or by phone.