All you wanted to know about MMF schemes

So what are "Make Money Fast" / "MMF" schemes? Well if you own an electronic mail address you will no doubt have been a victim of an unsolicited MMF e-mail. Typically the message is phrased somewhat like this,

"Tired of dredging off to work everyday, the wind and rain getting you down? what you need a safe way of making money fast. I needed further funds to help cover the cost of house repairs. I couldn't afford a nighttime carer to look after my kids for extra shifts. Depressed I was looking through my inbox and came across a message offering a realistic moneymaking. Explained in a simple format it made sense and before a week expired the orders had filled my inbox full. I need to order extra space with over £25,000 of orders. Everyone is happy, everyone is making money, why don't you STUPID"

The above is just an example, the variation of message and testimonial is virtually unlimited. And as the Internet expands and becomes increasing popular the scams and frauds are bound to increase with it.

Online "Make Money Fast" schemes are typically just another example of the classic postcode pyramid chain-letter scheme.

Real world postcode chain letters are hand written or typed letters which promise a person a phenomenal return with a small investment of time and effort. If a person falls for the scam they will send a cheque to the sender, who will in turn provide the instructions of who to send further letters to, to continue the scheme. A basic chain letter will only include the names and addresses of several individuals whom you may or may not know. You will then be instructed to send a certain amount of money, usually a small sum like £5 - to the person listed at the top of the list. Of course you will need to eliminate that name when you send others your letter, and add yours to the bottom. You are then free to repeat the entire process as much as you desire. When the letter is sent by others your name will gradually move to the top of the list. This is when people will begin to send you money.

These online and real world schemes are now illegal in the US under federal law and should be reported to trading standard in the UK. They are however only illegal in the US if they request money or other items of value. And in turn promise people a substantial return on their participation. The US tend to view chain letters as a form of gambling, which is also illegal in most states. Therefore sending any money through the mail or computer via a MMF chain letter violates Title 18, United States Code, Section 1302, the Postal Lottery Statute.

MLM (Multi-level Marketing) is currently NOT illegal in most western countries, but is driven by the same processes as MMF/Chain letters. The reason why MMF chain letters are illegal in the US is simple, they are a terrible investment. The only people who make any profit are those at the very top of the pyramid. The problem is mathematics, something the scheme creators try to steer wide of. For someone to make money in these schemes it requires a vast number of others to pay out to them. As the pyramid builds it requires more and more people to be signed up for it to succeed. It will soon become apparent there isn't enough people available in any given area for this to occur. This is when alot of people lose money. It's a mathematical fact about the system. It works somewhat like this,

The progression is represented in the way the numbers of people involved grow:

100

1,000

100,000

1,000,000

10,000,000

100,000,000

1,000,000,000

10,000,000,000 (There are only a few over 6,000,000,000 people in the world).

The fact is you will be extremely unlikely to make money out of a pyramid scheme. Unless you generated the scheme you will most likely lose.

MLM - Multi-level Marketing however is legal in most countries. It uses the same geometric progression as a pyramid scheme. They work by promising people they can make money fast and with little effort. The work is done by leveraging the efforts of other people. So basically the system works by recruiting people who recruit people, with no-one doing any real work or offering any real service. Of course the mathematics will end up just like the above progression chart. The reason they stay legal is they promise someone down the line will do some work, like build shelves or what not. But this never happens, it's all just a recruiting exercise, which means just a sophisticated chain letter.

A man named Bernstein from the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) in the US said the 12 most common types of email spam scams include:

Follow some of the links below for more information about "Make Money Fast" schemes:

Make Money Fast Hall of Humiliation A blog stroke site which runs its service with the latest scheme shown
Euro Consumer - Provides a article on Internet f raud and where you are at risk from Internet fraud. This page provides a fact sheet which tells users about some of the most usual types of scams. There are plenty of other sites which provide.
Anti Phishing Site Authentication with features anti phishing software for the problem and solutions of fraud on the web and Internet. MMF is only a small problem of online protection and isn't the only thing the the likes of the FTC is watching.
CAUSE Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail (CAUCE), is a well ranking organization which main aim is to combat the menace of unsolicited e-mails with a commercial sense. Basically for the laymans term spam combatants, (aka UCE or "spam"). Seems to concentrate mainly in the efforts in the US, with all the legislative efforts being enforced by their government to regulate spam. They also have a form for US citizens to fill in and submit their MMF scams to a well known representative in the US Congress [s].
Spam Filter, is a company whose mission is to stop the practice of people sending unsolicited boilerplate scam messages through electronic mail.
The Anti-spam Campaign, it's a major site and provides a very comprehensive anti-spam resource site.
Some day soon this soon hopes to compile a list of known MMF perpetrators. Be sure to read this page in a few months to access this list

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"Make Money Fast Schemes"