OFT in the hunt for scammers

The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has started a sweep of Web sites to catch online scammers.

It announced the beginning of a three day operation as part of Scams Awareness Month on 28 February 2006. Alongside the sweep it is also planning to launch several interactive scam games on its Web site and two spoof Web site pages to demonstrate what scam sites might look like.

Over 20 trading standards departments in the UK are taking part in a worldwide campaign that involves 53 consumer protection agencies from 21 countries. The OFT is conducting the sweep with international partners throughout the International Consumer Protection Enforcement Network (ICPEN).

An OFT spokesperson told Government Computing News that most of the sites to be examined have been the subjects of complaints from members of the public. Trading standards officers will examine the sites for signs of any intent to deceive users.

They will then write to the operators of any that appear dubious, asking for undertakings that they will withdraw any false claims. Ultimately they have the ability to close down the sites.

Home working scams are the focus of the sweep. An estimated five million people in the UK fall victim to scammers each year, according to the OFT's research.

There are three main types of scam homeworking scheme:

1. Directory schemes — These involve asking for a fee of about £15 in exchange for a list of companies offering work to homeworkers. The recipient normally receives a photocopied sheet or leaflet of other homeworking scheme adverts, charging from £10 to £200 to register with no genuine offers of work at the end.
2. Recruitment schemes — These are essentially pyramid selling schemes that typically ask for people to send £15 for information on homeworking opportunities. The recipients are then told to place more adverts in shop windows to recruit more people to the scheme, in order to receive a marginal sum for each new person recruited who also paid £15
3. Kit schemes — These often offer work making arts and crafts products from kits provided by the advertiser on the understanding they will buy it back from the homeworker when it is complete. The kits can cost from £10 to £200 and however good the product made by the homeworker it will be rejected on the grounds that it has 'failed' the quality standards.

Mike Haley, head of the OFT's Scambusters team said: "Bogus schemes are an increasing problem for those looking for genuine work to do at home. Like all scams the tell-tale sign to beware of is the fact that the company will ask for money up front. You should never have to pay a fee to get paid work."