by Lucinda Davis

Created on: November 26, 2008

Ever since I was a kid I was always looking for better ways to make money and so I started getting scammed at the early age of ten. I had worked hard babysitting and earned enough money to start a savings. One day I was looking at those ads in the back of a magazine "make easy money stuffing envelopes". Against my parents advice I sent away for the information. I don't feel so bad that I fell for that at such a young age and only spent $10 of my hard earned money. Shortly after that I answered an ad for some other scam that cost me $50. It sure did hurt at the time. I mean $50 to a kid that makes a dollar an hour, well that would be the equivalent of working over a week on a full time job!

As I got older I fell for other little scams here and there but when my parents or other people would warn me this time I listened. In my twenties as a single Mom I again was looking for better ways to earn money. I worked hard, sometimes two and three jobs at a time. I flipped a house and turned a profit and that wasn't easy so I had decided I wanted to invest that profit some other way. I considered flipping another house but thought it was too risky. I thought about buying a rental unit but my Father advised against it. So here I was reading the local newspaper and saw the vending machine route ads. I guess my lack of understanding how the world sometimes works injured me again. My Father didn't know anything about the vending machine business but warned me to be careful. What went through my mind at the time was that if you had enough money to invest the deal would be legitimate. I didn't think people would rip you off for thousands of dollars. I don't know why I thought that but I did and I've learned otherwise. There are people out there to scam you for chump change like a dollar or fifty cents and then there are people who are out there to take all they can get.

I was promised the moon and the stars from this vending machine distributor. That's the key they are a distributor selling you their product. They wanted to know how much I was looking to invest. Once the price was set they did the hard sell and pushed me about how I had to hurry and Fedex this and Fedex that. I think the entire contract process was pushed through in less than a week. Once they had my money that's when the troubles began. They made it sound like I could quit my job and make $40,000 a year on candy sales alone. They made it sound like it was just a matter of driving around filling the machines and collecting your money. It was more involved than that and I could write an entire article on the vending machine scam. The up side to this story is I learned a valuable lesson. I was also able to recoup some of my money with a class action lawsuit that I started by filing a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission.

My advice to you is to always think things through and get a second opinion and a lot of advice. Don't ever let anyone hurry you into signing something or spending your money on something. Always do your research before you invest your dollars.

While I was writing this it made me think about how no one is infallible. I think just recently our very own US government might have been scammed by the banks. Think about it. Weren't they hurried into signing something? Now it seems that money is gone and being used as they please. I guess I don't feel so bad after all. If con artists can fool a bunch of educated officials into handing over billions of dollars then maybe I'm not as simple-minded as I thought I was.

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