Top Ten Scams of 2007

 

By Mark Huffman
ConsumerAffairs.com

A stroll through the Scam Alerts archives finds it’s been Christmastime all year for the world’s scam artists. The Federal Trade Commission tells us that scams hit 30.2 million adults — 13.5 percent of the adult population during the last year for which it has added up its complaints.

While the FTC’s latest figures are for 2006, there’s certainly no reason to think the number declined in 2007. Human ingenuity is constantly on the prowl, after all, seeking new ways to fleece the unwary, the gullible and those looking to get rich quickly.

But of course it’s not just the greedy and the gullible who get taken. The poor and desperate are also falling victim to modern-day bandits – those in grimy boiler rooms as well as corporate board rooms.

The dictionary definition of a “scam” is “a fraudulent business scheme designed to make a quick profit.” In making our list and checking it twice, we combed our database of nearly 300,000 consumer complaints to find the scams that made great strides forward, roping in new victims and increasing their take in 2007.

So, here they are — ConsumerAffairs.com’s Top 10 Scams of 2007:

1. Weight Loss Scams

With America’s mushrooming obesity problem, perhaps it’s only natural that scammers would dream up all manner of bogus weight loss schemes, in an effort to separate overweight Americans from their money. In 2007 there seemed to be no limit to how outlandish these scams could be.

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