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Companies offering jobs, business opportunities, investments, or other money-making opportunities often talk about how much money you can make. But many people have lost time and money to companies that stretch the truth, leave out important details, or tell flat-out lies about the income people can make. Today the FTC announced that it’s considering issuing a new rule to address the use of false or misleading earnings claims and asking the public for comments.

Since 2000, the FTC has filed more than 100 cases involving deceptive money-making claims. For example, the FTC stopped a scheme that targeted Latinas with promises of big money selling luxury products — but both the promises and the products turned out to be fake; shut down an operation that used illegal robocalls to trick older adults into a work-from-home scam; and sued the operators of a “blessing loom” (a type of pyramid scheme) that allegedly targeted members of the Black community who never made any money and lost the $1,400 they paid to the scammers.

Other examples include recent FTC actions against gig companies that allegedly deceived people about the money they could make working for the companies, and schemes that used promises of big profits to lure consumers into signing up for expensive real estate and investment coaching programs.

Even with these aggressive enforcement efforts, deceptive earnings claims continue and impact every community. A possible rule that prohibits the use of misleading earnings claims could discourage scammers from making those claims, help the FTC move quickly to stop illegal conduct and return money to victims, and help businesses understand how to stay within the law when making earning claims.

So, if you’ve seen money-making offers that make big promises, have been misled by promises about the money you could earn by joining a multi-level marketing scheme or another program — or by claims about what you could make by working for a gig company or other employer, tell us about it, submit your comments.

Note: This blog was updated on March 17, 2022 with the link to the Federal Register.

It is your choice whether to submit a comment. If you do, you must create a user name, or we will not post your comment. The Federal Trade Commission Act authorizes this information collection for purposes of managing online comments. Comments and user names are part of the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) public records system, and user names also are part of the FTC’s computer user records system. We may routinely use these records as described in the FTC’s Privacy Act system notices. For more information on how the FTC handles information that we collect, please read our privacy policy.

The purpose of this blog and its comments section is to inform readers about Federal Trade Commission activity, and share information to help them avoid, report, and recover from fraud, scams, and bad business practices. Your thoughts, ideas, and concerns are welcome, and we encourage comments. But keep in mind, this is a moderated blog. We review all comments before they are posted, and we won’t post comments that don’t comply with our commenting policy. We expect commenters to treat each other and the blog writers with respect.

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Erica Gilpin
March 24, 2022

I was contacted by a woman claiming she wanted to hire me to coach ( life coaching) her 3 sisters while she received treatment for a serious illness. Before she even signed a single paper or agreement or contract with me she sent me a check for 3times what I charged. She urged me to make sure I deposited it that day saying something about the date. As far as I know (I may be totally wrong) 90days is the usual time you have to deposit or cash a check so that was my red flag. I don’t know for a fact that she was scamming me but my gut told me something wasn’t right. Just a warning and a reminder to always follow your gut!