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Magic Melissa and her baby

Earn cash from home -- not just chump-change but real money, $5,000-$6,000 a month!

Now who could turn down an offer like that?

Apparently Melissa Johnsen from Auckland couldn't and, as you can see, her and her baby are now financially secure - somewhere in NZ's largest city.

How lucky for Melissa that she wasn't conned by some of these other "get rich quick" schemes that litter the web.

She was probably re-assured by the claims made by the site carrying her story that "There are plenty of scams on the internet claiming you can make $40,000 a month, but that is exactly what they are - scams".

So she was just so lucky to find an honest, ethical company to warn her against such risks and instead, introduce her to an honest system that is delivering $60K-$70K a year into her pockets and the Auckland economy.

Cue Tui's ad.

I'd like you to meet Melissa Jonsen from Melbourne.

Woah... hang on a minute.. is it just me or do these two women (and their babies) look very similar?

No, surely it's just a mix up and they've accidentally used the same image and name twice -- right?

Perhaps this woman from Ottawa might be able to help us sort out the confusion...

Egad... how can this be?

Surely this isn't... "a dishonest scam" is it?

I'm starting to think that it must be but I'm thinking that "to be sure - to be sure", we ought to ask the Melissa Johnson from Dublin because her surname is spelled differently so maybe she's the real MJ.

I find it interesting that this scam is being advertised in a UK newspaper, the Daily Mail -- do they know they're complicit in a dishonest scheme to scam their customers I wonder?

The sad thing is that *anyone* who might get sucked into a scam like this could easily do a little research first (like I did) and discover the dishonesty lurking behind Melissa's many faces.

Given the amount of money lost to online scams like this every year, I wonder whether we ought to be teaching kids more about "cyber-street savvy" than "cultural studies".

Since so many kids and adults do (and will continue) to spend so much time online, surely one of the critical life-skills that our kids ought to be taught is how to recognise scams like this and how to research the bonafides of such offers.

What do readers think?

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