He added that fraudster work-at-home ads are also a danger in phishing sites that only pretend to be Monster.com.

In many cases, people who have paid fees to get home jobs are told they won’t be paid because the work wasn’t up to snuff, according to a Federal Trade Commission podcast.

The most recent surge in work-at-home scams is perhaps the most insidious because newer scams actually turn victims into criminals.

In a scam called “card cracking” or “card popping,” fraudsters ask their victims for their debit cards and security codes. They take money out and send part of the money back, then have the cardholder call her bank and claim the transaction wasn’t authorized so she gets back what she had in the bank plus the money the scamster promised to send her.

In another variation, the scamsters use the debit card to make a phony deposit and take the money out immediately before the bank realizes the check deposited was a fake.

Again, the fraudster promises to send the victim money -- but never does.

The bank computer systems often detect the crime, however. Even when the victims don’t go to jail, they can be seriously penalized for a lifetime by being accomplices to the frauds, cautioned Susan Grant, a director at the Consumer Federation of America.

“They’re never going to be able to open another bank account anywhere because bank account abuse is being shared among financial institutions,” Grant said.

The U.S. Postal Inspection Service has taken a lead role in ferreting out card cracking because some of the activity in the crimes is done through the mail.

Details about the agency’s work in attacking card cracking and warnings to victims will be shown October 3 to children in the first episode of a new CBS series on the inspection service.