Envelope stuffing at home: A quasi confidence game

A common consumer fraud is the work‐at‐home scheme which promises substantial earnings from “stuffing envelopes” in one's home. The purposes of this research were to describe this scheme in detail and to analyze the process by which the scheme persists. Upon purchasing materials advertised in National Enquirer the researchers found that the principal plan being sold involves a pyramid: those answering ads buy materials encouraging them to advertise in order to sell the same materials. For this study, the content of the materials was analyzed in terms of the elements found in traditional confidence games. It is evident that although their sequence differs, all the elements of confidence games are present in the envelope stuffing scheme. It is argued that the scheme is a quasi confidence game, and its persistence derives at least in part from the same factors that promote traditional confidence games.