The sluggish economy has a lot of people looking to pick up some extra money. So part-time jobs that let you work at home can be appealing.

But be careful! A lot of the work-at-home offers, especially those on the Internet, are scams that could cost you big money.

It wasn't so long ago that con artists had to rely on newspaper ads or snail mail to reach their victims. The work-at-home job usually turned out to be envelope stuffing.

Today the bad guys have the Internet and legitimate job sites where they can post their ads. And the jobs are much more impressive. They include positions like mystery shoppers, rebate processors and money transfer agents.

Amanda had her resume on a couple of online job sites, so she was happy to get an e-mail from a company that wanted to hire her as an independent contractor.

"It's easy and will not take a lot of your time. No costs, no investments," the e-mail read.

Plus, it said, she could make a good chunk of change working from home, up to $2,000 part-time and $4,000 full-time.

Her job? Process money orders for a company in the United Kingdom, a company that supposedly needed a faster way to get money to its clients.

"I would get 10 percent every time they would send me a bundle of money orders, whether it be $500, $1,000, $5,000. I was going to keep 10 percent," she said.

So this is what the company wanted her to do.

"They're sending me money orders, I'd go to my bank, cash it because they're under my name. And take the money out and then via Western Union send them to the places they e-mailed me to send them to, "she said.

The MoneyGrams looked real and the bank cashed them.

But a few days later the bank mailed them back to Amanda. It turns out they were counterfeit and Amanda owed the bank all the money she had withdrawn from her account.

"Right now it's about $7,000," she said. "The bank takes no responsibility. They cashed the money order, gave me the money and they have nothing to do with it from there."

Amanda contacted KOMO News because she wants you to know about this scam, which is becoming more common.

Get a work-at-home offer like this and you need to put aside the greed and ask yourself: why would a big company need me to do this for them? They don't.

Here's your tip off that it's a ripoff: a company says it wants to hire you to cash checks or money orders and "wire off" some of that money. Legitimate companies just don't do that via part-time workers.

Once you realize you've been scammed, the money will be gone, the bad guys will be unreachable and, as in this case, the bank will come after you for the money.

The Better Business Bureau says you should be suspicious of any work at home job that charges a fee up front. Some of the examples to be wary of:

- Refund Processing
- Home Mailing
- Envelope Stuffing
- Postal or Government jobs for an upfront fee
- Almost anything you receive in an email or see on a telephone pole

Here are five legitimate companies that have work at home programs:

- Convergys
- Arise
- Alpine Access
- Working Solutions
- Speak-Write