Thanks to the recession, there's a boom in offers to help you make extra money while you look for a full time job. There's only one problem: some of the most common job offers out there won't get you a job at all.

These work-at-home jobs all sound great when you hear the job descriptions. And in many cases, you'll even get a check.
Just don't try take the check to the bank.

When Jody Marquez's arthritis made it difficult to work full time, she tapped into her embroidery talents to make extra money.

"I sold a few things, but it's not as prosperous as I expected," she said.

So she went online find other ways to make money from home and discovered consumer research surveys that promised $100 per hour to start. What's more, she could set her own hours.

"And I left them my name and number, and people would call me back and then I started receiving things in the mail," she said.

What followed happened so fast it left Marquez's head spinning.

Her first assignment: "Go to Wal-Mart, and do a consumer survey study. See how clean it is, how neat it is, how the people acted," she said.

The assignment included a check for nearly $4,000 which Jody was supposed to deposit, wait for the check to clear, then buy a MoneyGram as part of a test to see how she'd do the job.

She deposited the check into her savings account and waited for the bank to tell her it cleared. Four days later, when the bank told her the check had cleared, Jody followed her "employer's" instructions and bought a $2,900 MoneyGram, then wired it to her employer in Canada.

Later that evening, she got a call from the bank, telling her the check was no good. Marquez never saw it coming.

"I called MoneyGram and gave them the reference number. And they said the money was picked up 15 minutes after it went through."

The check was counterfeit. The bank put a hold on thousands of dollars of Marquez's savings.

"I was devastated," she said.

Marquez was ripped off by one of the top 10 job scams going around. Scammers use counterfeit checks for all sorts of work-at-home schemes. If you cash the check, your bank will hold you responsible for any money that is spent.

Consumers and banks lose millions of dollars to the scam every year.

The biggest job scams using counterfeit checks include check and money processing, rebate processing, e-mail processing and package forwarding.

Other top work-at-home scams to watch for include data entry, envelope stuffing, medical billing, craft assembly and pitches that charge you for work at home listings.

As the Problem Solvers have warned before, there are very few legitimate work at home jobs and none of them will make you rich.

More information:

Legit work at home jobs

Legit Mystery Shopping Opportunities

Job Scams