With the economy in trouble, scammers are trying to hire people just like you. They’re offering “work-at-home” jobs that promise excellent part-time money if you’ll help their accounting department. What do they want to you to do? Only some light accounting and help pay bills. Sounds reasonable.

They offer you a job with a title such as “international sales representative” or “shipping manager,” and you’re asked to open a new bank account in their name, process anonymous payments into your account, and forward those payments to locations—usually in Europe. The money is real, they say, and you’re promised a cut. So you cautiously sign up, to see if it’s legit. You check your account balances and, zowie, big bucks are really there. Happy Day!

But wait just a minute. Didn’t you wonder why you have to open an account for Mr. Big Shot Corporation? What’s with that?

Trouble is, what looks like a nice little home accounting business is actually a laundry business. If you fall for this you’ll be helping criminals launder money—pay each other while disguising the source for them. Until you go to jail, of course. Remember, ignorance is no excuse.

The ads for this scam are professional looking and convincing, and they tout easy money. But they don’t offer much in the way of details. What they count on, frankly, is that you’re dumb enough—and greedy enough—to think there really is such thing as easy money, and that such jobs are really legitimate. There isn’t, and they aren’t.

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: if it’s too good to be true, it usually is.