Preston Peterson/Guest Contributor

It was my second week of freshman year, and I was sitting in the Smaug eating a delicious chicken burger writing a short paper for a class.

I decided to ask the guy at the next table a question: “What’s A-Rods real name?” not remembering who the steroid-injecting multimillionaire’s real name was. After this stranger responded to me, he decided to introduce himself and offer me an “opportunity of a lifetime.”

He was a seemingly well-maintained man, so when he wanted to make a meeting with me to explain his business, I said “Sure, why not?” (what could be the worst thing that could happen?). He said he had a business in Thailand. Which ended up being the first sign something was wrong.

I started questioning—Why is this stranger telling me this? Why would he think I would be any help to him?

After missing our first meeting, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to help anyone who already had a business—especially one out of Thailand—I started to receive several calls and voicemails. I ignored almost all of them. I finally answered an unknown number to gave him a chance to run his idea by me.

This guy was trying to exploit a naïve freshman, which seemed like a sure fire deal at making a couple of bucks. Too bad I didn’t fall for it.

About two weeks after the first time he got my phone number, I met him in the same location that we met at.

Understanding business is kind of what I like, so I asked a couple very simple questions like do you have a business plan, what products do you sell and how will this make me money.

Almost every question that I asked he would give me such a general explanation: the fact that he is learning from millionaires, how nice it is to work for yourself or my personal favorite: he is just trying to give me the opportunity of a lifetime.

These statements are the beautiful linguistic skills of a bad or even a cheap con artist; they allow you to feel like he is going to make you a ton of money which is not even close to being the truth.

The system he tried to have me to join is as good as the Avon industry, which is fine, but if you pay money to make someone else money, how much profit do you think you will really make? Avon is not a bad business, but essentially when you join it you will always be less than the people before you. As you make money the people above you will always make more.

I explained this idea to him: if you want to make money, you need a product. In my example that product is a cookie: delicious, easy to make and who wants to pass up a cookie? To truly work for yourself, you don’t want to sell someone else’s cookie, especially not someone’s “product” that you have never seen or tasted.

Nonetheless, he kept bringing up how he was “learning directly from millionaires.” But every millionaire who is self-made will always tell you only a couple ways they made their money. They either did what they loved and saved, got lucky or never allowed themselves to work for someone else (risking everything for the potential to make nothing, the true American dream).

I kept drilling this con artist with questions: how much profit do you make per product and how do you expect me to sell anything? Finally, I made sure to ask how much money he was trying to get me to put in as an investment to make money, which happened to be $199.

On a fixed income with no real way of making money, I know this is completely not feasible, but it’s the fact that he tried to get ahold of me so hard, expecting to get this money out of me since he drove all the way to the school from La Crosse, Wisc. (and never was a student at Winona State University).

Now the saddest thing is not the fact that this man drove from La Crosse, but that he expected me to not ask any of these key questions that define any business. After a few questions and almost no answers, he said, “You’re obviously not interested, so why would I show you my paperwork?”

Do not take this as if networking is a bad thing, but make sure you understand that just because you are on school grounds does not mean people aren’t looking to exploit you.

On the bright side, you’re in college, growing your intelligence slowly so that you won’t fall into a trap that many people actually believe.

You have now been warned.

Contact Preston at [email protected]