In response to a piece I recently posted on the Nigerian 419 scams, a reader, we'll call her Terri, sent me an email about a different kind of fraud. It's a variant of what's known as autosurfing, and something in her story broke my heart, so I agreed to call her and hear the details.

Autosurfing sounds like a great way to pick up some spare cash. You get paid for visiting certain places on the web. Each click on a site or an ad generates money for you. In the real world, this is the equivalent of getting paid to participate in a focus group, fill out a survey, or try out a product.

The reason web sites are willing to pay you to surf is because it increases their traffic. With increased traffic they can announce that they are a "most trafficked site" and then charge more money for their ads accordingly. For website owners, autosurfing sites charge a fee promising to increase their traffic; typically owners pay per click.

None of this is necessarily illegal. While autosurfing might seem a bit tawdry, the basic idea of getting paid to click is relatively harmless. But this behavior can quickly escalate to being quite dangerous by taking a number of different twists. After you've had some success and made a modest amount of money, some autosurf sites will require you to pay a fee to continue to participate. Others may ask you to become an investor in the company if you want to continue. They may ask you to help by recruiting your friends. At this point, autosurfing turns into a  type of scheme often called a "Ponzi" or pyramid scheme, because longer-term participants reap really healthy rewards fueled by the money paid in by new participants.

Terri's friend, who happened to be appove reproach (both a mom and a minister), encouraged Terri to begin autosurfing. The friend was making good money, enough money to pay off her house and vehicles. The friend even lent Terri the $500 she needed to get started.

Terri writes: "I was enrolled in 4 [of an autosurf network's] surfing programs and I was paid a certain percentage a day from the ads I clicked on. I was paid for about 4 weeks, and then I decided to invest $1,500 in the network and another $2,000 in 12daily Pro, another network."

Coincidentally, as soon as Terri paid in her money, the network suddenly decided to keep everyone's money, saying it was "reinventing" itself. It promised to roll over the investments and earnings within 18 days.

Terri writes: "That was in September and so far I haven't received a dime of my money, though they always have an excuse for why." She says that the company went so far as to deposit a large credit in her account to get her to surf more, but they haven't allowed her to cash out. They give her a litany of reasons why including trouble with their database, a slowdown in new members, and reorganization.

The second company she invested in, 12daily Pro, was paying her for clicking, but it's been shut down by the SEC pending a fraud investigation. According to the SEC, 12daily Pro, a "paid autosurf program," was really a massive Ponzi scheme which raised more than $50 million from over 300,000 investors worldwide by offering a 44 percent return on investment in just 12 days.

The worst part of Terri's nightmare? It's ongoing. The autosurfing network she joined sends threatening notes saying it will keep the money if she posts negative comments or complains.

Terri has been in touch with the Better Business Bureau and the FTC. Neither answered. I spoke with an FTC representative who told me that they do not intervene on the behalf of an individual consumer. The consumer needs to retain counsel. They also won't discuss pending investigations, but the spokesperson said she wasn't familiar with autosurfing.

So how can we help Terri and others out there from being victims?  If anyone has had any success getting through to SEC, FTC or other organizations that might help we're all ears. For those of you who are thinking about getting into the get-paid-to-click business, here's some advice to protect yourself from the SEC's web site.

The SEC cautions:

1. Are the payouts high? If you are promised unusually high earnings, be VERY skeptical.
2. Do you need to invest your money to autosurf? In general, you should never have to pay to get a job.
3. Where is the money to pay you coming from? Is it coming from advertisers paying the autosurf company or from other members' fees?
4. Are the payouts related to what you are doing? Why should you earn more money for viewing the same ads if you have more money invested in the program? (After all, advertisers don't get more benefit if you've invested more money.)