Bad Times Are Good for Con Artists : Crime: Get-rich-quick, get-approved-credit-quick and get-a-job-quick scams are booming nationwide.

Tough economic times are fertile ground for one venerable American entrepreneur--the con artist.

With more people with less money or out of work during the recession, get-rich-quick or get-a-job-quick schemes are booming nationwide, authorities say.

“Right now it is a prime market for swindlers,” said James Allen Fox, a professor of criminal justice at Northeastern University in Boston.

“When times are good, there are many ways to strike it rich legitimately,” he said. “When the times go sour, people from the shady side come out and offer opportunities.”

In Maryland, a charismatic businessman targeted fellow minorities and promised 500% returns on real estate in what federal officials called “a classic pyramid scheme.”

In New Jersey, thousands of people lined up to apply for lucrative jobs rebuilding Kuwait. The jobs didn’t exist.

In California, one entrepreneur charged $8 a pound for 120-year-old dirt from a Nevada mine he claimed contained gold that new technology would help extract.

A sweet fishing hole for swindlers is the large pool of consumers unsuccessfully casting about for loans during a recession-induced credit crunch.

Lisa Guide of the New Jersey Consumer Affairs Bureau pointed to an outfit called National Credit Savers of Alabama, which mailed out thousands of postcards bearing the Visa and MasterCard logos.

The organization claimed that respondents would acquire an “approved and guaranteed gold card.” The company never delivered a major bank card, but rather a credit line good only for purchases of overpriced items from a catalogue.

To find that out, many credit-hungry customers called a 900 number for $15 that linked them to an eight-minute recorded sales pitch. It ended with a another 900 number to call.

Persistent consumers calling the second number could pay up to $85 in fees for the catalogue card, touted as the “approved and guaranteed gold card.”

The Alabama group paid a $3,500 fine to New Jersey and agreed to make a refund to anyone who lodges a claim.

In a similar scheme, First Federal Bankcard of Santa Barbara sent out 15 million postcards, said Paul Griffo of the Postal Inspection Service, which investigates mail fraud. The company netted $8 for the first phone call and $29 for a second call.

Jill Samuels of the Better Business Bureau in New York City said her office has received a number of complaints about advance fee loan companies.

“They advertise that this is your great hope, if you pay us $200 or $300, we’ll get you a $10,000 loan,” Samuels said.

Officials allege that one of the bigger strike-it-rich schemes was the idea of Melvin Ford and his International Loan Network of Lanham, Md. Ford is suspected of having pocketed tens of millions of dollars with a real estate scheme aimed primarily at minorities.

The Securities and Exchange Commission, which has frozen ILN’s assets, calls it a classic pyramid scheme--that is, that ILN paid off existing investors with money from new investors, rather than with money from legitimate profits.

Ford is alleged to have gone after minority investors of limited income, recruiting them to pep rally-style seminars that the SEC described as similar to religious revival meetings. The case is also before a grand jury considering criminal charges.

Getting jobs quick also has a strong appeal in tough times. Dozens of scams seeking to profit from the reconstruction of Kuwait have been reported nationwide.

In Union, N.J., Omne Maintenance Engineers advertised jobs “rebuilding Kuwait for $57.50 an hour.” About 4,000 people responded to the ads, which became the talk of union halls and local bars for construction workers laid off during the downturn.

But the company had no jobs to offer. It apparently wanted to start an employment service that would market lists of workers to construction companies.

Other firms charged $19.95 for a list of jobs culled from classified ads of local papers, or they charged fees for application forms, state officials said.

Some gold-diggers don’t stop at gold cards. Some even try to sell the real thing.

A California entrepreneur named Murray Brooks sold investors dirt for $16,000 a ton from the Comstock mines in Nevada. Brooks said his purported bonanza relied on new technology that could extract gold left behind by miners in the 1870s.

“Our inspector took a backhoe, dug the dirt himself, did an analysis and showed there wasn’t a speck of gold to be found,” Griffo said.

That was not surprising. The Comstock Lode was a famous silver strike. Brooks is awaiting criminal trial in California on federal mail and securities fraud charges.