A fraud that hurts Writers and other Professionals - losing your billable time.

Dick Preston, radio, film-maker 1951
Creative Commons on Flickr 

One fraud that hurts those, that like me, are self-employed, selling their skills to pay their bills, is that of fraud that costs you, not money, but your time. Your time that you could have used on something that would have paid and not something that will never pay. You only have so many hours per week that you can use to bill, losing them is hard to replace.

This site is a good summary of fraud that affect writers. Be it fake writing contests (where you pay extra fees to be published as a "winner", fake essay writing sites where you never get paid, Agents where the fees keep on coming, or those that appeal to the writer's ego to be self-published that charge for services with always additional fees, or for access to editors, manuscript evaluation services or agents who are "in the know" or with "access to the right people" to get your book published, but it never will.

Additionally there are many editors who commission works for publications, that may be published but where any royalties are never forthcoming.

So if time is money for you, be as careful of how you spend your time, as how you spend your money and don't be afraid to talk about money up front, later never happens.