I believe that the first way to avoid getting scammed is not being greedy and believing in something for nothing, secondly not seeking the easy way to achieving a great financial success.
It's better to ask yourself some vital questions or get clarifications on how someone promising you any goodies actually makes his own money from the business. I've learned that for a business to be sustainable, an employer should make up to 5 times or more what he pays for labour or collaboration, so if there's no clear and practical way he gets his own revenue, then you're the revenue.
I won't agree less with you on this. If you dig deeper into reason why people fall victim to scam is majorly due to their zeal to make returns with little or stress at all. They are very eager to get money as quickly as possible without following proper channel not realising there's no shortcut to success. The funny thing about trying to get money out of no where is that you end up spending the little you have again instead of making more money. Anyone promising you easy way to make money through whatever means is just trying to survive through you. They will not try hard to convince you to come and make money if truly they're making it themselves but greed won't let greedy people to realise this.