Extracting money from the desperate and needy - getting more common

There are activities today which focus on getting poor and desperate people to pay money to get hope. This ranges from state run lotteries, to companies which guarantee to find you a job for a substantial fee - even though they rarely deliver. There are groups who offer to fund start-ups, but which charge them to present, even though they provide little chance of funding. They may make more money by their charges to people who have no money than by the business enterprise in which they theoretically specialize.