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| Fraudulent investment companies, swindlers calling, white collar crime. Big stories in these days. It is good to know about swindlers to avoid loosing money by investment frod. Recognize early warnings, recognize tricky swindlers who come up with scams. Some phoney fraudsters sound so serious. Check out this report, it can help.
Investment Swindles: How They Work and How to Avoid Them Including 16 questions that can turn off an investment crookThe Multi-Billion Dollar Business of Investment FraudAmericans are investors. We purchase stocks and bonds, contribute to savings programs, own real estate, participate in futures and options markets, acquire collectibles, provide start-up capital for new business ventures, buy franchises, and the list goes on. The strength of our economy is in large measure the product of our combined investments. Perhaps more so than any people in the world, we enjoy an ever-expanding variety of investments to choose from, coupled with the freedom to make our own investment decisions. It's our money and we can invest it as we wish.Unfortunately, some unscrupulous promoters abuse our
freedom to choose by concocting investment schemes that have
zero possibility of making money for anyone other than
themselves. Such persons promise investment rewards they cannot
possibly deliver and have no intention of delivering.
Many of them are very good at it. Their annual take through lying and deceit is in the billions of dollars. If one estimate of $10 billion a year lost to investment fraud is accurate, that's more money than the combined annual profits of the nation's three major automakers! Some say even that estimate may be too low. Successful investment swindlers use every trick in the book, and some that aren't even recorded, to convince you that none of the descriptions and precautions in the following pages apply to them. After all, they are offering you a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make a lot of money quickly and you do trust them, don't you? As will be seen, some of their methods of gaining your trust are truly ingenious. Who are the Investment Swindlers?They are a faceless voice on a telephone. Or a friend of a friend. They may perform surgery on their victims' savings from a dingy back office or boiler-room or from an opulent suite in the new bank building. They may wear three-piece suits or they may wear hard hats. They may have no apparent connection to the investment business or they may have an alphabet-soup of impressive letters following their names. They may be glib and fast-talking or so seemingly shy and soft-spoken that you feel almost compelled to force your money on them.The first rule of protecting yourself from an investment swindle is thus to rid yourself of any notions you might have as to what an investment swindler looks like or sounds like. Indeed, some swindlers don't start out to be swindlers. There are case histories in which individuals who held positions of trust and esteem-accountants, attorneys, bona fide investment brokers and even doctors-have sacrificed their ethics for the fast buck of running an investment scam. In still other cases, investment programs that began with legitimate intentions went sour through happenstance or poor management--leading the promoter to mishandle or abscond with investors' capital. Whether an investment is planned as a scam or simply becomes one, the result is the same. This is why, as we will discuss, protecting your savings against fraud involves at least three steps: Carefully check out the person and firm you would be dealing with; take a close and cautious look at the investment offer itself; and continue to monitor any investment that you decide to make. No one of these precautions alone may be sufficient. Who are the Victims of Investment Fraud?If you are absolutely certain it could never be you, the investment swindler starts with a big advantage. Investment fraud generally happens to people who think it couldn't happen to them.Just as there is no typical profile for swindlers, neither is there one for their victims. While some scams target persons who are known or thought to have deep pockets, most swindlers take the attitude that everyone's money spends the same. It simply takes more small investors to fund a large fraud. In fact, some swindlers deliberately seek out families that may have limited means or financial difficulties--figuring such persons may be particularly receptive to a proposal that offers fast and large profits. A favorite pitch is that small investors can become rich only if they learn and employ the investment strategies used by wealthy persons. Naturally, the swindler will teach them! Although victims of investment fraud can differ from one another in many ways, they do, unfortunately, have one trait in common: Greed that exceeds their caution. Plus a willingness to believe what they want to believe. Movie actors and athletes, professional persons and successful business executives, political leaders and internationally famous economists have all fallen victim to investment fraud. So have hundreds of thousands of others, including widows, retirees and working people--people who made their money the hard way and lost it the fast way. |
