Triple Your Money in 30 Days! … and Other Scams You Should Know

What is worse than an economic crunch? People scamming people during the hard times. It’s evil. But it is a scene that keeps repeating itself. Sadly, the victims are often the most financially vulnerable among us: the elderly, pensioners, and employees whose savings and retirement options are their only main assets. We re-visited some of these heart-wrenching stories to remind everyone that scammers will always be among us, dressed in sheep’s clothes as seemingly the promised angel to give us our pot of gold. Caveat emptor—remember, if it’s too good to be true,
IT IS.

Financial Crimes and Scams
USA.gov

Find information on financial crimes investigations, current money scams, phishing scams, tax scams, fraud alerts and more.

The Believers: How America Fell for Bernard Madoff”s $65 billion investment scam by Adam LeBor
theGuardian

The economic crash has had an enormous ripple effect, and one of the millions of lives it changed was that of Bernard Madoff, or “Uncle Bernie” among Jewish America”s super-rich elite.

Underwater
ESPN

After 28 years, David Salinas” financial scams finally caught up with him. An insurance salesman for most of his career, Salinas at some point began taking money from friends and investing it for them.

Victims of Jamaica lottery scams refusing to come forward
Caribbean 360

The research stated that most victims reside in areas of the USA where there is a high Jamaican population, especially New York, New Jersey and Florida; and that victims risk their savings and social security payouts, ostensibly, for large sums of cash they believe they won in a “lottery” or the right to claim the fortune of someone who recently died.

Met advises vigilance after romance scam convictions
Itv

Victims from abroad were befriended through an online dating site and then tricked into sending money to the fraudsters to invest in the business.

FTC Warns That Hurricane Sandy Victims May Face Home Repair Scams Next
equities.com

“…The Federal Trade Commission reminds consumers that scams often follow disasters. The nation’s consumer protection agency warns people about urgent appeals for charitable donations, and cautions residents in stricken areas about fraudulent home repair offers.”

14 years for “financial vampires” in massive home repair swindle
Chicago Tribune

A federal judge… likened two brothers to “financial vampires” and sentenced them to 14 years in prison each for a massive fraud scheme targeting elderly and minority homeowners.

Scam watch: Grandparent scheme, debt collection, investment fraud
Los Angeles Times

According to the indictment, Goyer and his co-defendants called elderly victims in Southern California and invented scenarios involving legal or financial crises they claimed had befallen the grandchildren or other relatives of the victims and instructed victims to wire them money.

Have you or a friend been victimized by a scam? Please share the story to warn others.

By James Anthony

A senior FinancesOnline writer on SaaS and B2B topics, James Anthony passion is keeping abreast of the industry’s cutting-edge practices (other than writing personal blog posts on why Firefly needs to be renewed). He has written extensively on these two subjects, being a firm believer in SaaS to PaaS migration and how this inevitable transition would impact economies of scale. With reviews and analyses spanning a breadth of topics from software to learning models, James is one of FinancesOnline’s most creative resources on and off the office.