Thread: Cut and paste snippets about scams.

Michelle Obama's ID details hacked from data brokers
Michelle Obama The social security numbers of Michelle Obama and many others were stolen from data brokers

Hackers stole millions of social security numbers by cracking open the networks of large US data brokers, reveals an investigation.

The ID details of US First Lady Michelle Obama and many other famous people were exposed by the hack attack.

Journalist Brian Krebs tracked the information back to hackers who ran an online market for confidential data.

He found they got their data by compromising computers sitting on the data brokers' corporate networks.
Deep access

In March, Krebs, as well as the FBI and US Secret Service, started looking into how the exposed.su website was getting hold of social security numbers and other details of many famous Americans.

The mysterious website, which has now been closed down, published confidential information about Bill Gates, Beyonce Knowles, Jay-Z, Ashton Kutcher and many others.

The investigation into exposed.su showed it had bought its information from another site, called SSNDOB, that advertised itself as a market for just such private data. SSNDOB sold data records on individuals for as little as 50 cents (30p). The records of about four million Americans seem to have been accessed via the data-selling site.

In early summer, wrote Krebs in a blogpost, SSNDOB had itself been attacked and its database stolen, copied and widely shared.

Analysis of the SSNDOB database by Krebs and forensic computer expert Alex Holden, of Hold Security, revealed the ID data being sold had come from machines sitting on the internal networks of several American information aggregation firms. Compromised computers or systems at LexisNexis, Dun & Bradstreet and Kroll were all named by Krebs as the sources of the data.

In the commercial world, the three firms are well known for providing businesses with data about potential commercial partners and customers. The open access the hackers enjoyed meant they could run their own queries about individuals via the databases of the three firms.

"All three victim companies said they are working with federal authorities and third-party forensics firms in the early stages of determining how far the breaches extend," wrote Krebs on his blog.

LexisNexis issued a statement denying that its information was exposed.

"To date [we] have found no evidence that customer or consumer data were reached or retrieved," said the statement.

A spokeswoman for the FBI told Reuters it was investigating the breaches identified by Krebs but would give no more details.

BBC News - Michelle Obama's ID details hacked from data brokers

SCAMMER rbtbales@yahoo.com

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List of Fake Job Scam Examples
Avoiding Fake Job Scams

By Alison Doyle, About.com Guide
Ads:


"List of Fake Job Scam Examples"

Watch Out for Fake Job Scams

There are many scams that involve fake job listings. With a fake job scam, a scammer lists a job, but the job doesn't really exist.

The scammer uses the job listing to get job seekers to provide personal information including their social security number, credit card information, and/or bank account information. The information is then used to access your bank account or your credit cards and/or to steal your identity.

In addition, fake job scams often attempt to get job seekers to wire money from their bank, send money via Western Union or otherwise send money to the scammer.

Some of these job scams were on Craigslist. However, Craigslist isn't the only job site where there are scam job postings or where your email address may be collected in order to attempt to scam you.

Fake Job Scam Examples

Credit Report Scam
Here's an email sent to a Craigslist applicant: Company would like to take this moment to thank you for your response to our Craigslist job posting, as well as inform you that, after reading through your resume, we are interested in discussing this job opportunity with you in person. In order to proceed to the next step of the hiring process you will need to get your credit score checked. The applicant is directed to a website where they will input personal information including name, address, social security number, etc.

Fake Job Application Scam
This email asks to complete a job application application online. The link takes you to a website where you are to fill out all info needed to steal your identity. The email says: We look forward to reviewing your application and bringing you in for an interview, but can not do so until you complete our company application.

Pay for Background Check Scam
With this scam, a job seeker is told a position has just opened up and an over the phone interview is conducted. The applicant is notified that they would be responsible for the cost of the background check. Then the applicant is told that they have to purchase pre-paid $75 Visa debit card and send it to the interviewer to pay for the background check.

Pay for Software/Programs Scam
The company ask applicants to set up a Yahoo Messenger account for the job briefing and interview. The company then explains that the applicant will need to buy programs in advance and say they will reimburse the candidate.

Bait and Switch Scam: PR/Marketing
This job description isn't what it seems: Start entry-level, develop transferable skills, work with the world's leading corporations, advance to new positions, make money, and along the way figure out what you really want to be when you grow up. The job is actually door to door sales.

Pay for Training Materials Scam
The company asks candidates to complete interview tasks such as testing on accounting questions. Then they will tell you that they are going to set you up with software so you can work at home. Instead of a package they send a cashier's check. They ask the applicant to deposit the check into their bank then withdraw funds, and then send those funds Western Union to get the "training" materials.

Pay for Online Training Scam
In this scam, the job seeker receives an email from a person about a job they applied for that was filled. They had another job that the person was qualified for, but they had to pay to do some online training. This scam used the name of a legitimate company and an email address similar to the real company name.

Direct Deposit Before Interview Scam
The applicant is offered the job via email and told that all employees are paid via Direct Deposit with the company's banking institution - no additional cost for you. The applicant is sent to a website to sign up and told: "After registering your Direct Deposit confirmation, please respond back to this email with your ideal interview date/time. Remember, you need your Direct Deposit account info prior to your interview, as we will be processing your payment information at that time."

Trial Employment Scam
The applicant is told that they were selected as one of two people to go through a three week trial period. The name of the company and the website seem legitimate, but they ask you to fill out a contract with personal information including your Social Security number.

How to Avoid Job Scams
As you can see, it can be hard to tell if a job is a scam or legitimate. Here's how to avoid scams, how to check out companies and jobs, and what scams to watch out for when you are job searching.

How to Report a Scam
If you've been taken advantage of, here's how to report a scam, along with the information you will need to file a report and here's how to add a scam to our list of job scams.

Disclaimer:
You may see advertisements for work at home jobs on this page, because that's the topic of the article. Just because you see an ad here, that doesn't make it a legitimate company. Carefully investigate companies that you are interested in.

List of Fake Job Scam Examples

Obamacare scams start in full this week. This is the official US government website. www.HealthCare.gov,

I would consider any calls or emails to be scams, people also need to be aware of fake websites.

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http://www.bbb.org/scam-stopper/top-scams.php

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Scammers are constantly changing their tactics. But understanding the science behind their techniques will help protect you against new scams.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) funded research to better understand these tactics. The study found that many of these techniques are similar to marketing approaches used by legitimate businesses.

The difference is that a "hard sell" from a legitimate business may simply mean you end up buying something you didn't really want or need. A scam takes your money and leaves you with nothing.
Establishing a Connection

The first step a scammer takes is gaining your trust.

The scammer wants to build a relationship with you so you will not question his motivations. He may use social media to learn more about you, including a potential "hot button" issue that may elicit a specific response. For example, he may learn that you're single, and he may use that information for his "sales pitch."

Con artists also use a tool called reciprocity. The scammer will extend a small favor to convince you he is a good person and to establish a positive relationship with you. For example, you may meet someone who gives you a tip about a "unique investment opportunity."
What You Can Do

Be cautious about all investment opportunities, business prospects or work-from-home offers. Every investment has risks, but a professional investment broker or advisor is properly licensed. Do your research. If the promised return on investment is too great, that's a red flag. For more information on broker-dealers and registered representatives, visit www.finra.org/brokercheck.

A con artist will attempt to use his friendship with you to overcome your concerns or to discourage you from researching his offer. A true friend would never want you to make a financial investment without allowing you to thoroughly research the opportunity.
Source Credibility

A scammer uses lots of techniques to make herself look credible. She might claim to be from a legitimate business, but uses a fake website, business cards or phone number. The scammer provides the information to potential victims to "prove" that her connection to the trusted business is real.

It's easy to set up a phony website or to get an unregistered cell phone. The scam artist may look and sound so convincing that the victim doesn't feel the need to check out her real qualifications.
What You Can Do

Check out every business by going directly to their website. Do not follow a link in an email. Often scammers will use a website that's similar but not exact- www.wesernunion.com, for example. Type in the URL yourself.

Talk to someone at the business to verify that the scammer is who she says she is. In addition, check out the company's BBB Business Review at our search page. BBB often puts an alert on the report of a business if a scammer has been using a company's good name for disreputable purposes.
Scams that Play on Emotion

Scam artists use emotions to get victims to make quick decisions before they have time to think.

Scam artists prey upon the desire we all have to get rich quickly and easily or to help a loved one in need. They use this impulse to overcome the victim's reasoning, telling the victim that he or she must act quickly.

For example, in the "emergency" scenario, the scam artist calls or emails to tell you that one of your loved ones is in desperate need of money and to send funds immediately. In some cases, the scam artist will pretend to be a grandchild or friend of a loved one. He may tell you he is stranded in another country or that he has been arrested or in an accident and that you need to act immediately. The scammer counts on the fact that emotional decision-making is often not rational.
What You Can Do

Never react quickly to a request for money. Call other family members to investigate if a loved one is truly in need.

If you are presented with a "once in a lifetime" chance at riches, verify the opportunity. If the deal sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

http://www.bbb.org/scam-stopper/the-...e-of-scams.php

Residents in the QCA, including KWQC employees have reported receiving strange automated phone calls on Thursday morning, September 26, 2013.

The Bettendorf Police Department has labeled this as another phishing phone scam.

Officials say various Quad City banks and credit unions have contacted local law enforcement agencies after receiving calls from customers.

The way it works is customers would receive a phone call, either on their landline or cell phone, from someone claiming to be from their bank or credit union.

They are then told that their bank card has been deactivated and they need to enter or say their 16 digit card number and pin number to reactivate the card.

Officials remind bank and credit union customers not to give out personal information, including bank and pin numbers over the phone.

They say if you received this type of call and gave your card and pin information, contact your bank immediately and then the police.

http://www.kwqc.com/story/23538748/p...-scam-hits-qca

You can't even trust a wolf-boy these days.

He duped Berlin’s authorities into believing he was an abandoned and destitute 17-year-old waif who had roamed the woods of central Europe for five years. He spent the next nine months in a social services hostel costing taxpayers more than €30,000 (£25,000), only to be finally unmasked last year.

Robin van Helsum, a 21-year-old Dutch citizen, better known as Germany’s mystery “Forest Boy”, was ordered to do 150 hours’ community service for carrying out his elaborate hoax which kept police, social services and the media guessing for almost a year. He was also ordered to undergo counselling.

Addressing the public outcry over the cost of van Helsum’s care, Berlin court spokesman Tobias Kaehne said that van Helsum would have cost taxpayers a similar sum if he had not lied about his age to gain a place in a hostel for young people. “It would have cost the same if he had just registered as a homeless person,” he said. “He had personal problems and homelessness was an issue”. Van Helsum turned up at Berlin’s town hall in September 2011 sporting a pageboy haircut and T-shirt, equipped with a rucksack, sleeping bag and two-man tent. His first words to officials were: “I am all alone in the world.”

He said that he had lost his memory and knew only that he was 17 and his first name was Ray. He told officials he had roamed the forests of central Europe with his father, “Ryan”, who had subsequently died. He claimed that he had buried “Ryan” under a pile of stones. Police tried but failed to find the body.

Van Helsum’s real name was finally revealed when officials put his photograph online last year on what they assumed was his 18th birthday. A friend identified him almost instantly as 20-year-old van Helsum from the town of Hengelo in the Netherlands.

Van Helsum later revealed that he had amassed more than €8,000 in rent arrears in Hengelo and that his failure to pay up had landed him in a hostel for the homeless. At the same time, he said, he discovered that his ex-girlfriend had become pregnant. “I decided I had to go,” he said.

Buying a one-way train ticket with the last of his savings, van Helsum travelled to Berlin with a friend. After three days he appeared on the doorstep of Berlin’s town hall and told officials his concocted story.

“I knew that if I didn’t, they would send me back to Hengelo,” van Helsum said.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...s-8842338.html

The asking price for the maple dining room set was $175 on Craigslist. But the Florida “resident” sent a check for $1,700 to cover shipping, handling and “trouble,” explaining that the balance could simply be mailed back.

Elizabeth Hill, an 82-year-old Grove City resident and seller of the dining-room set, initially was suspicious.

“I’m hard to scam. I’m very cautious,” said Hill. “I’m a spry old lady.”

But through a series of 32 emails this month, the buyer, who claimed to be hearing-impaired, wore her down, asking such questions as, “Are you a real person?”

“Like they’re checking on me,” Hill said. “Really, they’re clever. They sounded legitimate.”

At one point, Hill had decided to cancel the transaction.

“I thought something was kind of fishy,” she said.

But a follow-up email from the buyer persuaded her to go ahead with the deal, which included having someone picking up the set locally.

The check bounced on Wednesday, Hill learned. Her Western Union money transfer for more than $1,400 — the equivalent of cash — is gone.

The Ohio attorney general’s office has fielded at least 75 similar “overpayment” complaints related to Craigslist since December 2010.

“You’re sending good money in response to counterfeit money,” said spokeswoman Kate Hanson, who works with consumer fraud.

Hill said she was warned, too late, by another Craigslist user that crooks often go after people selling antiques because sellers often are older and can be more open to alternative-payment methods.

“I was devastated,” Hill said. “It shocked me that I had fallen for such a stupid thing.”

She thought she was done with the scam until Thursday, when a second check for $1,700 arrived.

This time she was ready, opening the FedEx package with a rubber glove, not wanting to spoil fingerprints.

“I’d like to get my hands on this person,” said Hill, who retired 20 years ago from a job at Disneyland in California.

Grove City Police Detective Jeff VanBuskirk will meet with Hill but isn’t optimistic. Scammers, he said, use untraceable emails, often operating from public libraries, Wi-Fi hot spots or foreign countries.

Hill’s grandson, Bill Hawk, 42, also feels duped.

“I guess we tried to rationalize what he was doing,” he said of the scammer. “That was our downfall.”

Hill said her own honesty might be to blame.

“I think if I had been dishonest I would have picked up on it being a scam quicker,” she said. “Honest old ladies are sympathetic.”

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stor...heck-scam.html

SCAMMER davidhartner6@gmail.com

Was asked about this too good to be true deal on a Lexus. 100% SCAM, and not even a new one. Almost every SCAM on Craigslist has to have a plausible explanation why the seller is looking to move property fast and cheap. Someone I was reading last night pointed out that if you really want to sell a car fast you can go to just about any auto dealer and make a quick deal. Keeping in mind in this case, the car is priced well. Generally, people who are selling a car themselves are looking for more money than a dealership will give, not a fast deal.

I want to sell it because I'm working on an oil field in Arab Emirates, I have an contract for 2 years here. BS STATEMENT

Just a google search of this alone yields a lot of times this phrase has been used in the past by scammers.

I had a serious buyer before and I lost about 2 weeks waiting for him but I just find out that his loan wasn't approved.

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And this is may be the biggest tell, but Google Wallet appears to be used ONLY by merchants and not in person to person transactions.

I'm currently signed up for a protection program offered by Google Wallet and I would like to close the deal through them.

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Hello ,
Sorry for my late response, I just started to check my email and I wanted to let you know that the Lexus is still available for sale. I'm willing to sell it for $21,500. It's a 2007 Lexus LS460. It has only 55,665 miles. It is fully loaded with HDD Navigation,Keyless Go, Front Climate Seats, Dual power memory seats, Rear View Camera, Nav traffic, Satellite Radio, Bluetooth, Park distance control, Soft Close Doors, Rear power sunshade, Auto dim mirrors, Glass sun/moonroo, Xenon headlights, garage door opener, Lexus Premium sound, Steering wheel controls, power trunk lid,
Dual Zone climate ctrl, Rear Vanity mirrors and much-much more. It's a non smoker car, garage kept, the interior it's almost like new, very well maintained, the paint still shine. Please let me know if you are interested about my car and I'll be more than happy to provide you more details about it.
All the best !
Dave Hartner

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Hello Sir,
This Lexus is in excellent Condition! No scratches or dents. The engine runs like a top. Clean history. Never been wrecked or involved in any kind of accident. It runs and drives very good, needs nothing! Non-smoker car. All scheduled maintenance performed, all service records available. I am the only owner. It comes with a clear and clean title in hand, bill of sale signed by me and notarized and all the paper work. I want to sell it because I'm working on an oil field in Arab Emirates, I have an contract for 2 years here.
I had a serious buyer before and I lost about 2 weeks waiting for him but I just find out that his loan wasn't approved.
I'm currently signed up for a protection program offered by Google Wallet and I would like to close the deal through them. If you are not aware of this program you should know that it will allow you to test drive and inspect the car before paying me. In this way you're not buying something sight unseen. You will have a 5-day inspection period to decide whether you want to keep the car or not.
If we reach an agreement, I'm willing to take care of the shipping because the fee was already paid by me for the other buyer I told you about. The shipping company will not refund me in full but offered to ship the car anywhere within continental US, so it is at their warehouse and it's ready to be shipped anytime. It will be a big advantage for you if you decide to move the car to your location.
Please let me know if you have the funds available. Looking forward for your reply if you are interested in the car and I will send you more details about the deal or car as well. Also I attached you one pictures, if you want to see more just let me know and I'll be more than happy to provide you.
All the best !
Dave

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Google Wallet vehicle purchase scam

You find a cheap car online, and the seller claims that for your protection the purchase will be completed via Google Wallet. The car price is "too good to be true" and the seller claims a need to sell the car quickly because he or she is moving, moving out of the country, being called for military service, getting a divorce, etc. The reality is that there is no car, and you won’t be using Google Wallet. Instead, the seller will send you an invoice that appears to be from Google Wallet, but will instruct you to make the payment via Western Union, Moneygram or bank transfer.

A legitimate Google Wallet transaction will require that you sign in to your Google Account and execute the payment using the Google Wallet interface. Google Wallet does not accept wire transfers/bank transfers or payments via Western Union/Money Gram, nor does it use any escrow type of payment.
Google Wallet used to be called Google Checkout, and some scammers still use the Checkout logo and trademarks in their emails and other communications.

Avoid and report Google scams - Google Help

The IRS and government agencies do not conduct any official business via email.

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Latest Information - Internet Scams - Email Hoaxes - True Stories

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As con men go this guy is somewhat of a peach, he did remodel the homes. One thing that occurs to me in just about every area you can look up the property records online which would show both ownership and tax records. Not a bad way to suss out the true owner of a property.

A New Jersey man scammed families out of thousands of dollars by advertising homes for rent that were actually foreclosed, prosecutors say.

Barton K. Hodge, 37, pretended to be the owner of two foreclosed homes in Roselle, and advertised them to potential tenants as renovated properties, according to Union County prosecutors.

One of the victims, Giselle Bond, told NBC 4 New York she found the listing on Craigslist, where the monthly rental was posted for $1,600 a month. She said Hodge had actually renovated the place, putting in new carpeting, paint and appliances.

Then he had her sign what appeared to be a valid, notarized lease and took a $2,500 deposit.

"He took all the money," she said. "I was paying him rent every month. He took everything."

Prosecutors say Hodge collected more than $15,000 in rent and security deposit from two families over the course of six months. The actual owners of the homes on East Second Avenue and West Fifth Avenue had no idea what was going on.

Bond suspected something was wrong when an overdue gas bill came to the house in the name of the previous owner, and Hodge was suddenly not available to explain it. So she did some homework.

"I went to the city and I pulled records on the house," she said. "I got who is the owner of the house, and the house is a foreclosure house."

After an investigation, Hodge was arrested Tuesday afternoon moments after collecting rent from one of his tenants. He's charged with two counts of third-degree theft by deception and is being held on $50,000 bail.

Attorney information for Hodge wasn't immediately available.

"He has me and my family homeless," said Bond. "I'm practically homeless. I have nowhere to go."

Looking back, Bond says there were some warning signs: Hodge never asked for a credit check or proof of employment. She considers it a lesson learned, but nevertheless feels betrayed.

"He portrayed himself as being a landlord, and he absolutely had nothing," she said. "He's a con artist."

The bank is giving Bond and her two daughters time to find a new home and police will try to get some of the money back to the victims.

NJ Man Poses as Owner of Foreclosed Homes, Bilks Tenants Out of $15,000: DA | NBC New York

I feel bad for these folks as they were not being greedy, but scumbags don't necessarily care they just want your money in their pocket.

Ex-lawyer gets prison for South African Ponzi scheme
Posted to: Business Crime News Suffolk


By Tim McGlone
The Virginian-Pilot
© October 3, 2013

NORFOLK

Brian Ray Dinning, a former tax attorney who admitted running a Ponzi scheme involving gold, diamonds and real estate ventures in South Africa, was sentenced Wednesday to 12½ years in federal prison.

“We are pleased to see justice done today,” said Dan Murrill, who with his wife, Debra, lost their life savings – more than $220,000 – to Dinning with the belief he was setting up a charity for them in Africa.

Dinning, 48, formerly of Suffolk, admitted taking more than $2 million from investors who believed they would be making money off South African real estate and gold and diamond mines while contributing to the protection of wildlife and building churches in poorer areas of that country.

Instead, from 2008 to 2012, he used most of the money for his own benefit, including private school tuition for his children, $10,000-a-month alimony payments and a mortgage on a large Suffolk home.

He also admitted to a separate loan fraud scheme involving $868,000 he borrowed from Village Bank of Midlothian for the Suffolk house and a car. He lied about his finances to get the mortgage and then defaulted on it and gave away the car after he stopped making payments on it. The bank lost more than $200,000 as a result.

U.S. District Judge Raymond A. Jackson sentenced Dinning to more than five years above recommended guidelines and more than what prosecutors had asked for.

The judge cited the fact that Dinning fled to Canada when he learned he was under investigation and then maligned some of his victims with Internet blog postings.

The judge said the “innocent, unsuspecting victims” have “no doubt lost their trust in mankind.”

Dinning apologized before the judge.

“Words cannot adequately express my apologies and my remorse,” he said. “I was wrong, and I take full responsibility.”

He added that in the year he has been in jail, he has lost 40 pounds, his hair and a tooth.

“Those physical things don’t mean nearly as much as the losses I caused all those people,” he said.

The judge was clearly moved by the testimony of Murrill and his wife, who are from western Pennsylvania, and two other victims of Dinning’s scheme.

Dan Murrill said they lost their entire retirement savings, but worse was losing their lifelong retirement dream of doing missionary work in Africa.

“This was our dream come true. This is what we waited our whole lives for,” he said, choking back tears. “This has devastated us spiritually and financially.”

The couple paid Dinning for legal guidance to set up what they intended to be a charity to help orphans in the African country of Malawi. The couple sued Dinning in Norfolk Circuit Court and won a $722,000 judgment for the loss and pain and suffering.

But the judge made it clear that Dinning will likely never be able to pay back much of the $2.3 million in restitution.

Chesapeake resident Mario Blanco, another victim, told the judge about the promises Dinning made to build a church in South Africa in the name of his 16-year-old daughter, who died unexpectedly. He also invested in Dinning’s real estate venture.

Blanco said he made five trips to South Africa looking at the investment property and the hill where the church would be built.

After he saw children kicking a plastic ball, he delivered 100 soccer balls on his next trip.

And when he saw one child kick a ball, “I saw my daughter’s eyes in him,” he told the judge.

“My heart was over there,” he said.

Dinning’s investment plan was legitimate at first.

He started raising money in 2005 for the project, called Hole in the Wall. He planned to build vacation homes fronting the Indian Ocean on lands owned by the government and local tribes and then offer long-term leases for the properties. He also offered investments in gold and diamond mines, in another location.

His brother, Stephen Dinning, testified at the hearing that $600,000 had been spent on infrastructure at the oceanside property. He was living there at the time, working with the South African government and contractors on the project.

But on questioning by Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Haynie, the brother admitted taking some of that money as salary. He just couldn’t say how much.

Brian Dinning’s lawyer argued that a 2½-year sentence with an additional six months of home confinement would be sufficient.

But the judge quickly shot that down.

“You were involved in a massive scheme to defraud,” Jackson said. “The court believes it was just pure greed that drove you to commit these offenses.”

For Blanco, it was a day he had waited years for.

“A dog got what it deserved,” he said afterward.

Ex-lawyer gets prison for South African Ponzi scheme | HamptonRoads.com | PilotOnline.com

A man who thought he'd secured his dream job abroad was left shattered to discover it was all a scam – which cost him €4,000.


Damien Glynn (32), from Oranmore in Co Galway, is warning others to beware after he discovered he had been the victim of a sophisticated fraud.

He had forked out €4,000, given up his job in Ireland and travelled over to Scotland to start his new post on an oil rig when he realised it was a con.

The scam uses information from established companies to offer jobs before conning their victims out of thousands.

It involves fake certificates from the Metropolitan Police, the UK Border Agency, a reputable gas and oil company, and an insurance firm and has already hit dozens of unsuspecting workers.

Mr Glynn, an engineer, had recently retrained to work on offshore rigs for the oil and gas industry when he was targeted. He was offered a post following an in-depth online interview and made arrangements to move to Aberdeen.

In order to secure the post, Mr Glynn was told he had to deal with an "immigration lawyer" to obtain the necessary work documents and an insurance company to receive travel insurance cover.

"I had googled the company and all the details stacked up, right down to the managing director's details," he said.

"The interview questionnaire was very detailed and very much linked to the work I'd be doing. It took four hours to fill out. After they got back to me with an offer, there was a lot of back and forth – up to 50 emails sorting things out.

PERMIT

"I didn't understand why I needed the work permit but it was offshore work so I just went with it. I guess I just wanted to believe it too much."

After forking out £960 for insurance and £815 for a work permit, which came to €2,300, Damien made arrangements to travel to Scotland to take up the post. But he then had to fork out twice for flights after the scam artists cancelled the first meeting at the last minute.

"I left my job in Galway and was arranging to meet with the company director in Scotland. He put me off for a week saying he was away, but I know now the money hadn't gone through at that stage. I booked new flights but once they had the money I couldn't reach them.

Worker conned out of

The Department of Justice has filed felony charges against an East Bay man and his son, in what could turn out to be the largest securities fraud case in California history. At stake is more than $700 million from about 2,800 investors, many of them in the Bay Area.

The ABC7 News I-Team's Dan Noyes first broke the story more than two years ago; he also reported then that the FBI and Securities and Exchange Commission were investigating Walter and Kelly Ng, and finally, the criminal case is moving forward. So many people have lost their life savings.

Walter Ng had no answer in September 2011 when Dan asked him, "Mr. Ng, what do you say to investors who've lost all that money?"


Over the past 35 years, Walter Ng and his son, Kelly, ran a series of limited partnerships -- among them, RE Loans, Bar-K, Inc., and B-4 partners -- that made loans to real estate developers.

The charging document, "the United States of America versus Walter Ng and Kelly Ng," says they, in effect, looted the funds by making repeated cash withdrawals. The Ng's are charged with "structuring transactions for the purpose of evading a reporting requirement;" 11 counts for Walter, 20 for Kelly. Each count carries a possible 10 years in prison and a $500,000 fine.

Investor Dr. Bernard Wittenberg tells the I-Team, "It's been a hell of a long delay."

The 81-year-old is typical of the Ng investors -- he met them through friends and eventually lost more than $400,000. He's had to delay his retirement. He's relieved the Ngs have finally been charged.

"I felt happy at last," Wittenberg said. "I'll be happier when they're sitting in jail and happier yet if they're able to extract anything, but I think we may have lost every penny."

The Ngs also face a civil case from the SEC, accusing them of lying to investors about the health of their funds and "secretly using the assets of a new real estate fund to rescue an older, rapidly collapsing fund."

And attorney Richard Brown is leading a class action lawsuit; he thinks the Ngs and others involved in the funds may face additional charges.

"I think there will be more criminal charges to come," Brown said. "I think during this period when the Ngs were skimming the money, the people who were supposed to be watching over them, their lawyers, accountants and bankers were not doing their jobs."

The Ngs are set for arraignment in one month; Dan Noyes will be there to cover it. Walter Ng's attorney declined to comment Thursday, and Kelly Ng's lawyer did not call back. Now that they are charged, an IRS rule from the Bernie Madoff case comes into play -- investors may be able to deduct up to 95 percent of their losses.

I-Team Exclusive: Charges in massive investment fraud case against Walter Ng | abc7news.com

MILWAUKEE (WITI) — Think about the people you trust the most: your spouse, your doctor, your mother. Would you put your pastor or priest on that list? One man did, and ended up getting scammed.

“I entrusted an individual based on who he was, and I should never have done that,” an anonymous fraud victim says.

That individual was a minister, who led the man to believe he knew of an investment that was a sure thing.

“It was very disappointing and hurtful too. I pulled some of my family into this and some extended family members,” the fraud victim says.

Postal inspectors say the scheme started in 2008, when a group of individuals posing as an investment company claimed…

“They were mining gold, oil and other metals of that sort. The stock shares started at $100,” U.S. Postal Inspector Dennis Cunningham said.

The truth was, it was all a scam!

“They indicated that they had mines in Africa, that they were mining gold, silver, diamonds and they didn`t really have access to any of those mines,” Cunningham said.

The bogus investment group initially held seminars in libraries, and then started talking to church groups.

“They got a lot of ministers involved — openly recruiting. In fact, several ministers entered guilty pleas for conspiracy in the case,” Cunningham said.

In all, there were 2,000 victims and more than $7 million in losses.

One of those ministers helped rope the victim and family members into investing thousands.

“I know now even with men of God – you still have to be mindful and investigate whatever you`re investing in – do a thorough investigation,” the fraud victim says.

“Research that company. Check BBB in that state. Check to see if there are any complaints filed against them,” Cunningham said.

In fact, postal inspectors say a call to state officials could have been beneficial.

“The secretary of state had an open investigation in this case,” the fraud victim says.

All investments take a risk. FOX6′s Contact 6 advises taking the time to thoroughly research the company or people who want you to invest.

Man gets scammed after agreeing to minister’s investment scheme | FOX6Now.com

There are quite a few bank phishing scams going on right now.

Coast360 Federal Credit Union has recently received reports of a suspected phishing scam, according to a press release.

The credit union confirmed an email with the subject “Online Banking Security Alert” was a phishing scam and warns members and residents to receive the email to ignore and delete it.

Phishing is the attempt to defraud an online account holder of financial information by posing as a legitimate company.

The email purporting to be from Coast360 is from a fraudulent source and considered highly sophisticated, according to the press release.

“The message claims that a billing error has been detected and requests for the customer to log on using a provided link to update account information,” the release stated. “In the email, the perpetrators mask their fraudulent website link with the credit union’s website URL. The link opens a fraudulent site that looks very similar to Coast360’s online banking page.”

Coast360 advises that if a person has opened the link in the email or entered information into the fraudulent website, call the credit union immediately.

Coast 360 offers these tips for safeguarding your information:

--Coast360 will never call, email, or otherwise contact you and ask for your username, password or other online banking credentials.

--Coast360 will never contact you to ask for your credit or debit card number, PIN or 4-digit security code.

UPDATE: Coast360 warns members and residents about a recent phising scam | Pacific Daily News | guampdn.com

Business owners, watch out! Scammers are invoicing companies for online ads they never placed and using the Yellow Pages name to lend them credibility.


Sample scam invoice (From ripoffreport.com)
How the Scam Works:

You are at work. You receive a call from someone representing a website, which they claim is an online version of the Yellow Pages. The caller says he is updating the directory and asks you some basic information, such as your office's address, telephone number and email. After you answer, the representative repeats the information back to you, and you confirm the listing.

A few weeks later, your office receives an invoice for several hundred dollars for an ad from the Yellow Pages online directory. But you never agreed to that!

When you call to complain, the representative says that you verbally confirmed the placement. He or she even plays back a spliced version of your previous conversation. The altered recording makes it sound like you were agreeing to place an ad, when you were really saying "yes" to the listing information.

How to Protect Yourself Against This Scam:

Hang up. Don't confirm information from unknown callers. This just gives the scammers something to use against you.
Remember, the Yellow Pages name and logo is not trademarked. Scammers are able to use the name and "walking fingers" icon to lend credibility to their scam. They are not affiliated with the famous phone directory.
Don't trust Caller ID. Scammers have technology that lets them display any number or organization name on your screen.
File a complaint with the BBB. BBB has resolved hundreds of complaints against business have been accused of this scam. Go to bbb.org to file a complaint.

For More Information


For more information about this scam and an interview with the CEO of the BBB Serving Greater Washington D.C. check out this news story.

To find out more about scams, check out the BBB Scam Stopper.

It's almost over.

It's ending with a whimper, not a bang. One by one, the last of the cold-calling retail brokerage firms are fading away. The game that Jordan Belfort invented twenty years ago had managed to adapt since Stratton Oakmont's shuttering, but even adaptation has it's limits. These firms are going away.

Starting a cold-calling brokerage firm used to be easy - all you needed was the Lehman telemarketing script, a b-d license and a room full of testosterone-poisoned young men from Long Island or the outer boroughs of New York City that you could manipulate into thinking that they had any ability to make "clients" money. The hard part was keeping the shop open once the arbitration awards and investigations began piling up.

Given the horrifically conflicted business model and abominable standard of care, I'm actually surprised any of these firms have lasted even this long. But there are still a few alive and kicking, and those brokers who are still playing continue to find each other in these last refuges. They all know each other from in and around "the business." They can trace their lineages back to the same "senior brokers" for whom they once cold-called or "popped new accounts."

The few brokers who haven't racked up too many regulatory disclosures are somehow able to keep finding midwesterners or southerners who still answer a landline telephone and are too polite to hang up. Somehow, these brokers are still persuading people to send them money to churn.

But it's getting harder. The Internet has made it so everything being said during a stock pitch can be verified in seconds. The cost of trading is now zero, which makes it difficult to justify 3% commissions and outrageous "handling" fees on trade confirmations. And besides, people just don't pick up the phone anymore. Hard to "pound" a prospect or "take him to the mat" over text or email. Telemarketing of stocks requires the kind of emotional give-and-take that requires a phone conversation - and who has time for that these days?"

The Wall Street Journal just did a massive analysis of all the broker-dealers that have been shutdown over the last seven years using publicly-available disciplinary records. The reporters were able to quantify this diaspora of brokers leaving and then finding each other again as the industry spread and then shrank back down. It's truly fascinating...

The Journal's analysis reveals some of the nationwide migratory patterns of brokers associated with firms having troubled regulatory records. These brokers often remain in the industry after working at firms expelled by regulators, in some cases after the brokers accrued numerous arbitration claims or declared multiple bankruptcies.

To identify firms Finra has expelled, the Journal reviewed 105 monthly disciplinary reports the regulator published since 2005. Through the end of 2012, it said it had expelled 173 firms for problems ranging from a firm's failure to pay regulatory fines to fraud involving individual brokers.

At least 5,054 brokers who worked at these defunct firms were still licensed to sell securities earlier this year, the Journal analysis shows. Of those, 610 had worked at more than one firm Finra had expelled.

"Migratory patterns" is a polite way of putting it. I'd phrase it differently. I'd call it the Last Stand. They're on the run now with very little reason for the business itself to even exist. The last bastions of brokering, even if they could hire whoever's left, will be under more scrutiny than ever before and will likely not be able to withstand it.

Susan Axelrod, Finra's executive vice president of regulatory operations, told the Wall Street Journal that "We are watching broker migration with a laser focus." When your business, at it's most basic, is harmful to your customers and practically guarantees their eventual dissatisfaction, a "laser focus" is the very last thing you need.

Source:

More Than 5,000 Stockbrokers From Expelled Firms Still Selling Securities (Wall Street Journal)

Read more: Boiler Room Diaspora | The Reformed Broker

This presents an interesting legal discussion at the supreme court level. From a scam standpoint, unless you are super wealthy and I mean super, then hearing offshore investment means scam or the IRS going to hunt you down. While their are some exceptions to this, not too many and certainly none if you are hearing about it on the web or at the local hotel.

High court hears tale of Stanford's Ponzi scam
Richard Wolf, USA TODAY 4:13 p.m. EDT October 7, 2013
Issue: Can third parties be sued for Texas tycoon's $7 billion fraud?
STANFORD CHEATERS

Defrauded investors have sued insurers, law firms, others
Congressional law passed in 1998 precludes most class actions



WASHINGTON — Investors who lost their life savings in convicted Texas financier R. Allen Stanford's $7 billion Ponzi scheme got their day in court Monday on the first day of the Supreme Court's 2013 term, but it was unclear whether their plea will pay dividends.

Unable to recover their investments from Stanford or his fraudulent entities, including a bank based in Antigua, the plaintiffs filed class-action lawsuits in state and federal courts in Texas and Louisiana. But a law passed by Congress in 1998 was intended to preclude such lawsuits and assert federal jurisdiction.

Faced with conflicting lower court rulings, the Supreme Court must decide whether to side with the defrauded investors or the financial institutions, law firms and insurance companies accused of aiding Stanford's scheme. The federal government, seeking to protect the Securities and Exchange Commission's regulatory authority over security fraud claims, is siding with the defendants.

Ironically, the case may hinge on whether the fraud involved "covered securities," which Stanford claimed were standing behind his clients' bogus certificates of deposit. Although that puts the concept of covered securities at the center of the dispute, they were never purchased — a fact that concerned Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, among others.

"It can't be in connection with a purchase or sale that has never occurred," Scalia said.

The court's liberal wing appeared to be sympathetic to the hapless investors, while more conservative justices seemed inclined to side with the defendants and the federal government. That could leave Scalia's literal approach to the law holding the balance of power.

About 25,000 investors were fleeced by Stanford over 15 years before his arrest in 2009 and subsequent conviction in 2012. He is serving a 110-year federal prison sentence in Florida.

High court hears tale of Stanford's Ponzi scam

This is a great read for investors of all stripes. Futures trading of all stripes has a checkered past, with very few doing it well. Of course it is often used by ponzi scammers in an effort to explain super returns, not a day goes by that I don't get several emails promising me the moon and stars. But there is another side of the investment community that is legitimate, but packed with excessive fees that will rob you of returns.


The pitch was enticing. At a time when the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index had suffered a decline of 41 percent in the previous three years, Morgan Stanley (MS) was offering its clients the possibility of some relief.
Ken Steben, a CTA who markets futures funds, says the industry can confuse financial advisers.

Keith Campbell started a fund with fees that consumed 93 percent of all gains in the past decade.

In a prospectus, the New York securities firm invited its customers to put their money into a little-known area of alternative investing called managed futures.

“If you’ve never diversified your portfolio beyond stocks and bonds, you should know about the powerful argument for managed futures,” the bank wrote. “Managed futures may potentially profit at times when traditional markets are experiencing losses.”

Morgan Stanley presented a chart telling investors that over 23 years, people who put 10 percent of their assets in managed futures outperformed those whose investments were limited to a combination of stocks and bonds, Bloomberg Markets magazine will report in its November issue.

Clients jumped in. During the decade ended in 2012, more than 30,000 investors entrusted Morgan Stanley with $797 million in a managed-futures fund called Morgan Stanley Smith Barney Spectrum Technical LP. The fund already had $341.6 million invested during the previous eight years.

Top fund managers speculated with that cash in a wide range of asset classes. In that period, the fund made $490.3 million in trading gains and money-market interest income.
No Gain

Investors who kept their money in Spectrum Technical for that decade, however, reaped none of those returns -- not one penny. Every bit of those profits -- and more -- was consumed by $498.7 million in commissions, expenses and fees paid to fund managers and Morgan Stanley.

After all of that was deducted, investors ended up losing $8.3 million over 10 years. Had those Morgan Stanley investors placed their money instead in a low-fee index mutual fund, such as Vanguard Group Inc.’s 500 Index Fund, they would have reaped a net cumulative return of 96 percent in the same period.

The “powerful argument” for managed futures turned out to be good for brokers and fund managers but not so good for investors.

In the $337 billion managed-futures market, return-robbing fees like those are common. According to data filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and compiled by Bloomberg, 89 percent of the $11.51 billion of gains in 63 managed-futures funds went to fees, commissions and expenses during the decade from Jan. 1, 2003, to Dec. 31, 2012.

Fees: $1.5 Billion

The funds held $13.65 billion of investor money at the end of last year, according to SEC filings. Twenty-nine of those funds left investors with losses.

The $8.3 million loss in Morgan Stanley’s Spectrum Technical fund over a decade pales in comparison to an aggregate deficit of $1 billion in 29 Morgan Stanley and Citigroup Inc. (C) managed-futures funds in the four years ended on Dec. 31, the filings show. Those funds charged investors a total of $1.5 billion in fees.

Morgan Stanley and Citigroup merged their funds’ management in 2009; Morgan Stanley bought out Citi’s share in June.

“The big news here is, the fees are so outlandish, they can actually wipe out all the profits,” says Bart Chilton, one of five members of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Even though the CFTC oversees managed futures, Chilton says he hadn’t been aware of the effects of the high costs for investors.

“We absolutely need to do a better job of letting consumers know in plain English what’s going on,” he says. “Those numbers tell a story. It’s astounding.”
Little Noticed

The impact of high fees on investors has escaped the notice not only of regulators, but also some industry executives.

The Morgan Stanley Spectrum Technical fund was opened in 1994 under the leadership of then-Chief Executive Officer Philip Purcell.

He was succeeded in 2005 by John Mack, who had spent most of his career at Morgan Stanley. James Gorman, who replaced Mack in 2009, joined Morgan Stanley from Merrill Lynch & Co. in 2006.

The prospectus pitching the Spectrum fund, issued in March 2003, said the firm would accept investments as low as $2,000 for individual retirement accounts.

Morgan Stanley’s chief investment strategist, David Darst, who has written a book on managed futures, declined to comment on his firm’s fees. Bank spokeswoman Christine Jockle also declined to comment on the funds referred to in this story.
‘Historically High’

“Fees associated with managed-futures funds across the industry have been historically high,” Jockle says.

Brokers have an incentive to keep clients in managed-futures funds because they receive commissions annually of up to 4 percent of assets invested, prospectuses show. Investors pay as much as 9 percent in total fees each year, including charges by general partners and fund managers.

People put money into managed futures because their brokers recommend them, says Thomas Schneeweis, a finance professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst who was a futures-fund manager from 2004 to 2010.

“Everything is marketing,” he says. “Getting out there and pushing it. These things are sold, not bought.”

Broker pitches that don’t clearly tell investors about the drastic effect of fees should be considered fraudulent, says James Cox, a securities law professor at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.
‘License to Steal’

“Otherwise, the pitch is a half-truth,” he says. The government is to blame for allowing these products to be offered with inadequate disclosure, Cox says. “I would call it a license to steal,” he says.

Because the managed-futures market is opaque and poorly understood, otherwise sophisticated investors often don’t realize how pervasive the profit-eating fees are. The firms marketing the funds are at times also left in the dark. The industry refers to the computers programmed with trading algorithms as black boxes.

Some banks say they can’t see into the boxes of the traders they hired.

“Particularly given the black box character of many managed-futures strategies, it is virtually impossible for the manager to detect strategy changes,” Bank of America Corp. (BAC)’s Merrill Lynch says in an August 2010 SEC registration for its Systematic Momentum FuturesAccess LLC.

The 7,752 investors in that fund faced losses of $135.3 million, after fees, from 2009 to 2012, according to data from Merrill’s SEC filings. Merrill spokesman Bill Haldin declined to comment.
Side Bets

High fees and black boxes are just part of the story. Some funds also allow their managers to make undisclosed side bets by trading ahead of or opposite to the fund’s trades.

Chicago-based Grant Park Futures Fund LP, which is marketed by Zurich-based UBS AG (UBSN), says on page 90 of a 180-page, April 2013 prospectus that David Kavanagh, president of the $660.9 million fund’s general partner, may place such personal trades.

“Mr. Kavanagh may even be the other party to a trade entered into by Grant Park,” it says.

The Grant Park Futures Fund reported a net investor loss of $68.6 million during the decade ended on Dec. 31, after fees and commissions of $427.7 million. Kavanagh, president of Dearborn Capital Management LLC, which manages Grant Park, didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Misleading Numbers

When financial advisers promote managed-futures funds, they often rely on charts produced by a small company in Fairfield, Iowa, called BarclayHedge Ltd. The firm, which has no connection to London-based Barclays Plc (BARC), reports a 29-fold gain through 2012 for managed futures overall since 1980. Those numbers can mislead investors.

BarclayHedge doesn’t deduct billions of dollars of fees charged by funds. It uses only information volunteered by managed-futures traders. Traders can stop providing data if their system starts to lose money or collapses, says BarclayHedge President Sol Waksman.

The BarclayHedge data, even with its flaws, Waksman says, is the industry benchmark. Investors need to look at more than just his index, he says.

“They’ve got to accept some of the blame for going into something without any knowledge,” he says.

Managed-futures funds are a subset of hedge funds. They’re run by so-called commodity-trading advisers, or CTAs, who these days invest largely in financial futures. While hedge funds typically charge a 2 percent management fee and 20 percent of investor profits each year, a managed-futures fund often duns clients 7 to 9 percent of assets invested annually and 20 percent of any profits.
‘Ask Questions’

The National Futures Association, a self-regulatory group, doesn’t require managers to disclose the effects of fees on investor profits over time, says Mary McHenry, an associate director in the NFA’s compliance department.

“We can’t just give investors all the answers,” she says. “It’s important that they ask questions before they invest.”

While brokers commonly promote managed futures as protection against stock market declines, the language in prospectuses belies that notion. Managed futures are noncorrelated; that means their performance doesn’t track that of any other investments, either positively or negatively.

“As a risk transfer activity, trading in commodity interests has no inherent correlation with any other investment,” Grant Park wrote in its February 2013 prospectus. In other words, managed futures behave like a knuckle ball in baseball.
‘Don’t Know’

Players know a knuckle ball isn’t a fastball or a curveball, but beyond that, they don’t know what it will do. A managed-futures fund isn’t a stock or a bond; it may sometimes behave like one -- and sometimes not.

McHenry says she knows that brokers pitch managed futures as protection from stock market declines -- and that fund risk disclosures say there’s no correlation. Asked how those contradictory statements add up, she says, “I don’t know how to answer that question.”

Like hedge funds, managed-futures funds haven’t been required to file with the SEC as a matter of course. However, an SEC rule has mandated that any partnership with more than 500 investors and $10 million in assets -- even a hedge fund -- must file quarterly and annual reports.

The SEC has no category listing managed-futures funds, as it does for mutual funds or corporate filings. Bloomberg Markets culled through thousands of filings in several categories, including one called “SIC 6221 Unknown,” to identify 63 managed-futures funds that reported to the SEC.
T-Bills

While each trading adviser has a different black box, there are similarities in how fund managers approach their jobs. Some of their investments are plain vanilla. They place money from investors into U.S. Treasury bills or other short-term debt. They then use about 15 percent of the funds to buy or sell futures contracts.

They can bet that prices will rise or fall on more than 150 different futures contracts, including those covering stock indexes, government bonds, currencies, interest rates, agricultural commodities, oil and metals.

Treasury bills turn out to be critical. Interest income from T-bills and other debt investments has effectively masked the high fees funds charge their investors. The 63 funds that reported to the SEC collected interest totaling $2.34 billion in the decade from 2003 to 2012.

Without those gains, the combined 10-year earnings of $1.3 billion after fees in the 63 funds would have been converted to a loss of more than $900 million. As interest rates have fallen to historic lows since 2008, managed-futures funds have suffered their largest declines ever.
More Risk

Fund managers amp up the risk in their investments by using leverage. They can buy futures contracts on margin, with down payments as low as 10 percent. A $100 investment in Morgan Stanley’s Spectrum Technical fund, for example, bought $1,000 worth of futures contracts, according to its 2003 prospectus.

By comparison, the New York Stock Exchange requires investors to maintain a minimum margin of 25 percent of the market value of a purchased security.

Even the managed-futures funds that file with the SEC don’t have any obligation to disclose how fees in recent years ate up all trading gains.

The Grant Park Futures Fund filed a prospectus in April to raise $927 million from investors. Although it included the boilerplate language saying substantial fees could offset trading profits, the document doesn’t say that the $25.6 million the fund had gained since 2009 was obliterated by fees. Investors suffered a $223.6 million loss over that period.
Advisers Confused

Ken Steben, who runs a fund, says managed futures can be confusing to both investors and advisers. His Futures Portfolio Fund, started in 1990, gathered $2 billion from more than 17,000 investors during the decade ended on Dec. 31. The fund has been marketed by 140 firms, including San Francisco-based Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC) and Minneapolis-based Ameriprise Financial Inc. (AMP)

It had gross returns of $619.5 million in that decade. Investors paid 86 percent of that amount in fees and commissions, leaving $84.3 million, for a 3.6 percent compounded annual growth rate.

“Most individual investors don’t understand what we’re doing,” says Steben, 58, sitting in the boardroom of his no-frills suburban Steben & Co. office in Rockville, Maryland, in April before the firm moved to Gaithersburg. “In many cases, the financial advisers don’t completely understand it.”
Individuals Pay

While pension funds, college endowments and other institutions invest in managed futures, individuals bear the brunt of the fees.

Institutions that invested at least $1 million with London-based Winton Capital Management Ltd., one of the world’s biggest CTA firms, received a net total of 11.9 percent from 2009 through 2012, the company reports. Winton charges those investors a 1 percent management fee and 20 percent of profits.

Individuals who invested in the Altegris Winton Futures Fund were less fortunate. Altegris Investments Inc., an alternative investment firm in La Jolla, California, allows clients to come in with as little as $10,000. Altegris collects additional annual fees totaling up to 4 percent, according to SEC filings.

Because of that, some of Altegris’s Winton investors lost 10.1 percent in the same period institutional investors had gains, SEC filings show.

Altegris Executive Vice President Richard Pfister asks, “Are any of these managed-futures funds worth it anymore at these fee levels? Do they make sense?”
1990s Success

One of the biggest and oldest futures managers, Baltimore-based Campbell & Co., did well for investors in the 1990s and early 2000s. Its flagship Strategic Allocation Fund provided a 10.5 percent compounded annual rate of return to investors in its first decade of trading through Dec. 31, 2003.

What followed wasn’t as good. From 2003 to 2012, more than 15,000 investors put a total of $4.5 billion into the fund. Clients were recruited by Merrill Lynch, UBS and other firms. The Strategic Allocation Fund earned $2.43 billion, according to SEC filings.

Those returns shrank to $158.8 million after investors paid fees and expenses of $2.27 billion, equaling 93 percent of the gains. The result was a 0.6 percent compounded annual rate of return for the decade. That compares with 7.1 percent, including dividends, for the S&P 500 during the same period. Campbell closed the fund to new investors in 2008.
‘Outdated, Inaccurate’

Like most managed-futures funds, Campbell develops algorithms for its black box. Those systems are flawed, Campbell tells investors in annual reports.

“A previously highly successful model often becomes outdated and inaccurate, sometimes without Campbell & Co. recognizing that fact before substantial losses are incurred,” the firm wrote. Keith Campbell, founder and chairman of the firm, declined to comment.

The knuckle ball nature of managed futures can flummox even the professionals. Gerald Corcoran, CEO of Chicago-based R.J. O’Brien & Associates LLC, the largest independent futures broker in the U.S., says he recently lost money investing in managed futures. Corcoran, 58, is a director of the Futures Industry Association.

His $25 million RJO Global Trust managed-futures partnership, pitched to retail investors with as little as $5,000 to invest, fell 35 percent during the four years ended on Dec. 31 after gaining 41 percent in 2008. It charges up to 7.25 percent in annual fees.
‘No Question’

“You’re going to lose money in managed futures over the course of a period of time. There’s no question,” Corcoran says. “I mean, I’ve just experienced it myself.”

“I actually would not even encourage most retail investors to be in managed futures,” Corcoran continues. “It’s on the riskier end of the investment spectrum.” He says managed futures serve wealthy investors. “They’re an important part of a diversification of a sophisticated portfolio,” he says.

Keith Stafford, an accountant who specializes in auditing hedge-fund and managed-futures data, says he and his colleagues are constantly amazed by the poor performance of managed futures for individual investors.

“We look at each other all the time and say, ‘Why would anyone invest in this?’” says Stafford, the member in charge of performance analysis at Arthur Bell, Certified Public Accountants, based in Hunt Valley, Maryland. “It’s a racket.”
The CFTC

While managed-futures funds are relatively new, official trading of futures in the U.S. dates back to 1848 at the Chicago Board of Trade -- which became regulated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 1922. The CFTC, formed by an act of Congress in 1974, took on oversight in 1975.

Morgan Stanley was the first firm to allow individual investors to buy into managed-futures partnerships, starting in 1979. Although commodity-trading advisers initially focused on futures tied to physical commodities, such as wheat, corn, oil and gold, most futures trades now cover stock indexes, interest rates or currencies.

Today, CTAs can be based anywhere. Their main assets are computers -- and the people who program them. Bill Dunn, a CTA pioneer, runs Dunn Capital Management LLC from the top floor of a three-story building in Stuart, Florida, alongside the St. Lucie River.

Dunn, 79, who earned a doctorate in theoretical physics from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, in 1966, began trading managed futures for clients in 1974 after a brief career as a consultant to the federal government.
Mainframe Computer

He raised $137,000 from friends and family and used punch cards to build a program to detect profitable market trends and control risk. He purchased processing time on a mainframe computer to run the cards.

High on one wall of Dunn’s windowless trading-room floor, hundreds of red and green numbers blink with currency and commodity prices.

The three traders on duty one March afternoon watch the numbers but don’t make decisions based on them. They leave that to their black box, which makes trading choices on contracts for 53 investments, including the Australian dollar, U.S. Treasury bonds, interest rates, stock indexes, cocoa, copper, live cattle and crude oil.

The so-called box is actually lodged in six computer servers linked by blue and yellow cables. It automatically collects tick-by-tick trading data on all 53 possible trading choices and runs it through hundreds of different models, asking each whether to buy or sell. Then it makes a decision, which it relays to the human traders.
‘Your Orders’

“In minutes, you have your orders for the day,” Dunn says.

Dunn doesn’t cater to most retail investors; he requires a commitment of at least $100,000. He boasts a 13.2 percent compounded annual rate of return over the past 29 years, after a 25 percent fee taken from profits. He charges no management fee.

“I think investors are very comfortable knowing that if they’re having bad times, we’re having them as well,” says Dunn, who sports a shaved head and neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper goatee. “We’re in the same boat.”

In a practice more typical of the industry, Morgan Stanley’s profits aren’t dependent on investors’ making money.

The firm’s 220,000 clients that purchased the 13 funds started by Morgan Stanley and are included in SEC filings paid a total of $2 billion in fees, commissions and expenses during the decade ended on Dec. 31. (The bank opened four of those funds after 2003.)
13 Funds

Investors lost money in seven of the 13 funds, SEC filings show. Spectrum Technical performed well during its first eight years, starting in November 1994. Its investors received a compounded annual return of 7.9 percent in that period. In the decade ended on Dec. 31, 2012, the fund had no gain. Morgan Stanley closed the fund to new investors in 2008.

The worst of the 13 funds was the Managed Futures Premier BHM Fund, which was started in November 2010. It had a compounded annual return of negative 11.7 percent over two years and two months. Five of the six gainers had compounded annual returns below 1 percent.

The best performer, the Morgan Stanley Smith Barney Spectrum Strategic Fund, had a compounded annual return of 2.1 percent during the decade ended on Dec. 31. By comparison, the Fidelity Money Market Fund gained a compounded annual return of 2.9 percent in the same period.

Morgan Stanley runs its managed-futures funds through a subsidiary, Ceres Managed Futures LLC. That was previously a joint venture with New York-based Citigroup. The two top-performing Citi funds, now managed by Morgan Stanley, were energy-focused investments that returned 14.2 percent and 14.8 percent compounded annually in the decade ended on Dec. 31.
Cautions Investors

Citigroup spokeswoman Shannon Bell declined to comment.

Darst, Morgan Stanley’s chief investment strategist, cautions investors about the cost of managed futures in his 2013 book, “Portfolio Investment Opportunities in Managed Futures” (John Wiley & Sons).

Darst, interviewed in April, says investors shouldn’t pay more than 2 to 3 percent in annual fees for managed-futures funds. He says even that’s steep compared with other investments.

“It’s higher,” he says. “That’s something you’ve got to be upfront with people about. This is not a bargain-basement kind of thing.”

He says investors should ask questions about fees before buying managed futures.
Double, Triple

Most Morgan Stanley funds impose annual fees that are double -- some are triple -- Darst’s suggested level. Morgan Stanley funds generally charge 6 to 9 percent of assets in annual fees. Darst declined to answer follow-up questions about his firm’s fees.

Even if an investor understands the effect of fees on returns, it’s impossible to avoid a potential conflict of interest between investors and fund managers. Such risks are explained deep in prospectuses or SEC filings.

Morgan Stanley cautions that employees of the general partner and trading advisers may buy futures for their own accounts, in competition with investors. Clients will never know, the 2008 Morgan Stanley Spectrum Technical fund prospectus says. That’s because those trading records are kept secret from investors.

“As a result, you will not be able to compare the performance of their trading to the performance of the partnership,” the prospectus says.
Lowering Fees

Morgan Stanley spokeswomanJockle says the firm’s managed-futures funds performed well during the stock market plunges that began in 2000 and late 2007. The funds overall gained 22.5 percent after fees in 2008. The bank sells only to investors it deems qualified, and it clearly defines risks and fees, she says.

Morgan Stanley is lowering fees for its new funds, she says. She declined to comment about conflicts of interest.

So incomplete are the disclosures for managed-futures funds that investors, referred to as limited partners, sometimes can’t even find out the names of the people managing them. BlackRock Inc. (BLK), the world’s biggest money manager, refused to name the CTAs it hired for the BlackRock Global Horizons I partnership, even after the SEC requested that information in 2009.

“We do not believe that disclosure of the trading adviser identities would be material to limited partners,” New York-based BlackRock wrote to the agency on Oct. 27, 2009.

The SEC persisted.

“Because your trading advisers manage your assets, it appears that the identity of these persons is material,” the SEC wrote back.
Investor Losses

Five weeks later, BlackRock began making the disclosures. The fund lost $10.2 million for investors in the decade ended on Dec. 31, after paying fees, commissions and expenses of $170.3 million.

“We maintain an open disclosure with the fund’s accredited investors and regularly provide them with insight into who we are investing with,” says BlackRock spokeswoman Jessica Greaney.

The world’s largest futures exchange by trading volume entices individual investors to put money into managed futures by painting a glowing picture.

“Over the past few decades, managed futures have consistently outperformed asset classes such as stocks,” CME Group Inc., which owns the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, wrote in a brochure.

CME Group, which says the managed-futures market holds $337 billion in assets, points to 2008 as a banner year for managed futures, saying these funds do well during stock market declines.
‘Short Selling’

“They employ short-selling and options strategies that allow them to profit in such markets,” the CME brochure says.

When the S&P 500 plunged 37 percent in 2008 because of the global financial crisis, BarclayHedge reported a gain of 14 percent in managed futures.

CME, which also owns the Chicago Board of Trade and the New York Mercantile Exchange, omits two key facts from its promotional material. By using BarclayHedge data, CME masks vast extra fees paid by fund investors.

And CME says managed futures outperformed stocks. But from 2003 through 2012, the S&P 500 delivered more than twice the gains of the BarclayHedge CTA Index -- 98.6 percent compared with 47.9 percent.

In a written response to questions from Bloomberg Markets, CME says that although the S&P 500’s return was higher, managed futures performed better because they were less volatile. “Outperformance is more than raw returns,” it says.
CME Income

Since most such funds don’t file results publicly because they have less than 500 investors and CME cites the BarclayHedge index in its brochure, there’s no way to independently verify whether managed futures are more or less volatile than stocks.

CME Group makes money from managed-futures trades. CTAs are important to CME’s bottom line, says Kelly Brown, a managing director of the exchange operator, who declined to provide exact figures.

“CTAs are kind of the backbone of the exchange,” he says.

No matter how good a CTA’s track record is, even some of the best can fall from grace quickly. John Henry, 64, the principal owner of the Boston Red Sox and the Liverpool Football Club, opened John W. Henry & Co. in 1980. Henry’s Financial and Metals Portfolio earned 19.8 percent compounded annually for the 27 years ended in 2011, when it closed.

Citigroup hired Henry to manage at least four funds. Citi shut down three of those in 2007 after they each plunged more than 44 percent in three years. The fourth, Westport Futures Fund, gained $40.7 million in the decade ended on Dec. 31.

Those earnings were more than erased by $73.8 million of fees. Henry declined to comment.
Investor Misimpressions

In the secretive world of managed futures, managers often keep millions of dollars of investment gains even as their clients suffer losses. And hype by brokers routinely gives investors misimpressions.

One improvement for investors would be a mandate that managers clearly explain in writing how severely fees have consumed returns over time.

“We don’t have a requirement where they have to present that information,” says the National Futures Association’s McHenry. “That would be valuable.”

It would also create a quandary for the managed-futures industry. If fund managers and brokers told investors the whole truth, they might lose the very people who make their business so profitable.

Editors: Jonathan Neumann, Gail Roche

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jonathan Neumann at jneumann2@bloomberg.net.

How Investors Lose 89 Percent of Gains from Futures Funds - Bloomberg

This is a good show for people who like to learn about scams, American Greed and American Greet the Fugitives. Current season on CNBC and some older episodes on line. CNBC's American Greed: Scams, Schemes, and Broken Dreams

John Mark Moore's in-laws didn't suspect a thing. Not even when Moore repeatedly forged their signatures. According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, the couple, two well-respected California farmers, had no clue their son-in-law was increasing their business lines of credit so he could draw down millions in loans—for himself.

At the same time, Moore persuaded his in-law's friend and business associate—known in court documents only as GLM—to invest more than $12 million in a series of ranching and farm ventures that never materialized.

Moore, convicted of fraud, will begin a hefty prison sentence this November. But the story is cautionary: When a scam slams you, you'll never even see it coming. And a new report suggests that Americans may be more vulnerable to fraud than they think. A 2013 report from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) Investor Education Foundation shows just how susceptible we really are.

"Even with all the attention paid to recent frauds like the Madoff scheme," said Gerri Walsh, president of the FINRA Investor Education Foundation, "we're still seeing investors solicited in high measure—and they are not able to recognize the classic red flags!"

What qualifies as a red flag? Interest rates that are too good to be true—like 2 percent a day. (According to FINRA, 2 percent a day would turn $10,000 into about $1.4 million in just one year!) "Guaranteed" investments. And the most appealing red flag tested: Outperforming the Dow Jones!

FINRA's fraud susceptibility research reveals some surprising facts. For example, the more educated and wealthier you are, the more likely you are to invest in a potentially fraudulent scheme. And men, because they are generally less risk averse, are more vulnerable than women.

Other findings are sad but not so surprising: Americans over 65 years of age are 34 percent more likely to lose money to fraud than their under-50 counterparts.


Of course, it's especially hard to spot fraud when it comes from someone you trust. A family member or a friend, or perhaps someone from your church or Facebook tells you about a great investment. Everybody's getting in on it! Or maybe it's a loved one just asking for help: a loan. It all seems upfront and good … until you find out you've been scammed.

One in 6 respondents to the FINRA study said they had suffered a significant financial loss by being taken advantage of by a family member. Fraud and loss courtesy of friends runs at about the same rate. And 34 percent of respondents who had lost money in a fraud were introduced to the seller through a friend; 8 percent were introduced to the seller in a social situation.

Victims of fraud perpetrated by a family member are more likely to have modest incomes. Such were the relatives of master fraudster John Ruffo. As reported by CNBC's "American Greed: The Fugitives," even after Ruffo got caught defrauding seven banks out of $350 million, he wasn't finished breaking hearts. Next, he turned to his relatives.

"He was really good at keeping secrets," Ruffo's ex-wife, Linda Lausten, told "American Greed." When bail was set at $10 million, Lausten, his elderly mother and five of his aging aunts and uncles put up their homes as collateral. "There are all these little people, elderly people, so innocent and naïve," said Lausten. "And we just signed away everything."

Two years later, Ruffo, convicted and sentenced to 17 years in federal prison for the biggest bank fraud of the decade, failed to surrender to serve his sentence. He ran—knowing his wife, mother and relatives would all forfeit their homes. His mother died in a nursing home; she never saw him again.

Even Ruffo's attorney couldn't believe the extent of Ruffo's treachery. "To this day," Judd Burstein told "American Greed," "it astounds me that somebody would do something like that and that to me is really pure evil."

"It was a very selfish act," Deputy U.S. Marshal John Noel told CNBC. Ruffo is still a fugitive, and Noel, the case agent, is still searching for him. "I wish I could give it 110 percent of my time."

For anybody who cares about investing, protecting yourself from skillful hucksters can be tough. "Fraudsters who are 'good' at their game will put you into a heightened emotional state," said Walsh. They talk excitedly and create a feeling of pressure. "They aim to move you from the rational side of your brain to the emotional side."

Slow down, advises Walsh. "Don't make snap decisions. Ask questions to take charge of the conversation." And above all, said Walsh, stay rational.

—By Celia Watson Seupel, Special to CNBC

Fraud: How susceptible are you?

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Now to matters of personal finance. But actually, today, we want to talk more about a common scheme or scam, depending on your point of view, that ensnares thousands of college students every year. Now you figure, if you've made it to college you'll probably be pretty smart, and you figure a college student could smell a pyramid scheme a mile away, but you might be amazed at how often the, quote, amazing business opportunity that their peers want to get them into turns out to be a scam or at best a scheme that costs more in time and money than it earns. That's the situation Darrin Moret found himself in as a freshman in college, and he decided to write about it for Zocalo Public Square so others can learn from his experience. And he is with us now. Darrin, thank so much for joining us.

DARRIN MORET: Thanks for having me.

MARTIN: Also joining us is Sheryl Harris. She's a consumer columnist for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland. She's reported on financial scams over the years. Welcome to you, thank you so much for joining us.

SHERYL HARRIS: Thank you for having me on.

MARTIN: So, Darrin, tell us what happened. It started with a pretty girl, as I understand it.

MORET: Yeah, well, yeah, that's a moniker I would use to describe her. But, basically, a classmate of mine approached me - this was freshman year of college - and approached me with what she called a business opportunity, or a project that she would like me to check out with her and some other people that she brought along as potential recruits. After going to a meeting, which was held at a hotel near LAX airport, we were given a sales pitch for a company selling legal insurance.

The premise was that if you pay a certain amount per month, then you have legal insurance on call whenever you like. And you also get to recruit people in your social network - your friends, family - and then you get a percentage of whatever they bring in. And so starts your business. Your own business.

MARTIN: And so what was attractive about it to you?

MORET: Well, the way they market it was something that you basically - an opportunity to earn passive income. Meaning that you don't have to work a certain amount of hours to get a certain amount of pay. This is the kind of pay that once you start recruiting these people, the checks just kind of more or less roll into your bank account.

MARTIN: Yeah, you're earning money while you sleep. So when did you figure out or when did you start to believe that this wasn't exactly the great deal that you had hoped it would be?

MORET: I would say very shortly after I joined. In fact, my total involvement with this company didn't last more than about a week. However, it was a bunch of small red flags here and there. The first red flag, which I should have picked up initially, was the buy and entry cost for this company was - I want to say it was $125 and then they said that the price would be raised if you didn't sign up the very same evening of the event.

The second thing is once they actually got me as a member, there was very little mention of the actual sale of this supposed legal service. It is an actual legal service, don't get me wrong, but at the same time, it was very apparent that the focus was not on selling memberships to consumers but just recruiting more and more people underneath me to build up my business, for better lack of terms.

MARTIN: OK, you decided after a certain point this was not for you. Did they let you go willingly or did they try to argue with you when you decided that you'd had enough?

MORET: They let me go easily. Basically, he was trying to give me a fatherly pep talk about how, you know, if I quit everything before - just after I start I'll never get anywhere. Something to that effect.

MARTIN: Oh, wow. Guilt trip. Oh, my goodness.

MORET: I'm probably making it sound a little worse than it was. But something to the effect that, you know, you need to kind of stick with things in order to get ahead.

MARTIN: Let's bring Sheryl into the conversation. You're sitting here with me and I see you nodding at just about everything that Darrin is saying. Heard it before?

HARRIS: It's so classic, because, you know, this one-on-one pitch - hey, I know you, I'm like you. I'm making money, come join me. You can make money, too. You know, going through some network. Student to student. Coworker to coworker. Through a church.

This is - it's all very one-on-one sales. Dragging people to these meetings, and the meetings are usually a frenzy of people standing up and doing testimonials. I made a thousand dollars in just two minutes. I mean, it's high pressure sales. And that's really evident in, you know, buy now. Buy your package now and you can get a discount because later these are going to cost people a lot more money. And, the other classic marker here, is there really aren't sales to the public at large. Your income stream really comes from sucking all these other people that you know in. As many people as you can.

MARTIN: And the obvious question, Sheryl, is, is this legal?

HARRIS: No.

MARTIN: It's not?

HARRIS: Well, there are two things that people get confused. They confuse multilevel marketing and pyramid schemes 'cause they're built a lot the same way.

MARTIN: Yeah, what's the difference? Yeah, what is the difference? Because you notice I was struggling over what term to use. Is it a scam or is it a scheme?

HARRIS: And a lot of times pyramids will call themselves multilevel marketing. But here's the basic difference. In multilevel marketing, yes, you are recruiting other people to work under you and you're getting a cut of their sales. But, the bulk of the money that's coming into the company is from people who have nothing to do with the company. It is to the public at large. I have a product, isn't it great? Would you like to buy it? And the public is buying it. In a pyramid...

MARTIN: I'm thinking of a food storage material that I'm particularly fond of. I think that it's traditionally sold by stay-at-home moms, right?

HARRIS: Right.

MARTIN: It's something that was traditionally sold in that way. That's multilevel marketing.

HARRIS: Exactly.

MARTIN: But it is a real product. And I love it.

HARRIS: And it goes on for years because the products, people swear by them. They don't want to sell them necessarily, but they like to buy them. So, that's multilevel marketing. In a pyramid scheme, you're recruiting all the time. You're getting more people to bring more money in and that's - you have a product because it's usually just a sham product. No one outside really wants it, or you can't really prove the value of it. You don't really know.

But, the people who are buying it tend to be people who are already signed up because the more products they can buy or sell, they even sell to themselves or sell to each other, because the more they can sell, the higher up the pyramid they can move. And the bigger cut of what they're bringing in, they can allegedly receive down the line, so...

MARTIN: So it's based on inflated inventory or inflated value.

HARRIS: Exactly.

MARTIN: Why college students? Are college students the main people who seem to be attracted to this?

HARRIS: No, frankly, I'm appalled to hear that it's on campuses. Although, I know of students who've lost money to these things before. In these schemes.

MARTIN: But you're saying it's not mainly college students or you're saying college students are a ripe target?

HARRIS: They're a ripe target. But you'll also find it among professionals. I wrote about a scam once that happened in - a pyramid in Akron, Ohio and a lot of the people who were going to those meetings and selling the products were cops. I mean, anyone can do it. Professionals, blue-collar workers, just...

MARTIN: Is the idea basically to tap into people's social networks...

HARRIS: Yes.

MARTIN: ...so you can figure out why a student like Darrin or college students like him. So, Darrin, what do you draw from this? What would you like other people to learn from your experience? And you were brave enough to write about it. It's not easy to, sort of, admit one's own failings or mistakes.

MORET: Definitely.

MARTIN: So applause to you for doing that. But what do you want the take away to be about this?

MORET: The take away is, often times, when things seem too good to be true, they almost always are.

MARTIN: Sheryl?

HARRIS: I think that Darrin's experience is rare in that he got his money back. And, what I would like people to know, is once people make that initial investment and they make money, they invariably go look for other funds to sink in because the return looks so great at the beginning. So there are people who've wiped out their college savings accounts, who've wiped out their pensions, who've taken out loans against credit cards and even home equity loans to be part of these pyramids. And, when the pyramid collapses, the losses are huge. So, most people don't get their money back.

MARTIN: Darrin, did you get your money back?

MORET: I did. I canceled my membership within the week and I think there was a weeklong or three-week cancellation period in which you'd actually get reimbursed for whatever the initial startup cost was. I was lucky enough. I turned in the papers and they did send me my $125 check or whatever it was. So I was lucky. Yeah. It was a cheap lesson.

MARTIN: Well, that's great. Darrin Moret is an English teacher. He joined us from Hsinchu City, Taiwan, where he is working now and presumably keeping his money in his bank account where it belongs. Darrin, thank you so much for joining us.

MORET: You're welcome.

MARTIN: Sheryl Harris is a consumer columnist for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, Ohio. And she was kind enough to join us in our Washington, D.C. studio. Sheryl, thanks so much for joining us.

HARRIS: Thank you.

Pyramid Schemes: If It Looks Too Good To Be True, It Probably Is : NPR

SCAMMER tacywilliams@gmail.com

Seriously, ever been in the hospital on someone's last days with a pile of money to give away? This email is a bit like saying I have a place a the beach and can't possibly find anyone but some stranger via email to share it with.

I know that this letter may be a very big surprise to you, I came across your email contact from my personal search and I instructed the doctor here in this hospital to help me email you and i believe that you will be honest to fulfill my final wish before i will die.

I am Mrs. Tracy Williams, I am 66 years old, From Mongolia, and I am suffering from a long time cancer of the breast. From all indication my condition is really deteriorating, and my doctors have courageously advised me that I may not live beyond 3 month;This is because the cancer has reached a critical stage.

I was married to late Dr Williams Altangerel, gold & diamond exportation) in Burkina Faso , West Africa , where we live all our Lives for Thirty-two years before he died in the year2004. But is quite unfortunately, He died after a Cardiac Arteries Operation that lasted only for four days.

Since his death I decided not to re-marry, I deposited all the sum of $7.8million dollars with a Bank in Ouagadougou-Burkina Faso, where we spend our life together in Burkina Faso .

Presently, this money is still in their custody, and the management just wrote me as the Legitimate beneficiary to come forward to receive the money after keeping it for so long or rather issue a letter of authorization to somebody to receive it on my behalf since I cannot come over as a result of my illness, or they get it confiscated.

Presently, I’m with my laptop in a hospital where I have been undergoing treatment. I have since lost my ability to do anything myself and my doctors have told me that I have only 3 month to live.

Now that i am about to end the race like this, without any family members and no child. It is my last wish to see that this money is invested, but you will assure me that you will take 50% of the money and give 50% to the orphanages home in your country for my heart to rest.

I want your good humanitarian, to also use this money to fund churches, orphanages and widows around. I must let you know that this was a very hard decision, but I had to take a bold step towards this issue because I have no further option. I hope you will help see my last wishes come true.

As soon as I receive your reply I shall give you the contact of the Bank. I will also issue you a letter of authority which will prove that you are the new beneficiary of my funds, and the documents concerning the deposit. Please assure me that you will act accordingly as I stated herein. Hope to hear from you soonest. I am waiting your response.

Yours Sick Sister in Christ,

Mrs Tacy Williams.

death scam.JPG

Phishing scam warns against phishing scams

By Bruce SterlingEmail Author
October 10, 2013 |
4:14 pm |
Categories: Uncategorized

Follow @bruces

*This fraud is diabolical in its cunning parody of the way that financial service outfits actually speak — in the most tedious and officious way possible.

*If it hadn’t taken the trouble to warn me about phishing scams, I might have clicked it just to see what was going on.

We received your payroll on October 9, 2013 at 4:54 PM.

Attached is a copy of your Remittance. Please click on the attachment in order to view it.

Please note the deadlines and status instructions below:
If your payroll is received BEFORE 5 p.m., your Direct Deposit employees will be paid two (2) banking days from the date received or on your paycheck date, whichever is later.
If your payroll is received AFTER 5 p.m., your employees will be paid three (3) banking days from the date received or on your paycheck date, whichever is later.

YOUR BANK ACCOUNT WILL BE DEBITED THE DAY BEFORE YOUR CHECKDATE.
Funds are typically withdrawn before normal banking hours so please make sure you have sufficient funds available by 12 a.m. on the date funds are to be withdrawn.
Intuit must receive your payroll by 5 p.m., two banking days before your paycheck date or your employees will not be paid on time.
Intuit does not process payrolls on weekends or federal banking holidays. A list of federal banking holidays can be viewed at the Federal Reserve website.
Thank you for your business.

Sincerely,

Intuit Payroll Services

IMPORTANT NOTICE: This notification is being sent to inform you of a critical matter concerning your current service, software, or billing. Please note that if you previously opted out of receiving marketing materials from Intuit, you may continue to receive notifications similar to this communication that affect your service or software.
If you have any questions or comments about this email, please DO NOT REPLY to this email. If you need additional information please contact us.

If you receive an email message that appears to come from Intuit but that you suspect is a phishing email, please forward it to immediately to spoof@intuit.com.
) 2013 Intuit Inc. All rights reserved. Intuit and the Intuit Logo are registered trademarks and/or registered service marks of Intuit Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other marks are the property of their respective owners, should be treated as such, and may be registered in various jurisdictions.

Intuit Inc. Customer Communications
2800 E. Commerce Center Place, Tucson, AZ 85706

I was sort of late to the whole online ad scam thing, but in the short time I have been here it seems an area where everyone has their hands in your pocket. If you are looking for a second income or a business owner looking to advertise you need to be careful. The http://www.realscam.com/f8/banners-b...onzi-scam-897/ is epic scam reading, but there are a few other ad type scams highlighted here as well.


One of the worst kept secrets of online advertising is that it is riddled with fraud. Talk privately to execs in the world of web and mobile adtech, and they'll agree that fraud is routine stuff.

But it's unusual to hear them say it out loud, on the record. That just happened at a panel in New York hosted by Magnetic, an adtech company.

Generally, in the web ad business, people agree that adtech fraud looks like this: Publishers buy traffic from dubious sources so their numbers look better. Ad networks offer inventory from publishers that no one has ever heard of. Botnets click on everything, juicing the numbers. And ads are served in places where even legit consumers can't see them — "below the fold" of the screen they're looking at, or in "pop-unders" that appear behind their screens. Ad agency trading desks fail to report to their clients how much bogus inventory they're buying. And clients don't seem to care that their money is being wasted because the campaigns appear to be performing well — look at all those clicks! Estimates vary, but perhaps $7 million a month is wasted on adtech fraud.

Speaking on the Magnetic panel were James Green, CEO of Magnetic; Anne Hunter, SVP of global marketing strategy at comScore; Brian Gleason, managing director, North America, Xaxis; David Hahn, SVP of product management, Integral Ad Science; and Walter Knapp, COO of Federated Media Publishing.

Industry blog AdExchanger attended, and produced a terrific transcript. We've excerpted the transcript to highlight only on the bits where they mentioned fraud ... and it's eye-popping.

Xaxis' Gleason: Where there’s money, there’s fraud. Until we do bring standards, the reality is that there will be fraud. ... If I’m not paying attention to what I’m buying programmatically, it can be wrought with fraud. It’s up to me to be able to put the mechanisms in place to prevent it.

Federated's Knapp: There’s a degree of fraudulent traffic on [premium publisher] sites (ESPN and The New York Times were two examples the moderator chose for reference purposes). But it’s not like someone goes out intentionally at ESPN to buy fraudulent traffic. There’s a legitimate strategy to buy search engine marketing and there’s a legitimate strategy to go ask for somebody to generate traffic from our site. Almost every large site does that and some of those people work with other brokers that help drive traffic and one of those guys is incented on driving traffic to a site and therefore buys traffic from some dude in Kazakhstan.

Integral's Hahn: I think what we see from our data, in millions of impressions every month, is typically sites like ESPN or The New York Times have much lower degrees of fraud. They don’t need to buy as much traffic or do these audience extension networks. ... I don’t want to say The New York Times or ESPN are riddled with fraud. It’s a fraction of traffic and it happens rarely. Less than 3% [of those who] typically sell their media have instances of fraud, whereas in the exchange world, sometimes see as high as 30%.

comScore's Hunter: We have data working with premium publishers and data working with networks and exchanges. Fraud happens to premium publishers, usually not by them. They want to be in the comScore 100 and they come to us and say, ‘We have all this real traffic,’ and we work with them to understand how they’re being frauded and getting traffic they don’t want or intend to get. It’s often a surprise, but very quickly resolved.

Read more: Adtech Execs Say Online Advertising Is Riddled With Fraud - Business Insider