They are a faceless voice on a telephone. Or a flashy web site on the Internet. Or a friend of a friend. hey may have no apparent connection to the investment business or they may have an alphabet-soup of impressive letters following their names. They may be glib or fast-talking or so seemingly shy and soft-Forex Scamspoken that you feel almost compelled to force your money on them. The first rule of protecting yourself from an investment swindle is thus to rid yourself of any notions you might have as to what an investment swindler looks like or sounds like. Indeed, some swindlers don’t start out to be swindlers. There are case histories in which individuals who held positions of trust and esteem—accountants, attorneys, bona fide investment brokers and even doctors—have sacrificed their ethics for the fast buck of running an investment scam. In still other cases, investment programs that began with legitimate intentions went sour through happenstance or poor management, leading the promoter to mishandle or abscond with investors’ capital. Whether an investment is planned as a scam or simply becomes one, the result is the same. This is why protecting your savings against fraud involves at least three steps. Carefully check out the person and firm you would be dealing with. Take a close and cautious look at the investment offer itself. And continue to monitor any investment that you decide to make. No one of these precautions alone maybe sufficient.
Who are the Victims of Investment Fraud?
If you are absolutely certain it could never be you, the investment swindler starts with a
big advantage. Investment fraud generally happens to people who think it couldn’t happen to them. Just as there is no typical profile for swindlers, neither is there one for their victims.
While some scams target persons who are known or thought to have deep pockets, most swindlers take the attitude that everyone’s money spends the same. It simply takes more small investors to fund a large fraud. In fact, some swindlers deliberately seek out families that may have limited means or financial difficulties, figuring such persons may be particularly receptive to a proposal that offers fast and large profits. A favorite pitch is that small investors can become rich only if they learn and employ the investment strategies used by wealthy persons. Naturally, the swindler will teach them! Although victims of investment fraud can differ from one another in many ways, they do, unfortunately, have one trait in common: Greed that exceeds their caution. They also possess a willingness to believe what they want to believe. Movie actors and athletes, professional persons and successful business executives, political leaders and internationally famous economists have all fallen victim to investment fraud. So have hundreds of thousands of others, including widows, retirees and working people—people who made their money the hard way and lost it the fast way.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
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