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"In 2008, Utah residents Linda Woolf and David Gengler were charged in connection to the "Teach Me to Trade" stock-picking system. Customers paid between $3,000 to $40,000 to learn the system, even though the duo were, in the words of the Securities and Exchange Commission, "unsuccessful traders." Combined, they earned more than $6 million selling the product."
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"Russell Dalbey, CEO and founder of the company behind the "wealth-building" program "Winning in the Cash Flow Business" is charged by the FTC with defrauding consumers with what were described as "phony claims that they could make large amounts of money quickly."
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"This month a federal judge in Texas sentenced Eric Rulack Farrington, another infomercial star, to 11 years in prison for "orchestrating a multimillion-dollar mortgage fraud scheme in the Dallas area."
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There's one born every minute.....
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
A lot of us entered trading with some pretty unrealistic expectations and people at this stage are quite vulnerable.
Plus you have people who are in dire straits looking for a way out.
It's not always pure greed that drives them.
There's people getting scammed for their life savings from boiler room operations. Sure, they are foolish but the price for foolishness should not be that high. I feel very sorry for people that fall for this stuff.
Regardless of their situations, they are still accountable for believing
in a get rich guaranteed scheme. Nothing worth doing is easy.
I'm a skeptic of most advertising and marketing and especially skeptic
of anyone making promises that will make me money and that it's easy.
I guess I learned early on that the only person I can trust is myself.
I feel for the people that lost all of their money. That's just not right!
I'm pissed off that they didn't think it all the way through, ask around,
do some research, etc., etc. Scammers are the scum of the earth.
The people that lost their money of course are not.
It was another lawyer and potential "investor" in RRA's fraud scheme that exposed the crooks to the authorities.
It's amazing how so many people were willing to invest money in someone without actually doing any diligence.
The lawyer simply asked to see the actual cases of some of these medical settlements that were being sold (in exchange for lump sum cash, the settlements would later collect the entire settlement, resulting in a profit).
When the crook (Rothstein) at RRA kept making excuses why he couldn't reveal the information (he wouldn't even allow the investor to talk to the recipient's lawyer) the potential mark knew something wasn't right.
I think this is all a function of a society inundated with liberalism.
1) In a free market system, people that are dumb enough to fall for this type of crap, frauds, schemes, etc, would expose the dangers and people would become inherently skeptical and cautious.....
Why isn't this the case? Regulation. Liberal sentiment and government bureacrats somehow feel that through regulation they can prevent this from happening.
This is thought to be accomplished through everything from requiring the business entity to jump through considerable hoops in order to operate, to taxation of high(er) risk ventures, to all sorts of hoops and prequalifications for consumers.
2) That might work (regulation) but in the modern US, we live in a state that no longer punishes anyone. Martha Stewart conducts insider trading, LIES ABOUT IT TO THE FEDS and gets what? Nothing.
If we'd either A) get rid of all the regulation which gives consumers a false sense of security and makes these scams more possible or B) Start REALLY punishing people for this type of thing, it would be cut to a fraction.
Instead, we punish all the good upstanding businesses and consumers with more laws and regulating and we give false security to consumers who get taken and when we finally catch someone doing it, we don't ruin their lives, we don't execute them, we don't even beat them in a public square, we give them a few months of prison, maybe a few years of probation and it's case closed.
You know why people in Indonesia don't throw chewing gum on the ground? Cause they'll beat your ass and throw you into a REAL prison if you do.
Liberalism destroys everything.
Start punishing people....REALLY punishing them....bring back chain gangs and public executions and cruel/unusual punishment and this **** would come to a screeching halt.
Yeah, most of the people that get "taken" are usually at a low point in thier financial life and are more vulnerable to this kind of stuff. People seem to forget there is a reason why some of those old sayings are timeless like "if it looks to good to be true it is ". That being said the book should be thrown hard at those who mislead and/or make false claims...it's just plain wrong
To quote Humphrey B. Neill, "If we wish to attempt to make easy money, we cannot complain of the risks."
The cost of foolishness is as high as the person/fool makes it. The customer is solely responsible for that. There is nothing foolish about swinging for the fences, but when I put my life savings in an investment that is my decision. Regardless of whether the company is legit or not, it is still YOUR decision to invest all of your money in Company A or not.
The government tries to protect consumers from fraud but they can't protect consumers from their own greed/lack of common sense. For many, if a boiler room didn't take this person's money, then I'm sure they would have found a legal way to lose it as well like trying to legally flip houses or playing the regulated stock market.
So while I am not condoning the actions of swindlers, there is blame to be placed on most victims as well