It can be very easy to be hoodwinked out of cash and savings. Even the most confident and knowledgeable amongst us have found themselves to be victims. Banks and financial companies are also just as likely a target and it’s why they have to invest in some serious KYC. Here are some examples where people, some of them even experienced investors and financial analysts, were caught out by scammers.
- ZZZZ Best was far from it. Personality goes a long way in defrauding and Barry Minkow certainly had it. He was big in Wall Street and set up a public company that cleaned rugs. It seemed like a brilliant investment, Barry was quite the financial whizz, so initial valuations put the company at £200 Million. That might seem a lot for a rug cleaning company, and it was, especially as the company didn’t even exist. It had no work coming in and was set up through Credit card theft. When exposed, Barry got 25 years in jail, despite having a guest spot on Oprah Winfrey’s show. He did have some trucks and equipment. This got sold for $64,000.
- We tend to think that telephony scams are a modern occurrence but this is not true. In the past telegraph signals were sent via tall wooden relay towers positioned across the country. France, being a modern sort of place, had many of them distributed around the towns and countryside. Around Bordeaux this was no exception. The Blanc brothers discovered a way to hack into the signal where they could send fake messages about the sale and purchase of stocks and shares. In this way they were able to invest and make a fortune. Even when they were discovered doing it they escaped jail as there was no law in France, at the time, to cover it.
