What a terrific title for a book on keeping yourself safe financially. Naturally, the Madoff and the Stanford scandals feature as sobering lessons…
The Five Signs of Financial Fraud are:
Sign #1 Your advisor also has custody of your assets
Sign #2 Quoted returns are consistently great! Almost too good to be true
Sign # 3 Flashy tactics — The investng strategy isn’t understandable — is murky, flashy or “too complicated” for him (her, or it) to describe so you easily understand.
Sign #4 Exclusivity … Your adviser promotes benefits like exclusivity that don’t impact results.
The scam is to try to make you think: “this guy is clearly super-duper long-term successful — which in [the victim’s] mind speak to legitimacy and that [scammer] can be trusted. And he’s a nice guy to boot — he gives to charity!
Sign #5 You didn’t do your own due diligence, but a trusted intermediary did. (Lesson: Due diligence is your job no one else’s!)
From How to Smell a Rat by Ken Fisher and Lara Hoffmans.
And look at this rogues’ gallery compiled by the author — with, in some cases, pictures of rats with the caption ‘(Actual photo unavailable)’. Nice touch!
from www.smell-a-rat.com/investment-frauds
(Ha! And some of my subjects on this blog complain about their treatment here.)
Perhaps they should do an Asian Oceania version, then you can include Stenning and co in it…it will be a best-seller.
I am sure many Malaysians, Hong Kong, Taiwanese, Singaporeans, Indonesians will promote it using the very same twalk system (provided it work for 2 days maximum) and social media to everyone on the planet.