Posts Tagged ‘scam?’
Pattern recognition
An ADHD friend of mine, a medical doctor from New York, once described medical diagnosis as ‘pattern recognition’. That’s why, he said, a competently written computer-based questionnaire can actually be more effective at diagnosing medical conditions than a human being: because the computer will ask ALL the relevant questions, not skipping some that don’t seem […]
Impressive
Blimey! Kiwi super hacker wows Vegas By Alice Neville | NZ Herald Thursday Jul 29, 2010 Kiwi Barnaby Jack wowed an American crowd this week by making cash spew out of an ATM machine like magic. But although he was in Las Vegas, Mr Jack is no magician – he’s a super hacker. … A […]
High profile conman jailed for at least 10 years
Apropos my comment yesterday about liars being stopped in their tracks: Go on working your con-game and feeding your lies to anyone who will listen … until you are finally exposed by inconvenient truth (like Bernard Madoff?) and STOPPED IN YOUR TRACKS. I heard this guy (below) speak once. He was very memorable. Highly engaging, […]
How liars deal with a challenge
Rachel Maddow telling the truth to Bill O’Reilly … gee she’s good at this stuff! Spot the pattern: Rather than contribute to a debate about ‘the facts’ Maddow asserted about him and Fox News, (e.g. ‘This is why what she’s saying is wrong…’) Bill O’Reilly merely whacked Maddow’s sincerity (‘you have to be kidding’) and […]
Giving scumbags a second chance
Surely this is an argument for lifetime bans from business and legal practice. It was a surprise to read over the weekend that Blue Chip’s shonky lawyer had, like Mark Bryers and other crooks, come back for a second bite of the cherry — i.e. just as with Bridgecorp’s Rod Petricevic, the failure to drive […]
Re-touching to the point of distortion
From an eye-opening Dove soap commercial. Kudos to them! Watch it happen in high speed stop-motion below the fold.
What an amazing coincidence!
Er, does anyone really expect anyone to believe this? (It appeared in my browser all by itself this morning after I visited who-knows-what dodgy website.) Or is it a sign of a ‘scarcity mindset’ to even question my good fortune in ‘winning’ this ‘prize’? Oh boy. (It jiggled and blinked on the screen, too, in […]
Insurance against DISGRACE? Really? You can get that?
Disgrace insurance? I didn’t even know such a thing existed! Live and learn, I guess. From this article in the Herald on Sunday: The documents revealed a year after [Comedian Mike] King was recruited as the face of pork in New Zealand, officials became nervous when the comedian left an obscene phone message* for the […]
OK, so it’s not a hopeless quest …
Filed here for the sake of completeness: Well done Sarah. It took 5 years and 257 complaints but the Commerce Commission have finally acted on NBO and all the spin off “businesses” operated by Shallendra Singh, Jitendra Singh and Sonia “All I ever did was work for him” Klair who just so happens to also […]
At last, some good news for the Blue Chip victims
The rather obvious injustice in this situation cried out for a remedy. Just what it will be remains to be seen. Many victims of the smooth-talking Blue Chip spruikers will never recover as it is. This will, I hope, send a message to those spruikers still operating (and their accomplices) that it ain’t over till […]
‘If you tell a lie often enough you’ll start to believe it…’
More from Michael Lewis on the success of Dr Michael Burry… Includes this: [Big finance firms selling sub-prime instruments] create lots of risk. The only way you get that risk out there and get people to take it is to disguise it. So they got really good at disguising the risk and they got so […]
Live by the ethical assumptions of your market – or change your soul?
Liars Poker and The Big Short author Michael Lewis responds to the SEC’s fraud charges against Goldman Sachs on Bloomberg … The Bond Market Will Never Be The Same After Goldman First para: If you happen to be sitting on the Goldman Sachs bond-trading floor life must feel horribly unfair. You did nothing worse than […]
SEC says “FRAUD”
So the SEC says Goldman Sachs defrauded Its own investment ‘clients’ and cooperated with Paulson & Co to effectively weight the bets against them — bundling bad debt then betting against the bundle. Engineering failing investments to sell to ‘the little people’, retail investors or ‘pigs’ is a time-honoured (but dishonourable) tactic on Wall St. […]
A likely story?
Accountants to blame, say Feltex Five Monday Apr 12, 2010 | NZ Herald The five former directors of Feltex Carpets are blaming their accountants for irregularities in financial statements. Well, it’s possible, I guess …
Exposing a dangerous fraud
Wow! Straight-talking, clear writing like this is a welcome thing. I applaud it. Exposing manipulators, fakers and dishonest hucksters for what they are is a truly worthwhile activity. Reading this encourages me to keep after the weeds — native and imported — in our own back yard … in spite of the insults, threats and abuse […]
