Who are the Investment Swindlers?

[Rey Nuevo]

They are a faceless voice on a telephone. Or a flashy web site on the Internet. Or a friend of a friend. They may perform surgery on their victims’ savings from a dingy back office or boiler-room or from the vast reaches of cyberspace or from an opulent suite in the new bank building. They may wear three-piece suits or they may wear hard hats. They 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.