Fraud Link Tuesday
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Psychic Con Game |
"By repealing the Act, the onus will go round the other way and we will have to prove we are genuine," McEntee-Taylor told Reuters. "No other religion has to do that."
Is it too much to ask for a proof of miracles?
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Cell Phone Spam |
Corbett explained that the Attorney General's Bureau of Consumer Protection has been receiving a steadily increasing number of complaints about unwanted cell phone text messages - primarily involving advertisements for prescription drugs and pornography.
I ran into this phishing scam several months ago, when someone left me a text message to call their number. Stupid cell phone almost did so by itself.
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The Ritz Hotel in London |
And it was indeed too good to be true. The hotel, with an estimated market value of around £600million, was not on the market.
Yet two conmen managed to persuade Mr Collins, co-founder of a large and reputable property company, that the hotel's owners, the Barclay brothers, were prepared to sell it at a bargain price.
Once again proof that that being a successful business man or woman is no protection against the lure of something for nothing.
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Lawyer Fraud |
On Friday afternoon, as the WSJ Law Blog was reporting the unfortunate tale of Samuel Fishman, the former Latham partner who defrauded his firm and his clients out of more than $300,000, one major question of human psychology seemed to hang unanswered over the story.
Why, given the annual take-home of a Latham partner and the long period of time over which Fishman's fraud played out, would he risk so much for so little?
A good start to this question would be to review Dan Ariely's work on Dishonesty
, he suggests that the farther removed from cash we become the easier it is to cheat.
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Charity Fraud |
He said it provided funding and services "to the poor throughout the world."
But his enterprise was no more real than George's, according to federal agents, who say he and a partner invented it as part of a scheme to rip off investors in Crawford County and across the country of some $2 million from 2003 through March 2007.
The FTC has a new webpage on charity fraud.
