Recovery of Funds From a Fraud
A month ago, Amanda Cantrell, a CNNMoney.com staff writer, had a thoughtful piece on the difficulties in recovering assets from a fraud, in this case Kirk Wright's hedge fund fraud. She listed all of the standard difficulites, including trying to enforce a U.S. Judgment against offshore assets. Remember a judgment only allows the creditor to intercept funds owed to the debtor, if the jurisdiction which has the asset recognizes the underlying action as valid. Sometimes this can require a separate trial on the merits.
Business Opportunities frauds or scams are no different, but the recovery rate, at least from the FTC figures, is notably less. I estimate, using data that the FTC produced from 1993-2000, that the actual recovery to the public from Bizop scams is around 5 cents on the dollar. If the Bizop is a scam or fraud, then you are likely going to lose all your money. Think about that - Bizop frauds or scams are so bad that you might as well be throwing your money away -burn it, buy lottery tickets for non-existent lotteries, or buy swamp land. You are simply going to lose your money, if the scheme is a fraud or scam.
What is a even scarier number than 5 cents on dollar?
Technorati Tags: scams, fraud, cnnmoney, offshore assets, frauds, ftc, judgment, money, hedge fund, debtor, intercept, merits, enforce, business opportunities, jurisdiction
Well acccording to whois.org, then number of registered sites with "biopz" in the domain name is 94.5 million; bizop.ca is ranked in the top 5 by google. (A search of domains with "business opportunities" in the domain name reveals the same number.) So 94.5 million sites are hawking business opportunities, which if a fraud will take all your money, which according to the FTC is on average $20,000. And the FTC wants to make it easier for the sellers of these "opportunities" to register.
Technorati Tags: scams, fraud, cnnmoney, offshore assets, frauds, ftc, judgment, money, hedge fund, debtor, intercept, merits, enforce, business opportunities, jurisdiction,
