Up until now in this blog, we’ve mostly been talking about different strategies that you can put to use to make yourself a more versatile trader. This is all well and good, but all the strategies in the world won’t do you any good if you’re so unfortunate as to fall victim to an investment scam.
Scams Are Everywhere
These types of scams are, unfortunately, all over the place. No matter how savvy you think you might be about this sort of thing, some of the scams are quite sophisticated and easy to fall for unless you know exactly what you’re looking for.
To those ends, we’re going to spend the next several entries here going over many different types of investment scams and how to keep an eye out for them. It pays to know the enemy, right?
Internet Is Popular For Scams
It should comes as no surprise when we say that the majority of the investment scams going around are perpetrated on the internet. The nature of the internet allows for a great deal of “safety” and anonymity for thieves and con artists, so it makes a popular venue for taking advantage of the unwary.
No doubt you’ve seen at least one type of scam already, if you’ve spent any time at all looking at investing online, or joined any investment discussion sites. This is the email spam scam, wherein someone invites you to take part in his or her brand new scheme for making “guaranteed” investments. They use a lot of hyperbolic language touting their new system and claim that they’ll let you in on their amazing secrets for just a few hundred dollars.
Of course these types of scams are quite transparent, but believe us when we say that they get a lot more sophisticated than this. We’ll begin our discussion next time with an overview of the different types of scams out there.
See you next week for part 2 of Investment Scams.
Sean Rasmussen
The Bullhunters Guide
Universal Wealth Creation © 2004 – 2008
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
this is a good idea and the of being ripped off is quite real and to have the power to identify the criminals would be a very good thing.
regards richard colum
Thanks for the tip unfortunately Ive already had a bad experience luckily I pulled out without losing to much thats why Ive been very cautious about going ahead with this.Still sounds good lets go.
Hi Sean,
You’re right; there are a lot of scams online. So far, I’ve been lucky and I haven’t lost very much money at all on scam artists. Some are easy to see coming and others well; they just seem to be able to make people trust them.
I think it’s because they understand how the internet works so even if you search for information on them; the first few pages are flooded with positive information. But, I’m learning.
Many of us unfortunately have been at the losing end of an investment scam and for me I was bitten once and learned from it.
Unfortunately there are many people out there who haven’t been involved in a scam yet and who may be yet to experience one.
As ’street wise’ as I think I am, I nearly walked into another one recently with a major well known Australian company who are always touting their credibility and who I have been with for a few years. Luckily with my new copy writing skills I was able to ‘persuade’ them to return my money.