[snip]

[snip]

Steve,

Why don't you just kill-file him?

Don't you have a life?

Baby Boomers a Fraud Target
A study shows that even the financially literate in the aging group
fall for investment scams.
By Jonathan Peterson, Times Staff Writer
July 18, 2006

WASHINGTON - The aging of the baby boom generation looms as a
windfall for con artists who have become increasingly skillful at
duping people out of their life savings, securities regulators warned
Monday.
Moreover, such scams have proved especially effective against people
with above-average levels of financial sophistication, according to a
new report.
That finding raises questions about the sort of message to consumers
that would be most useful in combating such schemes.

"Protecting seniors from investment scams is one of the most important
issues of our time," Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman
Christopher Cox said at the agency's Seniors Summit, an event held to
call attention to fraud threats.
The issue will be further complicated, he said, by the fact that future
retirees may be less conservative in their approach to investing than
older people have been in the past. Greater longevity and rising
healthcare costs, for example, will increase the cost of retirement,
potentially making people more susceptible to sales pitches that hold
out the promise of boosting wealth.
"While they're living longer, people's retirement plans haven't taken
that into account," Cox said. The retirement of 76 million baby boomers
- the oldest of whom are now 60 - and the financial pressures many
of the boomers will face could make for a "perfect storm" for
investment fraud, he said.

People over 60 represent 30% of financial fraud victims, the group
Consumer Action estimates. And the mountain of wealth controlled by
that age group is expected to balloon. Baby boomers now have $8.5
trillion in investable assets, a figure that could swell with trillions
of dollars in projected inheritances.
At Monday's summit, financial regulators listed a number of common
schemes that aim to defraud older investors, and also focused on the
psychological tricks and other forms of manipulation that con artists
use to persuade their victims.
In one typical fraud, criminals pose as charitable organizations
offering monthly annuity payments to investors who surrender their
savings.

In some cases, pitches may center on products that are legal but are
being sold in a misleading way, regulators said. That could include
investments that tie up older peoples' cash for many years, putting
them at risk of heavy redemption charges if they try to exit early.
.....
Here are the most common investment scam techniques used by financial
fraud perpetrators, according to a report by the NASD Investor
Education Foundation. They are listed in the order of the frequency of
their appearances in undercover telephone transcripts involving
financial hustlers and their targets.

·  Phantom fixation: Offering the prospect of wealth and riches.

·  Scarcity: Making an investment offer seem rare to increase its
appeal.

·  Source credibility: The con artist claims to be from a known
business or other legitimate entity.

·  Comparison: Juxtaposing the offered price of the investment with a
higher-priced example.

·  Friendship: Appearing to be the victim's friend.

·  Commitment: The perpetrator tries to get the victim to make a
commitment early on, then uses that promise against him later.

·  Social consensus: The con man makes it seem like everyone is
buying his investment.

·  Reciprocity: The con artist will do a small favor for the victim,
thus putting pressure on the victim to reciprocate.

·  Landscaping: The con man structures the interaction between
himself and the victim so that all roads lead to where the perpetrator
wants the victim to go.