If its too good to be true-It almost certainly is
We have hard these words so often by those warning us to beware of scammers yet so often we hear of intelligent people being scammed of thousands of dollars and in extreme cases tens of thousands. Commonsense seems to go out the window when intelligent people get taken in by these rat bags. In a recent case, a New Zealand man in his late 50s whose job title was a cleaner aoppeared in the Christchurch District Court for his part in a ponzi type of scam where over $8 million was invested by 900 people in a fake foreign exchange scheme.
Many invester’s felt that everything was above board because the company involved weas registered on the Financial Service Provider’s Register however the cleaner was charged with obtaining registration as a financial service provider by deception.
A tradesman who had lost everything he put into the scheme commented that the investment appeared too good to be true and that he was afrauid of missing out on such an investment opportunity. A friend of the tradesman who had got him into the scheme later told him it was a scam but only after they had both lost the money they invested in it.
What happened to the money is a commonly asked question in similar scams and in this situation, none of it went into any legitimate forex trading platform or other invstment as had been promised by the company. Instead the defendant used part of the money as a deposit on a $3.5 million Christchurch property and $111,000 on a BMW.
I think there is a clear lesson here. Good money manager’s live a modest lifestyle and would you take financial advice from someone who drives a flash car? It hard to believe that people like this are able to relate to those who managed to save and invest money from their modest incomes. At the end of the day it is up to everyone to take responsibility for their own finances and use their commonsense, something that tends to go out the window when people are enticed into money making schemes promising easy riches.
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