Modus Operandi by Mauro Corvasce (universal ebook reader txt) 📕

the withdrawal will be secretly watched by an armed agent who will follow the victim home to make certain the money is safe.

A few minutes after arrival at home with the money, the victim is visited by the con artist posing as the armed agent. After some more double-talk, the swindler counts the victim's money, gives her a signed deposit slip and takes the money. Hours, days and even weeks later the victim finds out the name on the deposit slip is fictitious, the bank knows nothing of this employee, and the money given to the swindler is a total loss.

The Ponzi Scheme

The Ponzi scheme or kiting is the basis of all investment frauds, security frauds or get-rich-quick schemes. In a Ponzi scheme—named after Charles Ponzi, the American legend who in December 1919 started this scam—the swindler uses money invested by new victims to pay a high interest on the investments of earlier victims. The money from the earlier victims was appropriated for the operator's own use rather than investing it as claimed in the spiel. A Ponzi scheme collapses when the swindler runs out of victims.

The most common version of a Ponzi scheme are chain letters and pyramid sales schemes, but the swindle can take an infinite variety of subtler forms. Virtually any investment

vehicle can start out legitimately and turn into a variation on Ponzi's original.

In recent years investigations have revealed that con artists have worked Ponzi operations in everything from offshore mutual and private hedge funds to real estate commodities contracts and gold coins. Hundreds of small investors around New York City were recently stung by a Los Angeles crook who sold them some $9 million worth of 270-day notes presumably invested in real estate and guaranteeing returns of 20 to 30 percent interest. Instead, the $9 million vanished.

A very juicy scandal uncovered within recent memory was the Home Stakes Production Company swindle. Home Stakes, based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, purported to be an oil drilling company run by an Oklahoma lawyer named Robert S. Trippet. Home Stakes sold tax shelter partnerships to hundreds of wealthy investors eager to avoid paying taxes. To disguise the complete lack of oil drilling operations, Trippet and his cronies fooled investors with a variety of maneuvers, even going so far as to paint irrigation pipes orange to make a California vegetable farm look like an operating oil field. When the company went bankrupt in 1973, unsuspecting investors lost $100 million or more. The list of investors was astounding and included some of the biggest names in United States industry, finance, law and show business. Some of the show business crowd victimized were Barbra Streisand, Liza Minelli, Walter Matthau, Can-dice Bergen, Bob Dylan, Mia Farrow, Barbara Walters and the late Jack Benny. Andy Williams alone was sunk for $538,000. So, those who get taken by a Ponzi racket have one consolation: They can always boast that they are in the same league with the nation's financial elite.

Our experience has shown that these Ponzi swindlers proliferate in cyclical patterns throughout history and very often take place when inflation and unemployment are very high. There is never a shortage of suckers ready to take a tumble. What sets Ponzi schemes apart from other more intricate swindles is this: The money the investors put up isn't invested in anything, and the profits are paid out of new money from subsequent investors. Eventually there aren't enough newcomers to keep this snowball going, and the game collapses.

No one knows if a successful Ponzi operator has ever found a way to close-out his swindle without it collapsing. When a Ponzi scheme collapses all of the latecomers lose. Only early investors can win, but many of them lose, too, because they reinvest with the expectation of making larger and larger gains. They become trapped by their own greed. To profit from a Ponzi fraud it's not enough to be the first one in; you have to be the first one out as well.

Bunko Games

The pigeon drop or pocketbook drop is the street bunko game that requires the minimum number of props: a pocketbook or an envelope and a sizable amount of cash. The pigeon is the victim and no more than two or three swindlers participate in the crime.

The game begins in the presence of the potential victim, when one of the swindlers apparently finds a pocket-book or envelope filled with money, usually from $500 to $2,500. The approach to the victim is disarming, combining happiness in finding the money along with the question, "What do I do now?" As the victim starts to discuss the swindler's apparent good fortune, a second swindler shows up. Assuming the roll of a stranger who just happens to witness the find and wants to be part of it, the second swindler joins in the spiel that makes the victim a partner in a plan to hold the money until the origin of the cash can be determined.

Since this will take time, the two swindlers team up to convince the sucker that he should hold the funds, but to assure them of the victim's good faith, they ask him to show cash equal to the amount found or close to it. Faced with the possible loss of one-third of the money, the gullible victim goes to a bank, gets the cash and shows it to the swindlers. They go through the motions of counting it, advising the victim of their satisfaction. They bundle the found money with the victim's cash, hand it to him, and arrange to meet again the next day.

Sometime after this parting, the natural curiosity of the victim leads to an examination of the secret bundle of money. It turns out to be newspapers or regular plain paper cut to money size. The swindlers switched the bundle just before they parted from the victim.

Swindles Against the Elderly

On the bottom of any detective's list of social miscreants would be the con man who impersonates a Social Security employee to gain access to an