Scammer Successfully Sells Non-Existent Google Shares To Execs
from the watch-them-drool dept
If you talk to people in either the investment banking or the tech world, it seems like the whole world revolves around the (still unannounced) Google IPO. The various investment banks were pushing each other aside to get the underwriting gig, and now individuals are doing everything they can to position themselves to get whatever share scraps they can dig up. If this seems like the perfect setup for a scam, you'd be right. Some guy in NY convinced high ranking executives at some major companies that he could sell them Google "friends and family shares". It seems these executives didn't actually do any kind of due diligence, but just forked over hundreds of thousands of dollars to this guy, with no proof that he could actually sell them any shares. The FBI hasn't released the names of the victims, but describes them as "the chairman of a global telecommunications company, a New York investment banker, a corporate attorney and a senior executive at a brokerage firm." Seems like these are the types of people who should know better - but with all the hype and frenzy surrounding the potential Google IPO, it's no surprise that they were taken.
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I hate fraud, but...
It's not like he was ripping off senior citizens or something...
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Re: I hate fraud, but...
Oh, so the quality of the victim counts now?
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Re: I hate fraud, but...
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Re: I hate fraud, but...
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Re: I hate fraud, but...
Now, how would you feel if an "average" citizen of the world (who is far poorer than you) showed up one day and made off with your computer, TV or car? After all, they need it worse than you, right? Just like the con man in the story needed the money worse than the ones he ripped off. Or maybe we're going to draw an arbitrary line - open season on anyone richer than the original poster, but anyone poorer is protected.
No one has any natural claim on anyone else's work or posessions.
The product of a man's hands ought to be protected as strongly as the product of his mouth
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Re: I hate fraud, but...
ATA
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Re: I hate fraud, but...
One of the guys who got taken was an INVESTMENT BANKER for crying out loud.
If a guy on a street corner sells blueprints for a car that runs on water to unsuspecting passer-bys you feel bad for the people who get taken and you get mad at the guy who took advantage of them.
If the same guy takes those blue prints to Chrysler's engineering team and they sit down and review the blueprints and see that they obviously can't work but they buy them anyways, do you still feel sorry for Chrysler and get mad at the conman?
The people that got "ripped off" by this scheme all sound like intelligent professionals who allowed their own greed to interfere with their rational thought process.
Do you really think that they were buying Google stock because they are big fans of Google or because they knew that the price was going to spike and they were going to get rich?
They were trying to do the same thing that the conman did, but they were trying to be "legal" about it.
I don't feel sorry for them, nor do I feel sorry for people who lose all their money to a Nigerian scammer.
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Re: I hate fraud, but...
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F&F shares
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No Subject Given
P.S.I'm new to this computer stuff, at 66 I just watch the goings on
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