Related Research Articles
A scam, or a confidence trick, is an attempt to defraud a person or group after first gaining their trust. Confidence tricks exploit victims using a combination of the victim's credulity, naivety, compassion, vanity, confidence, irresponsibility, and greed. Researchers have defined confidence tricks as "a distinctive species of fraudulent conduct ... intending to further voluntary exchanges that are not mutually beneficial", as they "benefit con operators at the expense of their victims ".
Barry Jay Minkow is a former American businessman, pastor, and convicted felon. While still in high school, Minkow founded ZZZZ Best, which appeared to be an immensely successful carpet-cleaning and restoration company. However, it was actually a front to attract investment for a massive Ponzi scheme. ZZZZ Best collapsed in 1987, costing investors and lenders $100 million in one of the largest investment frauds ever perpetrated by a single person, as well as one of the largest accounting frauds in history. The scheme is often used as a case study of accounting fraud.
Bank fraud is the use of potentially illegal means to obtain money, assets, or other property owned or held by a financial institution, or to obtain money from depositors by fraudulently posing as a bank or other financial institution. In many instances, bank fraud is a criminal offence.
Internet fraud is a type of cybercrime fraud or deception which makes use of the Internet and could involve hiding of information or providing incorrect information for the purpose of tricking victims out of money, property, and inheritance. Internet fraud is not considered a single, distinctive crime but covers a range of illegal and illicit actions that are committed in cyberspace. It is differentiated from theft since, in this case, the victim voluntarily and knowingly provides the information, money or property to the perpetrator. It is also distinguished by the way it involves temporally and spatially separated offenders.
Email fraud is intentional deception for either personal gain or to damage another individual using email as the vehicle. Almost as soon as email became widely used, it began to be used as a means to defraud people, just as telephony and paper mail were used by previous generations.
Omega Trust & Trading Ltd. was an American company that engaged in prime bank fraud from 1994 to 2000. The organization was created by retired electrician Clyde Hood, who presented it as an offshore investment program offering complex financial instruments with a payout of 50-to-1 or more. In 2001 Hood pleaded guilty to charges stemming from the scheme, and admitted that Omega investors could never have received the profits that they had been promised.
Telemarketing fraud is fraudulent selling conducted over the telephone. The term is also used for telephone fraud not involving selling.
In the United States, Medicare fraud is the claiming of Medicare health care reimbursement to which the claimant is not entitled. There are many different types of Medicare fraud, all of which have the same goal: to collect money from the Medicare program illegitimately.
The Spinka financial controversy is a case in which five Spinka charitable organisations under the auspices of Grand Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Weisz, the Spinka Rebbe of Boro Park, as well as Weisz himself, his personal assistant, and five others were charged with various counts of tax fraud and money laundering. Their indictment alleges that the five charities were used to launder money and to avoid payment of tax on taxable income by issuing fraudulent receipts for bogus charitable contributions, and charging fees for transfers of funds. Among those charged are four men from Los Angeles, California and two from Tel Aviv. These include a diamond merchant, a businessman, and an attorney. The five Spinka charitable organizations are Yeshiva Imrei Yosef, Yeshivath Spinka, Central Rabbinical Seminary, Machne Sva Rotzohn, and Mesivta Imrei Yosef Spinka, all based in Brooklyn.
The redemption movement is an element of the pseudolaw movement, mainly active in the United States and Canada, that promotes fraudulent debt and tax payment schemes. The movement is also called redemptionism. Redemption promoters allege that a secret fund is created for every citizen at birth and that a procedure exists to "redeem" or reclaim this fund to pay bills. Common redemption schemes include acceptance for value (A4V), Treasury Direct Accounts (TDA) and secured party creditor "kits," collections of pseudolegal tactics sold to participants despite a complete lack of any actual legal basis. Such tactics are sometimes called "money for nothing" schemes, as they propose to extract money from the government by using secret methods. The name of the A4V scheme in particular has become synonymous with the movement as a whole.
Thomas Joseph Petters is a former American businessman and chairman and CEO of Petters Group Worldwide, a company which stole over $2 billion in a Ponzi scheme. He was convicted of massive business fraud in 2009 and was imprisoned at the United States Penitentiary, Leavenworth. Amid mounting criminal investigations, Petters resigned as his company's CEO on September 29, 2008. He was convicted of numerous federal crimes for operating Petters Group Worldwide as a $3.65 billion Ponzi scheme and received a 50-year federal sentence.
John Donald Cody is a convicted felon who perpetrated several fraudulent activities across the United States since the 1980s. He disappeared from his law practice in Arizona in 1984 after investigators began looking into his activities, suspecting the theft of client funds. In the 2000s, using the alias Bobby Thompson, he ran a fraudulent charity named the United States Navy Veterans Association from Florida. After evading authorities for two years, he was arrested in 2012 on charges associated with fraud and identify theft and ultimately convicted, receiving a sentence of 28 years of prison.
Nevin Karey Shapiro is a convicted felon who received a 20-year prison sentence for orchestrating a $930 million Ponzi scheme. According to interviews, he allegedly engaged in rampant violations of NCAA rules over eight years as a booster for University of Miami athletes. Shapiro allegedly provided football players cash, goods, prostitutes, and assorted favors.
Menachem Youlus is a Baltimore rabbi and Torah scribe who falsely claimed he had rescued Holocaust-era Torah scrolls from Eastern Europe, selling the scrolls at inflated prices. On August 24, 2011, he was arrested on charges of mail fraud and wire fraud, and he pleaded guilty on February 2, 2012.
Mass-marketing fraud is a scheme that uses mass-communication media – including telephones, the Internet, mass mailings, television, radio, and personal contact – to contact, solicit, and obtain money, funds, or other items of value from multiple victims in one or more jurisdictions. The frauds where victims part with their money by promising cash, prizes, and services and high returns on investment are part of mass market fraud.
Andrew W.W. Caspersen is an American financier and formerly a partner and managing director at PJT Partners Inc.'s Park Hill Group.
Operation Varsity Blues was the code name for the investigation into the 2019 criminal conspiracy scandal to influence undergraduate admissions decisions at several top American universities.
Obinwanne Okeke also known as Invictus Obi is a Nigerian entrepreneur and convicted fraudster who is currently serving a ten-year prison sentence in the United States for internet fraud that caused $11M losses to his victims. After initially pleading guilty, on February 16, 2021, Okeke was sentenced to ten years in prison. Until his arrest by the Federal Bureau of Investigation following a 13-month investigation, Okeke was a globally-renowned businessman who had investments in oil and gas, agriculture, private equity, alternative energy, telecom and real estate. He operated his holdings under the 'Invictus Group'. Invictus Group operated in three African countries including Nigeria, South Africa, and Zambia. He holds a master's degree in International business and Counter-terrorism from Monash University, Australia.
References
- ↑ "Charity Fraud Pleads Guilty". The New York Times. April 20, 1918.
- ↑ McFadden, Robert D. (November 13, 1992). "Small-Change Donations Going to Vendors, Not Charities, Abrams Charges". The New York Times .
- ↑ Saltzman, Marc. "'Hurricane Ian': Here come the scams. (And how to avoid them)". USA TODAY. Retrieved 2022-10-17.
- ↑ "Life Cycle of an Exempt Organization". Archived from the original on 2012-08-29. Retrieved 2017-08-10.
- ↑ "Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) - Tips On Avoiding Fraudulent Charitable Contribution Schemes". www.ic3.gov.
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