The Securities and Exchange Commission held it’s first ever Senior Summit on July 17 to discuss what we have been reporting on and warning people about for years, the widespread abuse of senior citizens by crooked brokers and so-called investment advisors. SEC chairman Christopher Cox actually used some of the fire and brimstone language that […]
It was a busy month for investment scams. But when isn’t it? After plowing through several similar high yield investment scams from different areas around the country I got curious so I typed “high yield investment program” into Google and up popped 21.6 million results. Think about it… 21.6 million opportunities to lose your shirt. […]
Imagine what would happen if the punishment for robbing a bank was modeled after what Eliot Spitzer is now expecting out of the major brokerage firms. In the future all get-a-way vehicles must be at least 100 yards away from all banks. This is in order to give the over-weight security guards an opportunity to […]
More Trouble from the Firm with the Aging Hippies in Their Ad Campaign The Wall Street Journal reported that a group of Exxon Mobil Corp. employees who claimed that their broker pushed them into unsuitable risky investments were awarded $22 million, including $3.5 million in punitive damages. This happens to be one of the largest […]
Our old nemesis H&R Block is in the news once again. The New York State Attorney Generals office has sued the tax preparation behemoth for fraudulently marketing individual retirement accounts. It is alleged that H&R Block opened more than 500,000 “Express IRA” accounts over the past four years. However, 85% of the customers who opened […]
Over the past five years we have reported on many of the nefarious practices put into play by the big brokerage firms in order to further their long-term goal of ridding themselves of “small investors” to boost the bottom-line. Dumping on the small investor has not only become policy for some firms, it has also […]
Albert Rocha stared at financial papers on his table for a moment then detailed how he, a World War II veteran, invested more than $100,000 in what prosecutors now say was a multi-million dollar Ponzi scheme. More than a decade ago businessman John Heath sat in the 91-year-old’s home and promised him large returns for […]
I couldn’t make this stuff up if I wanted to. H&R Block Inc, the most recognized and certainly the most advertised accounting company in the country; a company that does the taxes for millions of Americans announced that they got their own taxes wrong over the past few years. Block will have to restate results […]
In a classic example of the Markowski Investments/Watchdog on Wall Street echo chamber many of the scams and investment fraud that we have been highlighting and discussing for years have been named by the North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA) in a list of the most widespread ways investors are likely to be trapped in […]
“He who lives by the crystal ball soon learns to eat ground glass.” Edgar Fielder In another biblical sign of Armageddon, the highest rated television show on CNBC is James Cramer’s Mad Money. This is a program that is suppose to help individuals with their investments, a serious and noble endeavor; in reality, it is […]