Hollywood has taken great liberties and made a great deal of money in its portrayal of the “Wall ,Street Master of the Universe Tycoon” character. There was Richard Gere playing Edward Lewis in the film Pretty Woman, (a Disney film about a hooker…Gee, it’s too bad and a wonder they didn’t make an attraction about […]
ANNUITY SALES In March of 2005 in our article The Perfect Mark we chronicled two cases of banks taking advantage of senior citizens through the use of local branches and tellers. The scam perpetrated by Citizens Bank was as dubious as they come. Tellers at the bank earned compensation on a point system by referring […]
I couldn’t believe my eyes this past month when I saw the infamous Henry Blodget being quoted as expert on American Online and their new foray into making their service free. This guy has more lives than Jason Voorhees. I cannot understand for the life of me why the Wall Street Journal would go to […]
In a story reminiscent of the classic Tommy Flannigan Pathological Liar character on Saturday Night Live played by Jon Lovitz. Ladies and gentlemen I give you Frank S. Marone, pathological liar extraordinaire. This guy would give old Tommy Flannigan a run for his money. The New York Post reported that a former Merrill Lynch stock […]
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 […]