The Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force announced the conclusion of Operation Broken Trust, the largest investment fraud sweep ever conducted in the U.S. The 211 cases in the operation involved more than 120,000 victims who lost more than $8 billion.
Operation Broken Trust focused on scams directly targeting individual investors, rather than long-term complex corporate fraud matters. In many instances, these criminals were trusted people within their communities—sometimes neighbors, co-workers, fellow church-goers—who betrayed that trust in order to line their own pockets. And the results were often devastating, with some victims losing their life savings, their homes, their livelihoods. Each of the cases included in the sweep involved individual investors being deceived by individuals presenting “investment opportunities” that were either completely fictitious or not structured as advertised. An overwhelming number of the cases were high-yield investment frauds and Ponzi schemes. Others involved commodities fraud, foreign exchange fraud, market manipulation (i.e., “pump-and-dump” schemes”), real estate investment fraud, business opportunity fraud, affinity fraud, and the like.
http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2010/december/fraud_120610/fraud_120610
No comments:
Post a Comment