I’m not afraid to admit that I’ve tried online dating, and have been amazed at the lies my dates would tell. I walked away from one situation saying to myself, “That was boyfriend fraud!” And guys… women can be just as shady, so you have to look out for girlfriend fraud.
Pursuit Magazine just published an article about the book InvestiDate: How to Investigate Your Date: The Liars, Cheaters, Con Artists and Convicts Won’t Stand a Chance!
Primerica Financial Services is a multi-level marketing company that sells life insurance and investments. I’ve written about Primerica in the past, questioning whether Primerica is a pyramid scheme, and whether PFS is a scam.
The bottom line is that Primerica sells legitimate products and services (life insurance and investments), but sells them at inflated prices to generally unsophisticated consumers. So consumers are overpaying, and likely buying the wrong products. Additionally, the MLM structure sucks for the Primerica representatives. Because there is recruiting with so many levels, the distributor who sells the products receives much less money than if he or she sold similar services through a traditional insurance agency or investment company.
A typical recruiting ploy in Primerica is the job interview. Representatives of PFS troll the internet for job seekers, harvesting resumes from job sites. They contact the job seekers with an offer of an interview for an opening. They give the job seekers very little information about the “job” (it’s not a job at all… rather it is a position in the MLM pyramid), con them into showing up for an interview, and telling them if they have the right skills, they may be invited to stay for an information session.
A lawsuit recently filed in federal court in Chicago by Cottrell Inc. against J. Nigel Ellis highlights the issue of conflicts of interest for expert witnesses. Ellis is reportedly the founder of Ellis Litigation Support, Dynamic Scientific Controls, and Ellis Ladder Improvements. He has two roles in his career: selling safety products, and testifying as an expert witness about safety products.
According to the complaint, Cottrell says that Ellis approached the company in August 2005 to sell a “fall protection design” them. Prior to talking with Ellis, the company says they asked him if he was working with any of the attorneys representing plaintiffs who had sued Cottrell. He said he was not, and he signed a confidentiality agreement with the company. Ellis and Cottrell began exchanging information and letters regarding safety designs, and the relationship went on for nearly two years.
Earlier this year, I recorded a Sound Advice podcast for the American Bar Association’s Section of Litigation. When dividing shared business assets in a divorce, it is important to fully evaluate the finances of the businesses. It is impossible to fairly divide these assets if you do not dig into the financial details.
This podcast goes through the financial documents needed, including the tax returns (and which forms you should ask for, based on whether the business is a corporation, partnership, LLC, or sole proprietorship), the financial statements, and the detailed accounting records.
This article was originally printed in the ABA Section of Family Law eNewsletter, April 2013.
Financial documents are at the heart of divorces. Regardless of how contentious or amicable a divorce is, the finances of the spouses will need to be separated, and financial documents are required to make the division. Whether the information sought is current or historical, unaltered documents tell the truth about the money. This truth needs to be examined in every divorce before assets, debts, and income can be divided.
While financial documents can often be easily obtained during divorce proceedings, it is much easier for the spouse with access to the documents to simply copy and/or retain the documents. This reduces the number of discovery requests and subpoenas, and eliminates the time spent waiting to receive documents.
Serial charlatan Kevin Trudeau is up to his old tricks. Despite being caught by regulators violating consumer protection laws many times… despite being fined and sanctioned multiple times…. despite repeated violations of injunctions and orders….. Kevin Trudeau continuously invents new ways to avoid the long arm of the law.
Kevin Trudeau just filed for bankruptcy protection. And wouldn’t you know it, his lawyers say that the bankruptcy filing means the government can’t enforce an order that he pay a $37 million fine and that sanctions for non-payment cannot occur.
From a previous article about the Kevin Trudeau shenanigans:
One frequently asked question from divorcing individuals is what to do if the spouse is suspected to be hiding assets. I recently outlined the steps that should be taken if a spouse is worried about the other spouse manipulating assets and income:
If you think your spouse may be attempting to hide income or assets during your divorce proceeding, your first step should be to tell your divorce attorney. Your attorney should know how to handle situations such as this, and the sooner he or she can act, the more likely you are to see results.
You should also quickly gather and secure any documentation that might prove your allegations. Financial documents that you can legally access should be copied and turned over to your attorney. This might include tax returns, pay stubs, credit card statements, bank statements, brokerage statements, contracts, or any other documents which might prove the existence of assets or streams of income.
Read the rest of the article here.
The article can also be found in the Spring 2013 print edition of Divorce Magazine.
I have always been a big Dave Ramsey fan, and believed that his financial advice for consumers is first rate. But today Dave Ramsey got it wrong in a big way. On his blog, he published an article about making money in multi-level marketing.
The article failed to acknowledge the fact that over and over again, it has been proven that 99% of people involved in MLMs lose money. Front and center in the article was this lie:
Truthfully, if you have a go-getter personality, and you can follow some basic business and personal etiquette, you can make a lot of money in an MLM. The trick is to avoid all the potential pitfalls along the way.
Truthfully? No, there is no truth in what was said.
All good multi-level marketing companies have one thing in common: They fail to disclose enough information to allow consumers and regulators to determine if they are in the business of recruiting or selling products. They disclose just enough facts and figures to make it appear that they are being transparent. But they hide enough information that no one could ever determine definitively if they are running pyramid schemes.
MLMs cleverly avoid the pyramid scheme issue by making it impossible to determine the level of retail sales of products to consumers. The companies effectively use the technique of plausible deniability: They purposely do not track retail sales, so when the business model is challenged with the assertion that few retail sales occur (and therefore they are recruiting schemes), executives can claim that they know no such thing!
Usana Watchdog has released a report on Usana Health Sciences, challenging the company’s failure to reveal meaningful facts and figures that would allow consumers and law enforcement to determine whether the company is running an illegal pyramid scheme.
Former KPMG audit Partner Scott I. London brought great shame to the accounting profession this week by being charged with conspiracy to commit securities fraud through insider trading. After nearly 30 years with KPMG, London went down in flames after being caught passing insider information on audit clients of the Los Angeles office to his “friend,” Bryan Shaw.
Proving once again that there is no honor among thieves, Shaw got caught first, and then sold out his friend Scott to the Feds. He helped them get a gorgeous trail of evidence, including phone calls and photographs of the crime. Both are now charged with insider trading.
