{"id":1206,"date":"2008-01-13T15:15:07","date_gmt":"2008-01-13T21:15:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sequence-inc.com\/fraudfiles\/2008\/01\/13\/test-your-scam-alert-skills\/"},"modified":"2012-01-26T09:41:00","modified_gmt":"2012-01-26T15:41:00","slug":"test-your-scam-alert-skills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/test-your-scam-alert-skills\/","title":{"rendered":"Test Your Scam Alert Skills"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Colorado Division of Securities <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dora.state.co.us\/Securities\/AIS_CO_CD\/AIS_CO_Scams.html\" target=\"_blank\">has a little quiz<\/a> to help you see if you know anything about investment fraud, or if you&#8217;re a scam victim waiting to be taken advantage of. In addition to the quiz which helps you see if you can spot an investment scam, there&#8217;s also a checklist to help you evaluate these investment &#8220;opportunities&#8221; in the future.<\/p>\n<p>The checklist and my comments:<!--more--><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Too little information &#8211; If someone wants your money, they should be ready to fully disclose all the details about their scheme<\/li>\n<li>Too many personal questions, too soon &#8211; Keep your personal data personal until you know more!<\/li>\n<li>Spotty or absent credentials &#8211; Who is this person offering you this opportunity? Who do they work for? What&#8217;s their background?<\/li>\n<li>Too much account activity &#8211; Are you suddenly paying a lot of commissions or unusual fees?<\/li>\n<li>Too much hype &#8211; All is rosy, this company is the greatest thing out there&#8230; This could be a &#8220;pump and dump,&#8221; in which you get excited, hand over your money, and the thing tanks. Bye-bye money.<\/li>\n<li>High-pressure tactics and guarantees &#8211; Beware of them telling you this opportunity won&#8217;t be around long and you might miss out. Even worse are guarantees of high rates of return. Scam!<\/li>\n<li>An offer to get your money back &#8211; If you&#8217;ve lost money in an investment scam, don&#8217;t pay someone who says they&#8217;ll get the money back for you. You&#8217;ll just be out more money.<\/li>\n<li>A stranger speaks up &#8211; Beware of people contacting you because of a supposed connection through church or a social club. Many scams prey on common interests &#8211; especially churches &#8211; to gain your trust and get you to fork over your money.<\/li>\n<li>It sounds too good to be true &#8211; If it sounds too good to be true, it almost certainly is. Stick with traditional investment accounts and known investment advisors. These fly-by-night make-a-lot-of-money schemes are almost always nothing more than a scam to get your money.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Colorado Division of Securities has a little quiz to help you see if you know anything about investment fraud, or if you&#8217;re a scam victim waiting to be taken advantage of. In addition to the quiz which helps you [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[824],"tags":[1852,1538],"class_list":["post-1206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-consumer-protection","tag-scam-alert","tag-securities-fraud"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Z0e-js","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1206\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}