Word: conly
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Con artists have found a highly receptive audience among the millions of U.S. investors who routinely conduct stock and bond trades over the phone with their brokers. Because it is normal for legitimate brokers to solicit new business by making cold calls, crooks posing as Wall Streeters have talked elderly investors into borrowing heavily against their home equity to buy into schemes touted as surefire. "We are confronted with a national epidemic of truly staggering proportions," says John Baldwin, president of the North American Securities Administrators Association, a group of state officials who regulate brokers and dealers...
Millions of consumers have received postcards and telegrams in a fast- growing sweepstakes con that is designed to prompt them to call up the telemarketing crooks. "Mr. Quinn will definitely receive a two-week, all- expenses-paid trip to London," such an announcement begins. Winners are instructed to call for information on how to collect their prize. But when they do, they are informed that in order to "qualify," they must join an expensive travel club and pay "handling fees" of $100 or more, or buy a companion ticket at an inflated price. After the extra costs are added, such...
Most telemarketing crooks insist on payment by credit card. Reason: the vouchers can be cashed in at banks before the buyers have second thoughts. Moreover, purloined credit-card numbers enable con artists to compound the crime -- for example, by charging victims several times for the products they purchase over the phone. By the time the consumers receive a bill, the thieves have disappeared, often without shipping any products...
...variation on this con, excited consumers who call to claim prizes after receiving you-are-a-winner letters are asked for their credit-card numbers and card-expiration dates "as verification." The new car or microwave oven never arrives. But before long, mysterious charges begin to show up on the cards. Joel Lisker, MasterCard's vice president for security and fraud control, & estimates that thieves using such methods skimmed at least $105 million from the $120 billion in U.S. credit-card transactions last year...
...Con artists working the phones are robbing consumers of $1 billion or more every year. So far, law-enforcement officials can do little to stop them. -- As the U.S. gulps more oil and discovers less, imports are taking off. -- Small farmers love him, but pesticide makers think he's poison. Don't mess around with Jim Hightower...