Word: fraud
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...however, the last layer. That is a fraud called "recovery room," reserved for victims who have finally vowed not to be scammed again. In this case, after Downs had moved to Raleigh, N.C., and taken an unlisted phone number, she got a call from a man who gave his name as Virgil Hastings. He said he was a lawyer working for a federal court in California that had impounded the funds of the telemarketers who had fleeced Downs. The court, he said, was ready to return her $74,000--but first she had to send...
...them dividends of 13% a year. Actually, he was running a Ponzi scheme, using money from new victims to make payments--briefly--to earlier ones. O'Donnell was sentenced last month to 16 years in prison after a jury in Denver convicted him on 30 counts of theft, securities fraud and racketeering. Crosson got no money back and must now work to supplement a meager pension. She watches over the houses and pets of absent homeowners in Evergreen, a wealthy suburb of Denver...
...case--to fix it. Meanwhile, the Singletons' signatures had mysteriously multiplied on mortgage contracts, and the $19,000 became $53,000. The finance company then sold the mortgage to Hempstead Bank. It is now held by Fleet Bank, which contends it has no responsibility for any fraud that was committed before it purchased the contract. The house looks as if it took a direct hit from a bomb, Tony has disappeared, and his company is out of business. Warren Singleton has been disabled by two strokes, and his wife, at 71, has had to take...
Prosecuting the frauds, however, is difficult. Often there are no witnesses to a phone con except the scammer and the victim. The rare con artists who are convicted seldom get sentences anywhere near as long as O'Donnell's 16 years. Far more typical are the prison terms of one to three years imposed on operators of one New York State pyramid scheme. The House in July passed a telemarketing-fraud bill that for the first time sets minimum jail terms for federal convictions. But the minimum will be only six months, or 15 months if the victim is over...
...Fraud fighters offer this faint cheer: the baby boomers now entering their 50s are more skeptical than their parents. So maybe when they retire, fraud against the elderly will at last become tougher to perpetrate. Maybe...