Word: scams
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Bernard Madoff to 150 years in prison on Monday. In his decision, the judge dismissed Madoff's lawyer's plea for a lighter sentence of 12 years and disputed suggestions that the victims in the fraud were seeking mob vengeance. "The fraud here was staggering" and losses from the scam "off the chart," he said, justifying a sentence that sends a message...
...Madoff, dressed in a charcoal-colored suit and black tie, showed little emotion as the sentence was read. Throughout Monday's hearing, he sat stoically, facing the judge, while nine victims behind him gave emotional statements on how the scam had wiped out their finances and put their futures in jeopardy. One of the most heart-wrenching responses came from Miriam Siegman, who described how she now lives on food stamps, can't afford to buy new reading glasses and sometimes rummages through trash cans to eat. "[Madoff] discarded me like roadkill," the 65-year-old said...
...suit herself. She says she feels confident that Congress will decide the widows "have the truth on our side." Still, she fears there is a culture inside the U.S. immigration bureaucracy that assumes foreign spouses are merely green-card gold diggers. (To be fair, immigration agents do confront myriad scam artists, male and female.) She and Tigran were genuinely in love, she says, because they were "Russian soul mates" - he was born in Russia and came to America as a child with his parents - who met a year after she arrived in the U.S. on a visitor's visa...
...President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, whom he flatly called corrupt (a widespread belief among reformers and conservatives alike); he attacked Mousavi's wife Zahra Rahnavard, a famous artist and activist, for allegedly getting into college without taking the entrance exam; he attacked Karroubi for taking money from a convicted scam artist...
...alone. Over the next few days, I heard a dozen or so complaints from people that Tagged had spammed their entire contact list. One quick sweep of the blogosphere reveals a multitude of Tagged victims, dating back to 2007. But the scam is red-hot now. "Don't Get Tagged!" one blogger warned on June 6. "Spread the word: Tagged stinks!" shouted a Facebook friend the same day. The Better Business Bureau's grade for Tagged: a big fat F. Yes, I blame myself for being gullible. But the site was confusing and dishonest. And it's nice to know...