Word: scams
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...perhaps the size, sweep and nature of the FBI operation made early publication inevitable. (Rosenthal even deplores the name Abscam, which is short for Arab scam: "I wouldn't like it if the FBI had a Jewscam.") But there's still something disquieting about the way the press protects those whose leaks jeopardize due process of law or disclose security information. The Times, in listing the motives of leakers, says that some fear that superiors may override their findings, some long for personal credit, others with a grudge may want to punish a politician "with publicity even...
...Federal Bureau of Investigation uncovered the Goody scam through one of its now glamorous "sting" operations. The FBI probe started three years ago, when a strike force opened a record shop in Westbury, Long Island, with agents posing as owners and employees. A total of more than 200,000 cloned tapes worth millions were eventually involved. Most of the fakes were sound tracks of the movies Grease and Saturday Night Fever. Other popular copies included hits by Pop Stars Billy Joel, Olivia Newton-John and Paul McCartney...
...charges grew out of a four-month investigation by New York and CFTC officials. Scam busters discovered seedy boiler rooms where pitchmen used computer lists to contact unsuspecting pigeons, or potential victims. The salesman, in a follow-up phone call, might then say discreetly, "If you act now, I can squeeze you in on a contract." While most of the contracts have not yet fallen due, investigators allege that brokers in fact do not possess the oil to back up the bogus deals. Eventually, customers would find that the salesmen had either left town or were no longer in business...
Officials concede that the latest court action is unlikely to stop over-the-phone scams. Like some Hydraheaded monster, one get-rich-quick operation is no sooner closed down than another takes its place. Federal and state agents are usually one step behind boiler-room artists ready to sell to a gullible public. Says Attorney General Robert Abrams: "The same types of salesmen who brought us underwater land, worthless uranium stocks and phony gold certificates are in the process of perpetrating on the American public their latest scheme-oil futures contracts." A lawyer with the New York attorney general...
...would anyone in the Justice Department leak news of the Abscam sting if it imperiled the simultaneous Brilab scam? One possible answer, according to some Justice Department sources, was that one or more of Abscam's key directors in the New York-New Jersey area were angry at what they considered a premature termination of the Abscam operation. Abscam was shut down, these New York officials apparently believed, just as it was about to reach more members of Congress than the eight already involved. Fearing a high-level coverup, the advocates of this theory claim, the lower-level officials...