Fraud is extremely common and the best way to avoid it is to get personal recommendations for anything important, like business contacts, lawyers, or accountants.

Over a decade ago, a friend of mine was under the legal age when he sold his collection of websites with the same theme for around $100m. I'm sure you've heard of at least one of the properties. Being underage, he didn't know how to protect himself, and he gave his lawyers power of attorney. They took almost the entire acquisition for themselves and left the USA.

That's fraud. Those guys are still out there. He contacted other lawyers and they basically said "it's been too long the money is gone and so are these criminals."

Wow that's a crazy story that would benefit from the streisand effect to enact some justice on those scumbag lawyers. Any idea why your friend isn't trying to actively expose these individuals who screwed him over?

Well, at first he was worried that he'd be known as a sucker and wouldn't be able to raise money for another company. "I sold XYZ for $100m, now fund my new thing ABC." Sounds a lot better than the raw truth. Since then, he's started something that's doing well. Some pretty interesting investors, some market traction, but he's still no where near being worth $100m.

Wonder if you could get a judgement and get the domains back.

Wasn’t madoffs whole Rolodex of investors by word of mouth?

It’s hard for an accountant to use their incoming tax returns to payoff their existing tax returns.

Well MLM scams are alive and well today and have been coming out of Utah for the last 20 years so I'd say fraud is pretty common. Check Craigslist for some fun frauds and scams, they're right out in the open. Social media are open markets for fraud too

How tough is it to take down such an operation? Bill Ackman bet and lost $1B trying:

https://dealbreaker.com/2020/05/herbalife-fined-for-china-br...

My SO had an acquaintance try to convince her and her friends to join an airplane game scheme a week or two ago.

I read the google drive PDF that they use to convince people, and it's terrifying how effectively it would prey on desperate people. Also crazy: nobody in the scam checks that NOT ONE of the people in that document (who mostly have unusual names) has a meaningful presence on the internet.

What is an airplane game scheme?

Looks like a pyramid scheme:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airplane_game

I'd love to see the document on the Google drive, though! OP, can you share it somehow?

Couldn't find a more resilient/less sketchy way to rehost without breaking my half-hearted anonymization, so here's the link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UvMeetDz-uEhxolTAGBrwh2hugt...

Hope I'm not blowing anyone up (well, not really. Scammers can drown in their own sewage).

I dug around for what I could, but there are a distinct lack of identifying details. I don't think I've seen a marketing PDF in a long time that didn't contain a single link. Looks like most of their coordination is done through Telegram groups and Zoom presentations, without an actual internet footprint.

This is fascinating reading, thanks so much for sharing!

Smith, most common last name in the USA.

It's a straight up ponzi scheme.

My feeling from a decade in large companies is that fraud is actually more common than non-fraud; for every real project I saw that was interesting, there were two or three that were nothing but tissue-thin propaganda.

So assuming the politics of every day life apply to the world at large, I can totally see fraud as completely rampant without batting an eye.

What is the conventional wisdom? Because frauds are extremely common.

Many frauds go unreported because they're too embarrassing to the business to be public.