From afar reading or watching movies about con artists do their thing can be interesting as long as you have no money at stake and do not know anyone who is losing money. The history of money also includes people trying to do things to take the money away or cons have been in society for many generations and will continue to be. There have been multiple movies and books about the life of con artists including The Sting staring Paul Newman and Robert Redford. In the movies, the cons are more stealing from those who steal from others or people who have acknowledgement of the police in their lives.

In a summer reading book, The Con Queen of Hollywood written by Scott C Johnson published by HarperCollins, NY, 2023. The story is interesting because with the advances of technology, the bad side is we will see more of this type of con as the years go by.

The person doing the con was impersonating various high profile women in Hollywood and targeting those who do the work behind the scenes long before a movie is shot. The man was impersonating a woman’s voice and would have conversations in the background with a man’s voice and could bounce back between the two so the people being conned did not know they were talking to a man who was really a woman.

The people were self-employed or ran their businesses and being connected to a large budget movie would jump start their revenues. The con artist did their homework on the person because many small businesses have a presence on line, so it is possible to fill in the details. They would have to spend some money up front, go to another country and use specific services to access locations, but payment would be made in 30 days. The payment never arrived, but another request for service did. The people were slowly sucked in and if they stopped no payment, but if they continued when would they get paid? never. (if you have a small business ask for 60% down, that tends to distract people).

The story includes a corporate security firm called K2 Intelligence which handles identity theft among many options. While the con artist was caught and is in jail, the reality is the effort took 3 years, a lot of effort by the K2 staff. Similar to all con jobs, follow the money is the key. The lead investigator at K2 had multiple spread sheets.

Technology was the scam’s great enabler. It allowed the imposter to be multiple people at any given moment, anywhere in the world, often all once. It increased the ability to adapt to the needs and insecurities of victims in real time. The speed and frequency of communication – whether by email, text message, Instagram, What’s App, Skype or cell phone provided the one thing that will kill any scam: doubt.

When you first started investing, you likely started with a company which trades over the price of hamburger or in the teens or above, but you can only buy x amount of shares. If you trade in the stocks for less than a dollar or 5 dollars, you can buy more. Most of those companies trade at that level because they are worth that, but every once in a while a sector becomes hot and money flows into the small companies and they go up in value. Many times after the hot phase has left the market the company reinvents itself to capitalize on the new hot trend.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, the good thing with these stocks is if you buy a profitable company that can pay a dividend, the stock price goes up and down, but as the dividend comes forth you follow the number lesson on Wall Street – try not to lose money. The longer you are investing the more you will see and likely have lost money on a scam, all long term investors have lost money on something that looked really good at the time. As an investor as try to remember lesson one – try not to lose money and saying no to a great opportunity is a wonderful way to start.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.