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Cold fear...
Mar. 9th, 2004 09:05 pmGalina came home today brimming with excitement about a deal that carries all the earmarks of a scam.
The deal guarantees a whopping return, in exchange for guaranteed security for the investment (guaranteed by either a promissory note or a deed to property, I'm not sure which), and only requires us to invest our entire nest egg, plus about $5K. The idea ostensibly is to take a company public and make a whopping profit from the stock.
Upon reading the documents about the company, I was struck by several factors.
For a company in the entertainment industry, I found it interesting that it has no web presence, nor is its name to be found in Google for any reason (i.e., in a news story, for instance).
I found it interesting that the executive summary refers to "Brittany Spears" (the proper spelling is "Britney"). It also refers to something called "Mac," which is supposed to be the Next Big Thing™ in the music biz, but turns up no hits on Google. Natalie has never heard of such a genre, either.
Less telling is the fact that the Big Cheese of the new company was, as of this past December, an executive VP of some other company in the broadcasting industry (of course, said Cheese may have changed his plans to start this company, who knows?). Oh, and that other company was likely not long for this world (my paraphrase), according to their auditor's statement.
As far as their survey report was concerned, I was struck by how mundane the reported results were. Compared to the rest of what was provided, it sounded very smooth. On a hunch, I typed in half a sentence that contained numbers and found that a whole chunk of their report was lifted, verbatim, from something published by... someone else. WIthout attribution, natch.
My warning antennae are vibrating so hard, you could harness them to generate electricity. I am barely lucid. I can hardly type. I can't even talk about my translation work
I think I've convinced Galina that before doing anything else on this, we need to run it by a lawyer of our choosing.
Cheers...
The deal guarantees a whopping return, in exchange for guaranteed security for the investment (guaranteed by either a promissory note or a deed to property, I'm not sure which), and only requires us to invest our entire nest egg, plus about $5K. The idea ostensibly is to take a company public and make a whopping profit from the stock.
Upon reading the documents about the company, I was struck by several factors.
For a company in the entertainment industry, I found it interesting that it has no web presence, nor is its name to be found in Google for any reason (i.e., in a news story, for instance).
I found it interesting that the executive summary refers to "Brittany Spears" (the proper spelling is "Britney"). It also refers to something called "Mac," which is supposed to be the Next Big Thing™ in the music biz, but turns up no hits on Google. Natalie has never heard of such a genre, either.
Less telling is the fact that the Big Cheese of the new company was, as of this past December, an executive VP of some other company in the broadcasting industry (of course, said Cheese may have changed his plans to start this company, who knows?). Oh, and that other company was likely not long for this world (my paraphrase), according to their auditor's statement.
As far as their survey report was concerned, I was struck by how mundane the reported results were. Compared to the rest of what was provided, it sounded very smooth. On a hunch, I typed in half a sentence that contained numbers and found that a whole chunk of their report was lifted, verbatim, from something published by... someone else. WIthout attribution, natch.
My warning antennae are vibrating so hard, you could harness them to generate electricity. I am barely lucid. I can hardly type. I can't even talk about my translation work
I think I've convinced Galina that before doing anything else on this, we need to run it by a lawyer of our choosing.
Cheers...
