Sadly, our community has seen its fair share of Ponzi schemes, phony investments, and thieves who prey on fellow members of their kehilla; We all know the names of the most infamous schemers and scammers that have wrought havoc in our community. Some have been jailed, but others have been “bailed out” to prevent prison time and “mesira.” Many readers may not know this, but there were at least five Ponzi schemes and frauds exposed in just the past few weeks. One of them – seemingly the best known one –  is alleged to be a whopping $45 million dollars stolen by a thief in Toms River who then fled to Israel. Another one was in Flatbush, where around $10 million dollars was allegedly embezzled. A third involved investors from many Jewish communities around the United States and Israel, and a fourth took place in Williamsburg, where around $50 million was stolen. There’s also a fifth, but I can’t talk about that publicly just yet. While each scam and scheme had its own “shtick” to it, all shared one feature, a tzad hashaveh if you will: the investors were, by and large, not wealthy. Many, if not all, investors of each scam (except for the Williamsburg one) were hard-working, blue collar individuals; some of them poured their entire life savings into what they were convinced were great deals. In other words, they were all looking to make a quick, easy buck. A few points that need to be made. NUMBER ONE: If anyone offers you a 30% or 40% return on your money, immediately turn away and consider calling law enforcement, because whomever is making that claim is likely to end up robbing you and others in the community. Don’t let your greed overtake your seichel and think you’re about to strike it rich. You’re not. Specifically, when someone comes to you with a “great real estate deal,” be very, very thorough. Check every detail and then check it twice. If you’re not a pro and don’t have experience in real estate, get a mentor and learn it. There’s a lot more to real estate than cap rates and price per square foot. There have numerous stories of people losing all they had on real estate deals, thinking that they were about to become a real estate magnate. NUMBER TWO: Do you know why most of the victims were indeed not wealthy? Because truly wealthy people know that no investor anywhere in the world can promise to give you a 40% return on your money. A healthy investment makes 7% or 8% a year. And in the few cases where there were wealthy investors, they knew better, but they too fell for greed over seichel. NUMBER THREE: Can we please stop trying to hide these scams? There was one in Monsey a few years ago where a young kid managed to suck in tens of millions of dollars and proceeded to flush it down the drain. It’s high time that we turn these crooks into the cops and make them pariahs in our community. LIMAAN YISHMIU VIYIRAU! We think we are helping people who “made a mistake” by doing so, but in reality, we are severely hurting our kehillos. Not only that, but we are hurting future scammers, because if they’d see what happened […]
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