Shocking!!

[80s_Fan]

You have to read this story; it was on the news last night and it's pretty shocking and sort of sad. Please, spread the word; be careful who you give your money to because you could be sucked into a scam like this.
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Patti Pilniuk lost nearly $50,000 dollars to what is called 'Affinity Fraud.'

Jane Kelly, of Elyria, Ohio lost her life savings.

Fleecing the Flock
Updated Sat. Feb. 17 2007 6:55 PM ET

W-FIVE Staff

It's called Affinity Fraud. And it is one of the fastest rising frauds in North America. In the US, in 1989 only 15,000 people lost a total of $450 million. By 2001 those numbers had increased to 80,000 people who lost $2 billion.


Here's how it works. Conmen infiltrate organized groups: sometimes they're seniors, sometimes members of the same ethnic community, often it's churches. Once they've won people's trust they start selling them bogus investments. By offering rates of return upwards of 50 per cent a year and a guarantee on the return of the principle, people are coughing up their life-savings in droves.


Affinity Fraud is a scheme that has four main ingredients. Which mixed together, can produce the perfect crime. Ingredient Number One - a trusting group of victims. Because church goers are trusting by nature this group had been particularly hard hit.


The front man is the second ingredient, someone who acts as a salesman within the group.


Which brings us to the third essential ingredient--the trusted insider. Someone within the church who will vouch for "the front man" Without the insider, the Affinity Fraud often could never occur. Not just anyone can walk into a church and win people over. Sometime he's an accomplice, sometimes just a patsy.


And the final ingredient -- the master mind. The person who orchestrates the scheme and after the money is collected, generally spirits it offshore where it can't be found by authorities.


Patti Pilniuk, who lost nearly $50,000 to an Affinity Fraud that happened in a Church campground near Barrie Ontario, describes the individual that she says defrauded her as, "a wolf, but dressed up as a sheep."


Jane Kelly, of Elyria, Ohio who lost her life savings to a couple of Canadian con men running an Affinity Fraud says, "Not only are you financially devastated and; and feel raped and then you feel stupid um your whole lifestyle takes a nosedive. Your whole you know your faith is spun out of control."


And who's responsible for protecting people from Affinity Fraud? Across Canada the individual provincial security commissions put the onus on the consumer to educate themselves against such a fraud. Their message: Check to see if the person "selling" the investments is even licensed to sell investments, and if not don't buy them.


But the B.C. Securities Commission has taken the additional step of educating the Church-going public in the Frasier Valley by funding "God's Fraud Squad." The program is delivered by two pastors and hopes to reach 80 churches in the next year.


In Ontario, the Ontario Securities Commission has the powers to investigate allegations of these types of affinity fraud -- and like the police, they have the power to issue warrants, subpoenas and more. There are sanctions available with fines of up to $5 million or five years in jail, less a day. But according to their own web site, in the six years from 1999 to 2005 -- the OSC received almost 3,800 complaints, and laid just 11 charges.


Police are often reluctant to investigate white collar crime and a class-action law suit can be filed, but as W-FIVE found out, after the process of forensic audits are complete, more often than not the money is gone, never to be returned to investors.

[theshark8777]

I don't live far from Elyria.