Tag: scammers
Former President Donald Trump

How Trump Scammed Investors In His Last Public Stock Offering

Former President Donald Trump's Truth Social platform is set for its initial public offering (IPO) as soon as next week after its merger was approved by a special purpose acquisition company. But while Trump himself stands to reap a multibillion-dollar windfall, investors may not be as lucky given Trump's past IPO record.

According to NBC News, Trump's last attempt to go public crashed and burned relatively quickly, with investors getting soaked even as Trump reaped significant benefits. A few months before the 2016 presidential election, the Washington Post reported that when the business mogul took Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts public, it plummeted from a $14 per share IPO to a penny stock in less than a decade.

"In its short life, Trump the company greatly enriched Trump the businessman, paying to have his personal jet piloted and buying heaps of Trump-brand merchandise," the Post's Drew Harwell wrote at the time. "Despite losing money every year under Trump’s leadership, the company paid Trump handsomely, including a $5 million bonus in the year the company’s stock plummeted 70 percent."

NBC reported that Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts performed relatively well for a time, hitting a peak of $35 per share in 1996. However, once it purchased a casino for $100 million more than it was worth, the value of the company's shares started to slide precipitously.

"The year the stock peaked, it lost $66 million. In 1999, it lost $134 million," NBC reporter Dareh Gregorian wrote. "And in 2004 — when the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange — it lost $191 million, according to a CNBC review."

Truth Social may end up suffering a similar fate after its parent company, Trump Media & Technology Group, debuts its IPO on the Nasdaq exchange. Even though Trump himself is expected to net roughly $3.5 billion from the deal, it may be a considerably more risky bet for mom-and-pop investors.

CNN reported that Truth Social is "hemorrhaging users" and has just roughly 860,000 active accounts. That's far less than other far more popular social media networks like Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, X/Twitter and TikTok. Truth Social is reportedly not even among the top 100 apps downloaded on Apple's App Store, and the company's own management worried it could go belly-up if its merger wasn't approved.

"It's grossly overvalued,” University of Florida finance professor Jay Ritter told CNN. "It qualifies as a meme stock for which the price is divorced from fundamental value."

All eyes are on Trump's finances as he struggles under the weight of multiple civil judgments nearing $600 million in total. The former president owes roughly $464 million in penalties and interest to the State of New York after Judge Arthur Engoron found him guilty of artificially inflating the value of his real estate portfolio. He also recently posted a $91 million bond in his appeal of writer E. Jean Carroll's defamation verdict against him. That judgment came down after a 2023 judgment in which Trump was found guilty in a separate civil case of sexual abuse.

Despite his pending $3.5 billion payday, Trump is prohibited from selling any of his shares for six months, meaning he won't have any immediate help from the IPO in paying his legal costs.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

School bus

Right-Wing Scammers Are Targeting Public School Kids Now

The right's war on public education has reached its inevitable conclusion: fighting back against supposed liberal indoctrination in schools by empowering an explicitly right-wing organization to expose schoolchildren to flagrant conservative propaganda.

PragerU is creating partnerships with Republican-controlled states to put videos from its PragerU Kids offshoot — which it bills as a counter to ”the woke and anti-American leftist narrative taught in most schools” — in their classrooms. Oklahoma’s Department of Education announced on Tuesday that it will join Florida in treating PragerU Kids’ propagandistic work as legitimate educational content.

More states will likely follow — PragerU hosts a petition on its website whose signers support allowing its videos “in classrooms nationwide,” and state officials often mimic the policies they see implemented elsewhere.

This marks a new twist on an old con. Right-wingers regularly denounce nonpartisan institutions as excessively left-wing, then establish explicitly ideological counter-institutions as a purported balance. At its most effective, that strategy brings political benefits for Republican politicians and financial profits for their propagandists. With PragerU Kids, GOP officials are using their power to ensure that the grifters get paid.

Education is the next frontier for right-wing grifters and propagandists 

For more than two years, the right has conducted a nationwide campaign targeting the purported influence of the academic framework known as “critical race theory” in public school systems. Conservative think tanks, advocacy groups, and media outlets identify, exaggerate, or fabricate discrete instances of alleged left-wing excesses in discussions of race across the nation’s approximately 130,000 schools, then blow them up into national stories in order to focus the movement’s mostly white adherents’ racial anxiety into political energy.

Republican politicians have largely responded to the incentives created by this campaign by enacting legislation to limit discourse and teaching on race in public schools, at times through laws that courts have blocked as unconstitutional.

But the anti-critical race theory campaign also presents right-wing organizations with opportunities to access public school resources and their large, captive audience — and PragerU is taking advantage.

PragerU is a right-wing propaganda factory which claims to have generated “7 billion lifetime views” for its massive archive of videos targeting college-aged viewers. While its name conveys the imprimatur of a nonpartisan educational facility, the organization describes itself as “focused on changing minds” to be more conservative. Founded in 2011 by Dennis Prager, a right-wing talk radio host with an array of extremist views who has argued that “either ‘studies’ confirm what common sense suggests or that they are mistaken,” the organization has been heavily funded by Dan and Farris Wilks, the extremely religious GOP megadonors who also backed The Daily Wire.

PragerU rolled out its PragerU Kids line in 2021 in direct response to the right-wing frenzy over critical race theory. As with its videos geared toward college-aged viewers, PragerU claims its kids content is intended to counter the left-wing material purportedly taught elsewhere.

According to PragerU’s most recent report for its donors, its “kids shows are created to inoculate children against the woke and anti-American leftist narrative taught in most schools.” What that actually entails, as my colleague John Knefel reported, is “right-wing propaganda” that seeks to “render history and its inheritances invisible, inert, and incapable of inspiring young people to seek a more equal and more just world.”

By putting these videos in their state’s public school classrooms, Republican politicians can garner accolades on the right. PragerU, in turn, gets to tell the donors who gave more than $65 million according to its last publicly available tax filing that the organization has been successful in finding a new, captive audience for its content.

The losers are the students, and parents who don’t want their kids watching content explicitly designed to make them more conservative.

The right manufactures rage against institutions, then props up its own

PragerU Kids marks the latest iteration of a decades-old strategy. Grievance by grievance, the right has torn down nonpartisan institutions and businesses and constructed an alternate set of brands for “lifestyle conservatives” to purchase.

First came the press. Republican activists and politicians spent decades attacking mainstream news sources as excessively liberal. As rank-and-file conservatives lost trust in journalists, movement leaders launched new right-wing alternatives: talk radio in the 1980s, Fox News in the 1990s, and digital outlets in the 21st century.

Much of the content on these outlets focuses on attacking the mainstream press, both as a way to “work the refs” and encourage them to provide more favorable coverage of the GOP and its causes, and as a business strategy to keep audiences ensconced in a closed information environment where they only hear from right-wing voices.

Then came social media. The right ran the same playbook against the likes of Facebook and YouTube, trying to garner special dispensation to break the rules by claiming the platforms were biased against them. At the same time, they stood up (with varying degrees of success) explicitly right-wing alternatives in Trump’s Truth Social, Trump aide Jason Miller’s Gettr, white nationalist stomping ground Gab, and Rumble, a YouTube knock-off backed by fascist billionaire Peter Thiel.

Then came everything else. Over the last few years, right-wing propagandists have denounced an array of American corporations as exemplars of “woke capital” and called for boycotts. At the same time, right-wing entrepreneurs (often the same people promoting the critiques) have launched right-wing analogues to those disfavored brands.

Right-wing culture warriors are urged to drink Ultra Right Beer instead of Bud Light and Black Rifle Coffee instead of Starbucks, shave with Jeremy’s Razors instead of Harry’s or Gillette, make phone calls on Pure Talk instead of AT&T, and eat Jeremy’s Chocolate instead of Hershey’s. As other figures on the right attacked Disney movies and popular children’s books as excessively “woke,” they prepped right-wing options to replace them.

It’s a long con, one designed to channel culture war issues into Republican votes so the party can redistribute wealth upward, while also putting money in the pockets of the party’s hack class. And now, GOP politicians are putting the power of the state behind their grifters.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Online Scams: How Can You Protect Yourself and Your Family?

Online Scams: How Can You Protect Yourself and Your Family?

Dear Carrie: My mother is quite independent and does a lot of her financial business online. I hear about fraudsters preying on seniors all the time and worry about her falling for a scam. How can I protect her?

Dear Reader: It seems there’s no limit to the imaginative scams that today’s fraudsters can come up with. Just when we’ve all become aware of the email from a “friend” purporting to have been robbed in some far-flung place and needing money, there’s the new scam threatening arrest if you don’t pay back taxes or the tech support scam or—you name it. Seniors are a prime target because they’re perceived as more likely to have assets—and perhaps less likely to be skeptical.

But financial fraud isn’t age specific; we’re all targets. When you consider that the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) received 269,422 complaints representing more than $800,000,000 in losses in 2014 alone (and it’s estimated that only 15 percent of victims report crimes), you start to understand the enormity of the problem.

So, while it’s great that you want to protect your mother, when it comes to the potential for being scammed, we all need to take heed. My advice would be to sit down with her— and the rest of your family — to discuss best practices for fraud protection both on and off the Internet.

Become Familiar With the Latest Scams

Most scams are designed to defraud you of your money or get your personal information to access that money. Here are a few common frauds we should all be aware of:

—Emails purportedly from government agencies or financial institutions requesting personal and financial information or money

—Calls from familiar sounding charities pressuring you for quick donations by credit card or wire transfer

—Offers of discounted health insurance or low-cost medications

—Goods for sale, such as a car, at below market value, and insistence on a rush sale with payment by wire or to a third party

—Email purportedly from a legitimate collection agency stating that a loan is delinquent and must be paid in full to avoid legal consequences

—Offers for free gifts, vacations or “found money” dependent on some sort of upfront payment, such as a finder’s fee, taxes or delivery charges

—Various investment frauds, including offers of high-yield investments, letters of credit or prime bank notes

—Hot stock tips, especially for “penny stocks,” from unknown callers or e-mails even if they claim to work for well-known brokerage or investment firms

You can find a more complete list of common frauds at fbi.gov. Scam alerts are also posted on ftc.gov. A couple especially of note for seniors are emails supposedly from Social Security and Medicare asking for personal information. Another scam involves the new chip cards where emails, seemingly from credit card issuers, ask you to update account information before receiving your new card. Once you give out the information or click on the link, you’re had!


Review Techniques for not Falling Victim

Scammers are smart and know how to push emotional buttons. While we all hope we won’t be taken in, it happens. So to help protect your mother — and yourself — review the things to do and not do to stay clear of scams:

—Never reply to an unknown email.

—Never click on a link or download information unless you know the sender. Even then you need to be cautious because some links and downloads may contain malware or spyware that can monitor or control your computer use and gain access to your personal and financial information.

—Don’t return a call to a phone number provided in an unknown email, even if it has a local area code.

—Never email personal or financial information such as your social security number, date of birth, passwords. If you receive a suspicious email from a bank or other company requesting such information, contact that company by phone directly. You can report the email to the FBI at www.ic3.gov.

—Make sure you have up-to-date security software on your computer. Create secure passwords, don’t use the same password over multiple sites, and change your passwords periodically.

—Use different passwords for online banking and consider using two-factor authentication, where you enter an additional verification code sent to your phone or a separate device.

—Read your bank, investment and credit card statements.

—Get a copy of your credit report at annualcreditreport.com.

—Designate a single credit card for online purchases and monitor it closely.

And in this age of social media, be cautious about what you put online via social media. Your vacation plans, purchases, identity of family members, birthdays, or special interests can all be fodder for enterprising fraudsters. Also avoid clicking on links on social media sites. You can’t be certain where that link is really taking you.
Stay Informed — and Alert

There’s no way to protect yourself completely, but forewarned is forearmed. Check out the list of Common Fraud Schemes at fbi.gov. Sign up for AARP’s FraudWatch Network (or have your mother sign up). And by all means, if you’ve been the victim of fraud, identity theft or deceptive business practices, file a complaint with the FTC at ftc.gov or by calling 1-877-FTC-HELP (1-877-382-4357).

Unfortunately, in today’s world, we can’t be too trusting or complacent. It’s great to have the convenience of handling our financial business online, but at the same time we must be vigilant in protecting our information and ourselves. If your mother is Internet savvy, she may be more sophisticated than you think about avoiding fraud. But here, too, don’t take anything for granted. Have the conversation now—and check in with her periodically—for both of your sakes.

Carrie Schwab-Pomerantz, CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER(tm), is board chair and president of Charles Schwab Foundation and author of The Charles Schwab Guide to Finances After Fifty, available in bookstores nationwide. Read more at http://schwab.com/book. You can e-mail Carrie at askcarrie@schwab.com. This column is no substitute for an individualized recommendation, tax, legal or personalized investment advice. Where specific advice is necessary or appropriate, consult with a qualified tax advisor, CPA, financial planner or investment manager. To find out more about Carrie Schwab-Pomerantz and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

DIST BY CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC. (0216-0715)

Photo: An employee of a money changer holds a stack of U.S.  Dollar notes before giving it to a customer in Jakarta, October 8, 2015.  REUTERS/Beawiharta

FBI Investigating Scam Targeting Immigrant Children’s Families

FBI Investigating Scam Targeting Immigrant Children’s Families

By Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Los Angeles Times

DALLAS — The FBI is investigating how scammers obtained confidential information to defraud migrant children’s families of thousands of dollars by telling them they needed to pay a fee to get their children out of federal custody.

The investigation, which began July 18 in San Antonio, has uncovered evidence of similar scams in a dozen states, including California. The FBI issued a warning about the scams this week as the investigation broadened.

A spokeswoman for the FBI in Los Angeles said workers in that office were assisting their Texas colleagues. “We haven’t seen complaints to any degree here,” spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said. “We’re certainly monitoring the situation.”

Scammers called relatives of children who had crossed the border unaccompanied and were housed at massive new shelters run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio and Fort Sill, Okla., according to FBI spokeswoman Michelle Lee in San Antonio. Some scammers even used the phone number of a San Antonio business to appear more trustworthy, she said.

The FBI has not received reports of scammers targeting relatives of children housed at the shelter at Port Hueneme in Ventura County, Calif., Lee said.

Lawmakers and immigrant advocates were outraged by the scam and the apparent security breach.

“While they are in our custody, these children are our responsibility,” U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Texas Democrat from the Rio Grande Valley, said in an email. “Not only is it our responsibility to see to their care and protection physically, but also the protection of their privacy and their families’ privacy.”

The two shelters that are the primary focus of the investigation have held more than 4,500 youths since they opened in recent months, mostly Central Americans who crossed into the United States through the Rio Grande Valley.

More than 57,000 unaccompanied youths have been apprehended at the Southwest border since Oct. 1, more than twice the number this time last year. The sheer numbers have overwhelmed shelters and caseworkers responsible for placing the children with relatives or approved sponsors until their immigration cases are resolved.

Parents and other relatives who were targeted told the FBI that while they were waiting to be reunited, they received calls from individuals fluent in Spanish who were familiar with the system. The callers told the families that if they wanted their children, they would have to pay a fee first.

“Calls were made to cover the application fees, travel costs, and other costs to reunify with the family,” Lee said.

Scammers requested payments of $300 to $6,000, she said, and in at least one case, they collected bank information to take the money directly from the account. Some families paid, but it wasn’t clear how much, Lee said. Investigators are still determining how many victims were defrauded and how much money was stolen.

Scammers usually called families after they had been contacted by a case manager contracted with the Department of Health and Human Services, she said.

Kenneth J. Wolfe, deputy director of the office of public affairs at the Administration for Children and Families, a division of Health and Human Services, declined to comment on whether there was a security breach.

“The well-being and safety of these children is our top priority, and we take any reports of fraud very seriously,” Wolfe said via email.

“Trained case managers work with family members and sponsors of minors,” he said. “No direct payment to shelters will ever be requested during the reunification process.”

Wolfe said 1,037 children were being held at Lackland and 759 at Fort Sill. Baptist Children and Family Services, a nonprofit group known as BCFS, administers both shelters, he said.

Photo: o.maloteau via Flickr

Interested in national news? Sign up for our daily email newsletter!