When It Comes to Scams, Boston Has Tampa Beat
Last week, a Florida man was accused of scamming Apple out of $309,768 in 42 different transactions, according to The Tampa Bay Times. He ran up high bills at the Apple store, proceeding to “pay’’ with a card that was subsequently declined. He then pretended to call his bank, gave Apple a fake authorization code to pay for the products, and…it worked.
How does this most recent scam stack up with some of Boston’s scams?
– Boston Marathon bombing charity scams: There were plenty of them. Most well known was the “One Fund’’ scam where two brothers tried to defraud the Marathon victim charity site.
– West Roxbury Ponzi scheme: A family schemed about $10 million under the financial firm, Viking Financial Group, from 42 different victims, which included friends, aquaintances and a veteran’s organization.
– MIT students lottery scam: An MIT researcher and a bunch of students made $8 million over the course of 10 years scamming the lottery in a very complex process. (They spent $40 million and made $48 million.) Lottery officials knew about it, but the scam was only brought to the surface when The Boston Globe investigated. Lottery officials were pretty happy about their increased sales.
– TelexFree pyramid scheme: Last week owners of TelexFree Inc. were charged with fraud and conspiracy to, according to The Boston Globe, “commit wire fraud, alleging the two Massachusetts residents misled investors in a vast scheme to enrich themselves and others involved in the business.’’ They had a $1 billion global pyramid scheme.
– Belmont retirement Ponzi scheme: A man in Belmont, Mass. was running a $10 million retirement investment scheme, which defrauded three dozen investors, his sister being one of them.
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