You Can't Cheat an Honest Man: How Ponzi Schemes and Pyramid Frauds Work... and Why They're More Common Than Ever

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Ponzi Schemes Are Still Alive & Kicking Today!

As relevant today as it was in 1998

Not All MLM's Are a Pyramid Scheme !

Ponzi Schemes everywhere...

Interesting journey into the depths of stupidity

You Can't Cheat an Honest Man: How Ponzi Schemes and Pyramid Frauds Work... and Why They're More Common Than Ever
James Walsh
Manufacturer: Merritt Pub.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Ponzi's Scheme: The True Story of a Financial Legend

ASIN: 1563431696

Book Description

A keen insider's guide to investment rip-offs, scams and conartists.

Customer Reviews:

Ponzi Schemes Are Still Alive & Kicking Today!.......2005-04-20

In 1903 Charles Ponzi arrived in the USA with the aim of becoming as wealthy as Rockefeller. His modus operandi was based on the principle of robbing Peter to Pay Paul.

James Walsh, in his informative book, You Can`t Cheat An Honest Man: How Ponzi Schemes and Pyramid Frauds Work..and Why They`re More Common Than Ever, traces the origins of the Ponzi Scheme, and explores how and why the scheme works with its different modern day variations.

The first part of the book narrates how, after spending some time in prison for cheque forgery, Ponzi found a creative way to shaft people, that was even legal and possibly sound.
What Ponzi would do was to take advantage of the disparities in the foreign exchange rates pertaining to the postal currency of International Reply coupons. If these coupons could be purchased in countries where they were still hit hard by the after-effects of World War I, he could then redeem them for stamps or cash in the USA, where there value would be as much as 50% higher.
Presto! He was onto a brilliant scheme, however, he needed money to expand his enterprise.

In order to raise the needed cash, he promised investors that he would pay them high rates of interest with the profits from his scheme. As is the case today, people were gullible and greedy, and Ponzi had little difficulty in attracting huge sums of money.
However, Ponzi found it difficult to keep meeting his obligations of paying his investors.

He resorted to using fresh money to keep his original investors satisfied. And thus began the Ponzi Scheme, that is alive and well today with multiple variations on the original theme.

One such variation is the very popular pyramid sales scheme, where individuals are seduced to become part of a plan for the sale or distribution of goods, services or other property, and wherein they acquire the opportunity to receive monetary compensation, which has little to do with the volume or quantity of goods or services sold but rather on the number of additional persons that could be recruited to join the plan.

The author devotes considerable print to these schemes, as well as making reference to the abundance of jurisprudence that defines and outlaws these plans.

Anyone wishing to protect himself or herself, would do well in thoroughly reading the concluding chapter. It is here where we are given some very sound advice- to be wary of get rich schemes, watch out for deals that offer high yields, if you do not understand the investment, stay away from it, seek professional advice before investing in anything and check out who are the promoters.

Walsh has a sharp eye as to important details, and with his wide use of informative examples, readers receive a comprehensive understanding as to just how wide spread these fraudulent schemes are and how not to be seduced by them.

Norm Goldman, Editor Bookpleasures.com

As relevant today as it was in 1998.......2005-04-06

Some books may not be particularly recent publications but deserve renewed attention and ongoing recommendation in light of modern events or contemporary concerns: James Walsh's You Can't Cheat An Honest Man: How Ponzi Schemes And Pyramid Frauds Work...And Why They're More Common Than Ever is one of them, focusing on how pyramid frauds work, why they're common, and how to avoid scams and cons. The scheme name may change but the scheme is the same: it involves case studies in greed and exploitation, outlined in You Can't Cheat An Honest Man so that investors may learn from the woes of the 'taken'. As relevant today as it was in 1998.

Not All MLM's Are a Pyramid Scheme !.......2004-05-11

Alot of people think that network market is a semi-legal pyramid scheme, but not all network marketing companies are a pyramid. If many of you do your research, you'll see that companies such as life plus, melaleuca, market america, etc. are true network marketing companies they'll really compensate you if you refer people to their company & products. Before anyone pre-judges a network marketing company, do your research on each company, plan, products, etc. The true pyramid schemes are the one's that you get in the mail that ask you to send between a $1 - $5 to each name & address, and in return, you'll make millions within a few months...that's a true pyramid scheme, I know because I've lost money to these pyramids through the mail. I now know how to tell the difference between a pyramid & a real opportunity. These pyramid schemes give real & great network marketing companies a bad reputation. So again, do your research on a company before enrolling or sending out money. There are truly real gold mines out there, so please do your research by reading articles on them, and check the Better Business Bureau (www.bbb.org) . Thank you.

Ponzi Schemes everywhere..........2002-08-12

This book explains ponzi scheme after ponzi scheme, in an interesting, informative way. The people who run these schemes (called "perps") use seemingly endless variations but it all comes down to the same thing: robbing peter to pay paul. The perp offers a guaranteed return on investment, usually an outrageous amount, usually in a short period of time. The explanation for why the perp can give this huge return is basically a varation on the same theme: he has an investment vehicle that will return him even bigger profits then what he's giving you but he needs your money to expand his operation.

Just a few problems with this. First of all, the activity that the perp claims to me making these huge profits from are usually just a cover to take people's money. If the perp actually does use the money for some kind of trade or investments, he typically looses in much of his trading or, even if he is good at it, he has too much money flowing in from the "investors" to keep up. The money just comes too fast even if he has good intentions so...

Here comes robbing peter to pay paul, in other words, paying early investors with later investors money. Its always doomed to fail because it is based on continual growth that cannot possibly be maintained. Ponzi scemes can still last for years however, depending on many factors. This book beautifully explains these things in example after example.

This book also talks about multi-level marketing and pyramid schemes in depth. Also, what should you do if you have been taken by a ponzi scheme? This book offers a number of chapters of advice.

One of the most important points this book makes is that the biggest ponzi scheme of them all is run by our own government. This is the politically untouchable program of Social Security!

Interesting journey into the depths of stupidity.......2002-04-08

If you've ever wondered how pyramid schemes get started and how they unravel, this book makes an interesting read. You will be both amazed and appalled at the mass stupidity involved in getting these schemes off the ground. However, you might feel a little foolish yourself when the author points out that our very own Social Security System is a textbook Ponzi scheme.

Book Description

This outstanding selection of Helen Ladd's work provides an overview of the policy-oriented research she has conducted in the areas of state and local public finance during the past thirty years.

The volume is divided into four parts. The first addresses the concept and measurement of fiscal disparities across local jurisdictions and the design of intergovernmental aid programs. The second part examines the design of taxes and tax structures, including chapters on the mix of taxes at the state level and tax limitation measures. The third part deals with the interaction between taxes and land use, including the fiscal effects of rapid population growth and the use of tax subsidies to promote growth in declining urban areas. The final part focuses on education finance.

This important collection will be of interest to public finance and urban economists and practitioners and policy-makers in state and local government.

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This book is so good it hurts! Don't miss it!

Wolff & Byrd, Counselors of the Macabre: Case Files, vol. I
Batton Lash
Manufacturer: Exhibit A Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Humor | Entertainment | Subjects | Books
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Wolff & Byrd, Counselors of the Macabre: Case Files, vol. IV (Wolff & Byrd, Counselors of the Macabre, Case Files)

Wolff & Byrd, Counselors of the Macabre: Case Files, vol. II

ASIN: 0963395416

Book Description

This book collects the first four (now out-of-print) issues of the W&B comic book. The main characters, Alanna Wolff and Jeff Byrd, represent clients with a variety of supernatural afflictions: a couple whose wish on the monkey's paw goes horribly wrong; another couple whose house becomes haunted whenever there's a full moon (it's a

Customer Reviews:

This book is so good it hurts! Don't miss it!.......1998-12-30

What?! You haven't read WOLFF AND BYRD yet? You've got to be kidding! Don't you realize that this is one of the formost funny books of the age? Okay, let me tell you, it's funny, it's punny, it's clever and the art is entertaining. And it's soon to be a summer blockbuster movie from Universal Pictures! How completely cool is that?

So, of course you want to get in onthe ground floor, be the first on your block to be captivated by Alanna Wolff , Jeff Byrd, their secretary Mavis and the ebb and flow (sometimes literally) of their bizarre clients.

This book collects the first eight issues of this continually amazing comic book! It's a must have, and a perfect gift for lawyers, judges and just about nayone else with a sense of humour!

Customer Reviews:

best overview of the century.......2001-05-12

Morgan's book is the best that I have found for an overview of the entire 20th century in "classical" music. He divides his analysis into 3 logical sections:

Part 1. Beyond Tonality: From 1900 to World War I

Part 2. Reconstruction and New Systems: Between the Wars

Part 3. Innovation and Fragmentation: From WWII to the Present

This allows for some nuance that a simple list of composers often misses. For instance, Schoenberg's "atonal revolution" is covered in Part 1, along with the "new tonalities" of Stravinsky and Bartok. Part 2 covers the origin of the "twelve-tone system," but makes clear that it did not become influential until years later with the "serial revolution" in France, led by Messiaen and Boulez, in Part 3.

As others have noted, Morgan is not as strong on the more recent period, partly because the book was published in 1991 and thus misses such phenomena as Schnittke's surge of popularity, especially in Russia and Europe, after the collapse of the Soviet regime. I recommend two other books along with Morgan: 1) Gann's "American Music in the Twentieth-Century," which covers developments in the U.S. in greater detail, thus including for instance one of my favorites, Roger Reynolds, and 2) Griffiths' masterful "Modern Music and After," which begins after the Second World War.

Not Completely Comprehensive.......1999-12-12

This is a very good book, but it only covers the first three-quarters of the century. Minimalism is the latest movement that it really covers comprehensively. After that, most composers recieve only two or three lines of text. This is, of course, understandable, given when the book was written. Just be warned that more recent developments in music are often ignored or not given the attention they deserve. Also, it should be noted that the book generally restricts itself to "classical" music. Jazz and Free Improvisation, despite being arguably the most vital and truly revolutionary forces in music of the first 2/3 and last 1/3 of the century, respectively, are mentioned only in passing if at all.

The History of Modern Music for The Layman.......1997-03-15

As we end the 20th century, we may not realize that 20th century music covers the same time span as the 19th century Romantic music period. Have we grasped the meaning of modern music. To do this one needs to understand the history as well as the dynamics of 20th century music. Here is a book that fills the bill. Not only does Mr. Morgan discuss the growth and change in 20th century music but he does it in it's historical context of our maturing as a world. For many the atonality of 20th century music is hard to grasp, especially when concert artists and orchestras continue to emphasize in their repatoire 19th century music. But as the world changes so will music. A book to awaken your interest in 20th century music and the composers who were the leaders of this period.

Twentieth-Century Music: a History of Musical Style in Modern Europe and America (The Norton Introduction to Music History)

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Twentieth-Century Music: a History of Musical Style in Modern Europe and America (The Norton Introduction to Music History)
Robert P Morgan
Manufacturer: Norton
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000LZGL7K

Book Description

Muhammad Ali has a unique place in global history. One of the most extraordinary athletes of all times, Ali is also, as he always was, an inadvertent but powerful figure in world affairs. From the first announcement of his membership in the Nation of Islam, through his courageous refusal to fight in Vietnam, to his spiritual calm in the face of crippling disease, Muhammad Alirsquo;s steady values have inspired others the world over to rethink their racial, political, and spiritual attitudes. Alirsquo;s life over the years has put irony in a different light. When Muhammad Ali stood against those who criticized him for converting to the Nation of Islam, he told the world ldquo;I donrsquo;t have to be what you want me to be.rdquo; What first appeared as simple defiance was revealed over the years as rock solid conviction ndash; a conviction that allowed him to be and do what he believed in, while also embracing the world in his loving and laughing way. Charles Lemert writes with grace, perspective, and affection. Muhammad Ali is the first book to unravel the reasons for the enduring respect and reverence that Muhammad Ali commands long after the end of his athletic career. This text will appeal to those teaching and studying cultural studies, social theory, sports studies, and sociology, as well as to general readers interested in Muhammad Ali.

Customer Reviews:

Great book for the Star Trek fan..........2003-12-22

...but be aware that this book is from 1976, so you will only get information on the original series from the 1960s and the often neglected (but often bizarre) animated series from 1973-74. So you won't find any info on any of the movies (since the first Star Trek movie wouldn't be until 1979), The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, or Voyager. This is basically those who enjoy the original and the animated Star Trek. The 1976 version of Star Trek Concordance came with a gimmick cover, which you use as an index for each episode, stardate, and other things, and it guides you to what page the episode and stardate are. In the book itself is a description of each and every episode, both the original and the animateds. Description of the cast members are also given in every episode. Near the back is a glossary giving details to each and every character such as Spock, Dr. McCoy, Kirk, Sulu, Uhura, Scotty, etc. (and who played them, like Shatner, Nimoy, Takei, Doohan, etc.), as well as discriptions of various alien life like Vulcans, Romulans, Klingons, etc. The glossary even goes as so far as describing terms that might be a bit over some people's head. They even mention haggis, since there was a famous episode where Scotty said, "The haggis is in the fire now". In the very back is Star Trek fan art, where various people submitted their own artwork of different Star Trek characters and aliens. It's a great and useful book, if you bear in mind when this was published. If you're looking for info on the Star Trek movies, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager, you will obviously need much more updated material.

this book is really good.......1998-12-10

i thought that the original copy was better with the little chart that helps find certain episodes, but all in all i love this book.

NUMBER ONE ITEM FOR ANY STAR TREK LIBRARY.......1998-07-18

When Bjo Trimble did her first CONCORDANCE in the 1970's it was FANTASTIC,a really good book that covered everything at that time.Now,with the final STAR TREK film done, there is the closing out of the great STAR TREK era and this book covers it very well.There are other good STAR TREK history books,but this is one that stands out.This is a NEEDED part of ANY STAR TREK collection,a well done job.

INCOMPLETE BOOK.......1997-05-10

This book was published too soon to contain any details from THE SWORD OF KHALESS (DS9), TRIALS AND TRIBBLE-ATIONS (DS9), FLASHBACK (VOYAGER), & the FIRST CONTACT film. Otherwise, it's a great book with alternate titles and references to all of the classic & cartoon episodes and films

"This book is a must for fans of the Original TV Seriese!".......1997-04-16

For those of you who liked the original "Fan Produced" edition and/or the 1977 professionally produced one, YOU ARE GONNA LOVE THIS ONE! BJO has completely revised the book, not only including info from the moveis, but also info about both the live-action and annimated seriese from Gene Roddenberrys and others files that she did not have access to before. The book has got to have at least 10 times the info in the 1977 edition and she has also corrected the errors that cropped up in the older editions and added a lot more "fan art" than before. I can not emphasise this enough! This is a must have for all trekkies. Even Gene Goddenberry himself use the oleder version of this book to keep track of his universe. The star trek Encycolpedia pales in comparison to detali to this one. so if you love your Classic Trek, order it now.

The Star Trek Concordance : The A-to-Z Guide to the Classic Original Television Series and Films (Star Trek Ser.)

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The Star Trek Concordance : The A-to-Z Guide to the Classic Original Television Series and Films (Star Trek Ser.)
Bjo Trimble
Manufacturer: Kensington Publishing Corporation
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Customer Reviews:

Good book for Unicode and international scripts.......2007-06-27

Reader would learn a lot about Unicode and many unique problem of different scripts. For example, it is not one glyph for traditional "character" nor one code for one traditional "character". I also recommend readers also read source code of pango library and manual of freetype library.

Perfect Companion Volume to the Standard Itself........2003-08-07

This book is an outstanding companion volume to the Unicode standard. In fact, if you had to pick one, you'd quite possibly be better off owning this book INSTEAD of the standard. The author display an impressive knowledge of the world's writing systems and of the inner workings of the Unicode standardization process.

Part I of this book starts with the history of character encoding standards, from Morse code to today. It then presents a thorough review of the Unicode architecture and associated standards. The information presented was mostly excellent, although I found the section describing SCSU a little bit too sketchy (and the actual code in part III not entirely satisfactory to fill in the gaps).

Part II gives an overview of the various writing systems and character ranges represented in Unicode. Even for a nontechnical audience, this part would be fascinating with all the typographical and historical trivia it presents.

Part III discusses various algorithms applicable to text processing in a Unicode context. I must admit that I found this part a bit of a letdown. Many of the algoritms are only sketched out because discussing them in detail would be beyond the scope of the book. Quite possibly, the pages dedicated to these algorithms would have been better spent presenting examples of code using the various existing APIs for handling Unicode (Java, ICU, Perl, Windows, MacOS X).

This does not take away from the fact that this is a great book that any programmer interested in Unicode should own.

Want to understand the Unicode standard? Start here!.......2003-04-02

The book has three main parts:

(1) Unicode in essence: an architectural overview of the Unicode standard (six chapters) where you also get bits of terminology and history.

(2) Unicode in depth: A guided tour of the character repertoire (six chapters) where you get a lot about writing systems that can be represented in Unicode, and less about the Unicode characters.

(3) Unicode in action: implementing and using the Unicode standard (five chapters) where you get information aimed at computer programmers that wish to implement parts of the standard or write applications dealing with multilingual text.

Though this book is very long (~800 pages) it is still shorter and a lot more clear than the Unicode standard itself (over 1000 pages).

Code examples are in Java but they are not ment to be complete solutions and so there is no accompanying website or a CD.

Professional programmers are the target audience of this book. The reader is faced with many topics in linguistics, history and data structures. Readers with computer science background would probably appreciate how classic traditional algorithms were adapted and how data structures are used in character sets with a significantly larger number of character than 256.

The author of the book states that the book is about "representing written language in a computer", which may be misleading to some readers. The book is about the Unicode standard. Obviously, there are many other ways to represent written language other than the methods described in the book. As chapter 2 teaches... There are always more ways (sometimes better ways) to represent your data.

Part 2 of the book will not cover every writing system of the world. A better book for that would be "The world's writing systems".

Part3 is probably the most interesting and useful part for programmers (though the first part is important, in my opinion to those who want to UNDERSTAND Unicode).
You can learn about a lot of things and skip many too (depending on your interest and need). I believe that most readers will skip most of the topics.

This is not a book that is read lightly, but it is hellovalot easier and more fun to read than the Unicode standard itself. It appears that once you read this book and get what you want from it, you will end up going to read the Unicode standard only to see updates, hopefully, not for clarifications.

I am dealing with Natural Language Processing and being a Hebrew speaker I also have a lot of text in Hebrew (almost all the time it is Hebrew with other languages too, e.g. documents that contain Hebrew with some English). This book helps understand the difficulties, the current implementations and give you a solid ground to start thinking how you can make things better. Current infrastructure for Hebrew is either poor or not perfect and in most cases the better solutions are proprietary. There seems to be always problems representing 'plain' text in more than one language without stepping into the trap of the soup of different ways to do it. Unicode is one way to do it (arguably, not the best, yet it is alive and growing) I hope this book can help more people understand what they are up against, clear the fog and help people do better implementations.

A great book if you want to understand Unicode.......2003-01-23

I find this book extremely useful!

This is almost three books in one. The first part provides a very good introduction to Unicode in general. The middle is really useful for all sorts of people, from linguists to content authors who want to understand the scripts encompassed by Unicode. And the last part is extremely helpful for programmers who want to understand how to implement many text processing techniques using Unicode.

Throughout, Rich's style is easy and enjoyable to read, and yet quickly gets to a wealth of useful information.

Great job! Highly recommended.

A great manual for the practical use of Unicode.......2002-11-18

Unicode Demystified is a great manual and a good read. It earns a place on the bookshelf of programmers who deal with modern text processing, which is based on the Unicode standard. It is a great resource for anyone involved in software internationalization and localization.

Gillam provides a lot of useful details, history and explanations for the structure of the character set, and shows how to use it. The book is a companion to the print and online resources of the Unicode standard itself, and provides the glue to many of the pieces, the how-to's and basic data structures.

For example, the Unicode encodings UTF-8/16/32 (and BOM) are explained very well, bidirectional text is discussed with a lot of insight, and the family of Indic scripts with their special features is presented with examples for how to encode Indic text.

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