Beware the Many, Many Investment Scams

• Author: Mary Singleton
• Posted: 2024-05-23

The idea of personal investing is pretty simple to understand, even if you're still a very young person and have a really long time before you actually retire. You want to set money aside; you want to put money into appreciable assets that work to earn money while left untouched. You want to put money into stable assets, at a minimum, that will hold the value until which point in time you need the money. Most people get this and don't need some course on it. What a lot of people don't get, however, is just how many scams there are out there when it comes to investment opportunities. Sure, the big ones stand out to the average person, like Bernie Madoff and different pyramid schemes that people run; and most people have heard about real estate investment scams. Though did you know that nearly 70% of all investment opportunities the average person is presented with are outright scams? This number has exploded by orders of magnitude since the Internet became popular, and you have to be very vigilant to avoid these scams.

In your free item, go ahead and search for a term like "personal investing opportunities." Your search results are going to be inundated first and foremost with people trying to sell you courses via eBooks and other downloads. These are all scams, or at best they give you some rudimentary information that you could find if you just went to page 5 of the Google results instead of clicking on the sponsored ads. There's also an epidemic of those spam phone calls with people trying to get you to invest, which means they're just trying to rob you of your money. You might be thinking, "Nobody would fall for any sort of investment scam!" Well, keep in mind that those Nigerian Prince bank account scams convinced tens of thousands of people to give over their money. These are desperate times for people, and scammers know that. There are all sorts of different schemes out there targeting people who are looking to personally invest in their future.

Seniors are the Number-One Target

Unfortunately for older people, they're the most desperate to invest for a quicker turnaround in their older age, and scammers know this. It's gotten to the point where they'll advertise the investment scams on television. And since they're not technically illegal, they're legally allowed to advertise nonsense to you about investing in grossly overpriced silver and in zero-return IRAs where the goal it to just keep you investing more and more. They're not stealing your money, so they're allowed to do it. The trick is that they're just not giving you any returns on the willing investments you make, so it's chalked up to an organic loss, and you end up ripped off, and they're free to keep doing it again and again. If you are a senior, you definitely need to watch out for these sorts of scams.

The people behind these investment schemes aren't just your average dullards off the street. They know exactly what to say to get you interested in investing. They will appeal to your emotions. Most even have legitimate websites that look very professional. Yet, at the end of it all, they're still just scammers who plan on spending all of your money and returning none of it. Not only do you fail to profit when investing; you outright lose your investment. Since people lose their investments all the time, there isn't too much law enforcement can do if you're willingly handing your money over, and that's why it's so important that you work to avoid the scams.

Seek a Financial Advisor

One of the best ways to avoid getting scammed when personally investing your money is to work with a financial advisor who's licensed to do that sort of work. They have a vested interest in making sure you experience real capital returns. The better you do, the better they do, and this bodes well for their reputation. So you'll be able to find a good advisor whose only purpose is to make sure that you end up winning. They work for you and do what you say, while also offering you the best possible advice for investing.

There are many different legitimate ways to personally invest your capital. Make sure you're avoiding all of these different scams out here. Work with professionals from the start for the best returns.