BOGUS SHARES.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 18 June 1926, Page 8

BOGUS SHARES.

SWINDLERS IN ENGLAND. England just now is being invaded by a particularly insidious type of foreign crook; he is the American stock ami share swindler, and his methods arc such that people are cautioned to be on the alert for him. * In America these crooks are known ns “smooth guys,” “hot air merchants,” “white collar hold-up men,” and similar illuminating, if somewhat uncomplimentary names. But they have exploited the home territory, and are now concentrating, like a swarm of devouring locusts, on old England. England, they will tell you, is filled with “suckers,” suckers being people who are easily duped. This may or may not be so. But just now Scotland Yard. whom, nobody lias even accused of gullibility, is getting organised to watth/these pests. The two most popular type of bogus investments now being offered by these men with largo mouths and astonishing flow of picturesque, and, sometimes, convincing language, are shares in nonexistent oil land companies, and bogus real estate propositions. The modern share sharp is first, last, and all the time a business man. He ■goes into his operations carefully, thoroughly, cold-bloodedly. One of the assets most, coveted by these men are these lists, carefully compiled, of likely -“suckers.” These lists give 'full particulars of the prospective dupes, their personal characteristics, their incomes, and their histories. They are compiled for sale to the stock-seller, and they fetch astonishing prices. The next step is the business-like division of the country into areas and the release of the small army of ”dynamiters,” or “hot air merchants,” -who are to mesmerise their victims into “parting.” Many Of these men have sufficient talent to earn decent incomes honestly, ,but the game of extracting money from tlio credulous seems to hold a peculiar fascination for them. Well educated, well dressed, smooth, plausible, convincing, they wheedle their way into the confidence of their dupes and paint in vivid language pictures of the vast profits to be made from their “investments.” The dupe succumbs, writes his cheques, receives his ornately embellished share certificates. And it is all that he does receive, for the company is non-existent, and the paper worthless.