Money Hacks

"Investors" seem to be getting burned more and more often nowadays. This time, silly people invested in a company whose owner instead used their funds to buy stuff and make silly investments such as "canned sandwiches." That's funny.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The Securities and Exchange Commission has sued a Utah man for fraudulently misusing $139 million of investor funds on such things as a film about the Cub Scouts' Pinewood Derby car race and development of a "sandwich in a can."

According to a lawsuit filed Thursday in federal court in Salt Lake City, Travis Wright misappropriated all but $6 million of the $145 million he raised from about 175 investors between 2001 and 2009 by selling notes issued by his Waterford Loan Fund LLC.

The SEC said the 47-year-old Draper resident represented to investors that their money would be used for loans secured by commercial real estate.

SEC sues Utah man in 'sandwich in a can' fraud – Yahoo! News

Interesting story on how the Goldman Sachs vs. SEC case could help with financial reform.

When the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced Friday that it had filed a fraud action against Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS), the news hit the financial markets like a carefully targeted bomb.

The Goldman Sachs fraud case, which relates to the investment bank’s subprime-mortgage business, caused the financial giant’s shares to nosedive 12.8%. The fallout spread to the broader markets, too, causing the Dow Jones Industrial Average to drop 1.1% and the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index to skid 1.6%.

That reaction wasn’t overblown.

Depending on how rough the SEC wants to play it, the case has the potential to shut down the cartel known as Wall Street. It could even jump-start the kind of sweeping overhaul that legal or regulatory reformists have so far failed to launch.

How the Goldman Sachs Fraud Case Could Accelerate Wall Street Reform

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