Google IPO Scam Victims Fooled By Fancy Wall Street Terms

from the oooooooh!--a-participation-agreement! dept

Back in March we wrote about a scam from someone who convinced a lot of people who should know better he could sell them pre-IPO Google shares. Among the still unnamed victims were "the chairman of a global telecommunications company, a New York investment banker, a corporate attorney and a senior executive at a brokerage firm." These folks forked over half a million dollars without any due diligence to the guy who claimed to know the founders of Google from attending Stanford (which he didn't) and via working at Kleiner Perkins (again not true). We also had a post noting that a simple search query on the guy's name, though not on Google, would have turned up his questionable history. It appears that the NY Times has just discovered the story, but did a little extra sleuthing to point out that, beyond their scam-blinding greed to get in on the Google IPO, what really fooled these investment bankers and big time executives was the sophisticated Wall Street lingo used by the scammer. It turns out that if you just say "participation agreement," "stock purchase agreement" and "promissory note," combined with "Google IPO" wealthy stock brokers and executives will simply open their wallets for you. Also worth noting is that the scammer doesn't appear to have stored away most of his ill-gotten gains, but rather spent a large portion of it partying at expensive clubs and restaurants.

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