There's One Born Every Minute

by Jason Gorringe, Tax-News.com, London

14 May 2001

Offshore Business News & Research (OBNR) is a web-site that specialises in exposing offshore scams and frauds through its newsletter Offshore Alert. For the last few months OBNR has been running an opinion poll, asking its visitors the question: "What annual interest rate can an offshore entity legitimately guarantee its clients?"

Last week the site reported that exactly 500 people voted between September 29, 2000 and May 9, 2001, with more than one in five voters believing that annual returns of 100 per cent and higher could be guaranteed.

More than half of those polled believed in guaranteed annual returns of 20 per cent and higher.

The full results were:

100% and higher 108 votes or 22% of total votes cast.
6% 80 votes or 16% of total votes cast.
12% 64 votes or 13% of total votes cast.
25% 51 votes or 10% of total votes cast.
50% 50 votes or 10% of total votes cast.
20% 50 votes or 10% of total votes cast.
15% 50 votes or 10% of total votes cast.
9% 47 votes or 9% of total votes cast.

This result shows why there are so many crooked investment providers on the Internet (and elsewhere) and why so many credulous people get ripped off. But the next day, OBNR began to receive e-mails from people who were shocked and surprised at the figures.

OBNR rightly points out that there is no such thing as a risk-free investment: 'Products described as "High Yield Investment Programs" are scams, every single one of them. In our opinion, risk is directly proportional to reward and the surest way to make money in this world is to work extremely hard, take calculated risks and hope that you are lucky.'

OBNR tells the story of a retired couple in Florida who invested their life-savings of US$400,000 with a Grenada-registered bank even though they were informed that OffshoreAlert had exposed the bank several months ago. 'Incredibly,' says OBNR, 'the couple went ahead and invested the money anyway after praying to God for guidance, according to someone who was trying to talk them out of it.'

OBNR and OffshoreAlert News are at http://www.offshorebusiness.com

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