I recently read about Raffaelo Follieri and i could not understand how a real estate scam works. I then googled "real estate scam" and found nothing explaining it. The only part that was clear is paying people with bad cheques. But it seems to go on for years. Wouldnt it look suspicious if multiple people were sue ing a person for unpaid service? But i am sure bouncing cheques is only a small part of it.
Watch 48 hours Mystery. Really. They expose them as much as they find them When Freddy and Fanie were going nut's, though... Well, they had their hands fullllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll...
I have not read about Follieri but I hope this helps: Basically, a scam works by not delivering what is promised to you but taking away your money. It can also mean promising to give you back double or triple your money invested. In the Philippines, one big time scam involved getting interested investors to put in their money in a business. The first two or three times the money returned with bigger sums (with earnings) as promised by the group which had put up a classy office manned by beautiful and respectable looking female staff. After the investors had begun to trust the company, the group asked the investors to put in bigger sums. That's when they ran away with the bigger money. Maybe the payment was like that in the case you have read about -- in checks with no deposits, or bouncing checks. A real state business involves buying and selling lands, buildings and houses, and developing big buildings and subdivisions for sale. Maybe the victims were asked to invest so that a real estate project can be developed and sold with big profits. If there was a visit to the project site, that's smart. When the investors return, the site is gone or it is discovered that the documents for the real estate properties were fake. Maybe they returned some good earnings at first. But when it was time to pay the bigger earnings they issued bouncing checks. Well, the best the victims can do is file a class (meaning, group) suit against the scammer simply on bouncing checks. But if there is a law against scams and it is proven, they can file the case as such. They can include fraud and estafa, with words like qualified. But that's for the lawyers.
