While big corporate frauds grab the lion’s share of news headlines, there is also a growing cadre of smaller scams that prey on smaller investors through their religious, social and ethnic connections. The victims of so-called affinity scams, Businessweekonline reports, are often unsophisticated and foreign investors who know little about what to do with their wealth. For the scammers, however, it could add up to a lot of money, as evidenced by a recent case in which three individuals bilked mainly Cambodian-American investors out of $30 million in fraud. In effort to combat the scheme, securities regulators are expanding investor education programs concerning the scams.
