The North American Securities Administrators Association has issued its annual hit parade of predicted investor scams that are likely to plague investors in 2006. In alphabetical order The “Unlucky13" List of Investor Traps to watch are:
- affinity fraud (where scammers prey on one’s affiliations with the same group);
- churning;
- equity indexed certificates of deposit;
- oil and gas investment fraud;
- personal information scams (which involves a con artist’s scheme for extracting personal information) -- for example, a living will or living trust;
- prime bank schemes;
- pump-and-dump schemes;
- recovery rooms (scammers who offer to recover money, for a fee, for victims of other scams);
- registered high-interest promissory notes publicly advertised;
- sale and leaseback contracts; self-directed pension plans (where plan holders are urged to remove funds from legitimate investments and place them in what amounts to a worthless investment;
- unsuitable recommendations; and
- variable annuities.