Last week, I received in the mail an invitation to a “presentation” by a shady-looking bunch named Optionetics. They claimed to have an invincible “wealth building” :rolleyes: program based on trading Listed Options.
Their “presentation” was held in the same hotel – the same room, in fact – in which [url=http://home.netcom.com/~rogermw/nts.html]National Trust Services had taken $9500 of my money for a worthless system of trusts 7 years ago. Optionetics’ presentation was really a 2-hour sales pitch for their $4000 training program (“but we’ll knock a thousand dollars off the price if you sign up right now!”); it featured a fast-talking smooth salesman who insisted that no one in the audience ask any questions until the presentation was over (and then ask them to him in private, not in full hearing range of the rest of the room). He ran down the usual litany of promises about financial freedom, testimonials from a few successful graduates, “sample” options trading scenarios that made it look like trading a straddle was a guaranteed recipe for success, their program’s suspiciously-worded money-back guarantee, etc…
But one of the success stories this smooth-talker told really made my blood boil. A middle-aged housewife’s husband had been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, and would not be able to work any more after a few months. He was the household’s only source of income. She was terrified that their financial future would be in ruins. In desperation, she attended an Optionetics program and tried out their trading system.
She happened to be successful with it, and her story became one of the testimonials this salesman told us about.
BUT.
What if she hadn’t been successful? I know how these programs work. If only a handful of your graduates strike it rich, their testimonials will be enough to sucker new people into your program later on. If most of your graduates wind up losing their shirts, so what? Their moneyback guarantee was worded in such a way as to make it almost impossible to collect on.
This desperate woman, grasping for straws to keep her from sinking into financial disaster, came to Optionetics, and they gleefully took $3000 from her – money she could have invested in real financial securities instead of their pie-in-the-sky options trading program. Worse, she could have blown their household’s entire life savings in options trading, believing all the hype that these snakeoil salesmen were peddling to her. How many desperate people has Optionetics driven into the poorhouse, that they don’t tell us about?
Grrrrr. :mad: These people remind me of the guys who tell cancer patients to avoid “evil western medicine” so that they can sell them worthless homeopathic remedies.
I was waiting for the part where you stood up in the middle of the crowded presentation room and started shouting “Theives! Scam Artists! Don’t believe their lies!” If that wasn’t the purpose of your return, then I’m with glee. Why did you go back there?
Good on you tracer. I’ve recently become aware of the depths these scammers are willing to go to get rich off of peoples greed and gullibility. Last month my father showed me a stack of slickly printed three ring binders filled with “course materials” and audio lecture CD’s with the cheerful title of “Cash Flow Generator.” At first I considered it his latest “get rich quick” fiasco until he told me he’d paid almost $1,600 for it (but that did include a three day seminar later in the month). Needless to say I was pissed off that he’d let himself get taken like that but also that someone plied that much cash from an eighty year old man.
I jumped on the net and to see what could be found about this company (Russ Whitney’s Success Development/International Media Holdings, Inc.). They have literally hundreds of BBB complaints and an open investigation file with the Florida Attorney General’s economic crime division. I was able to persuade my father to let me write a letter requesting a refund, in which I lifted a few choice phrases from the Fla’s AG web site and from the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.
Alas no refund was offered prior to the seminar so when my father insisted on attending I went with him to insure he didn’t hemorrhage any more cash. The slick presentation with glossy handouts and PowerPoint presentations were well offset by the rather lavish conference room of the local Ritz-Carlton (at least they were kind enough to spring for the tasty Ritz-Carlton box lunches). Now I was pissed that they’d taken my fathers money and also because I had the waste my time at the seminar, but I wasn’t willing to be disruptive to the proceedings. When I did confront the staff with questions about the company’s track record it was always one on one during breaks. I got two of the five “success stories” to admit they had never actually used the knowledge they had gained from this program to invest in real estate and a third broke off our conversation when I pointed out that property transactions were matters of public record and I’d like to know the addresses of a few of the properties he claimed to have sold. The light didn’t come on for my father until I asked the seminar leader if it would be possible to get any contact information for the people who’s glowing success stories were shown on the screen during all the break periods. He was already frustrated with me from some of my other questions and he let himself get a little cross when he told us we’d need to buy at least one share of stock in the company then I could fly down to Florida and inspect all the company’s records.
Well after that, and with them quoting the prices for the next level of seminars (where they teach you the really good stuff) my father didn’t feel compelled to attend the third day of the event. But there is a happy ending, while I doubt I can credit my Colombo-esk investigation skills more than whatever heat SDI was getting from the Florida AG’s office, my father recently received a letter offering a refund less 10% if he returned all the “course materials.” I told my dad he owed me a steak.
Not to speak for tracer, but in rereading it seems the events he described occurred in the first seminar he mentioned, I suspect he did not attend the one from the recent solicitation.
Heh. Naw, I was tempted, but too skittish to actually do this. However, after the 2-hour free (i.e. sales pitch) presentation, I did talk to one lady who was in attendance there and told her about all the suspicious things being presented. (E.g. “If these options trading strategies are as universally profitable as Optionetics claims, why aren’t all the mutual fund companies using them and generating 4,000% annual returns?”) Hopefully, she took my advice and went out and read a hype-free book about options trading before deciding whether to give Optionetics $3000 of her own money.
It was only a “return” in the sense that it happened to be in the same hotel ballroom where I’d previously been scammed by a totally different company selling a totally different worthless system. I didn’t give these new people one red cent. In fact, I gave them a fake address and phone number on the little information card they made everybody fill out, just in case they intended to sell my address to some junk-mail company.
My initial motivation was just to go to this “free introductory seminar” and privately giggle at them, knowing what I know now about how scam-artist presentations are typically made. Their insistence that you need to sign up for the $3000 training program “right now”, or risk having the price go up by another $1000, reminded me of the way used car salesmen operate. They know that if you leave so that you can think about it, you probably won’t come back.
“Complaints have been processed by the bureau in its three year reporting period. In some cases, the company addressed the disputed issues even though the situations were not always resolved. In addition, other complaints were closed as resolved. The number and type of complaints are not unusual for a company in this industry. Complaints allege problems with the guarantee and withdrawal policies. The bureau recommends that consumers review the terms of the policy in order to make a more informed purchase.”
Ah ha. I knew their 6-month guarantee sounded suspicious. They make it sound like if you don’t make at least 3x the cost of their program in profits in 6 months, they’ll give you a full refund – but the actual wording translates to something like “You have to use the strategies we give you regularly for 6 months, and you have to have no transactions during that 6 month period that could have possibly yielded at least 3x the program cost as standalone transactions. So if you make one trade that results in a $10,000 profit, but 20 more trades that each result in a $1,000 loss, you can’t exercise our moneyback guarantee.”
LOL, compared to the group I was up against that report makes Optionetics sound like the chamber of commerce. At one point when discussing the BBB with the people at the seminar I was told that they had no problems with the bureau until they refused to pay for membership and then the BBB invented all those complaints. I’m not saying the Better Business Bureau are all saints and angels but if they were slandering a multi million dollar company I’d expect there would be a law suit and significant publicity.
The thing that gets me about these seminar scams is that they do have just enough legitimate information to avoid outright fraud but they hype their “special” or “insider” strategies in such a way that a half informed audience will find themselves wanting to believe the outrageous fees are well worth it. They simultaneously exaggerate the “power” of their techniques and drastically oversimplify the negatives. If they weighed down their presentations with the truth about how much time and effort it takes to succeed in investing (options or real estate) then too many people would decide that either it wasn’t for them or they should take out a few books from the library before they throw a lot of money into it, either way the promoters would lose enough money the might have to give up the seminar circuit and get a real job. (BTW, I could never understand why, if as they claim, they can make money hand over fist with little or no risk, they aren’t out doing that instead of living out of suitcases and practicing their sales pitches) trandallt, thanks. Even if all my questions and “pitch baiting” had nothing to do with the refund, the looks I got when I confronted those people were well worth it.
I don’t know for sure. But if Optionetics’ claim of having had 35,000 students over the past 11 years is true – another assumption, I know – then it doesn’t surprise me that they would have had a few graduates who “rolled the dice” with listed options and happened to strike it rich. All it would take would be a 0.1% success rate, and they’d have 35 extremely happy graduates who’d give them 35 glowing testimonials. (They only presented 20 testimonials during the sales pitch, with the woman-and-her-MS-husband being one of them.)
I’m going under the assumption that the woman-with-her-MS-husband exists because I figure that injecting a grain of truth here-and-there into their presentation makes the Big Lie easier to swallow.
When I get letters from bankers in Nigeria, **there isn’t any ** truth in their claims to have millions waiting in an account for me.
When a pyramid scheme offers you massive interest, **there isn’t any ** investment going on.
Sadly all you need for a successful con trick is to appeal to the greed of the mark. Once they want to believe in you, they are all yours.
