Scam Dogs and Mo-Mo Mamas: Inside the Wild and Woolly World of Internet Stock Trading

Amazon.com Review: Would you take a stock tip from a guy named Tokyo Joe? How about one from Big Dog? If so, you should read this book. If not, you will probably find Scam Dogs and Mo-Mo Mamas an entertaining curiosity about the type of person you're glad you're not. Tokyo Joe and Big Dog are two of the main characters in Scam Dogs. They post messages on Internet stock discussion boards, touting stocks most of us have never heard of. When these guys say "Buy," thousands of people do. The problem for those thousands is the gurus may have done all their own buying before recommending a stock to others and start selling as soon as their followers start buying. At least that's what the Securities and Exchange Commission accused Tokyo Joe of doing when it filed a civil complaint against him in January 2000. (This practice, according to the helpful glossary at the back of the book, is called scalping.) Emshwiller is a reporter for The Wall Street Journal who has covered numerous frauds and swindles--in fact the book started as a Journal article about the colorful Tokyo Joe (How colorful? He usually trades naked in his Manhattan apartment, sitting in the lotus position while staring at multiple computer screens.) Scam Dogs will be most useful to those contemplating a career in day trading. However, when you see how many ways there are to get fleeced, you may decide it's a more remunerative not to become a sheep. --Lou Schuler

Crimes of Persuasion: Schemes, scams, frauds.

In-depth fraud coverage of computer crimes such as pyramid schemes make this crime library of internet crimes the cyber crime location for the schemes and scams that con artists perpetrate. White collar crimes such as prime bank fraud, pyramid scams, internet fraud, phone scams, chain letters, modeling agency and Nigerian scams, computer fraud as well as telemarketing fraud are fully explained. This crime report on organized crime topics include credit card fraud, check kiting, tax fraud, money laundering, mail fraud, counterfeit money orders, check fraud and other who's who true crimes of persuasion.

Fraud 101: Techniques and Strategies for Detection

Unique insights into the nature of fraud and how to expose it It's not enough to wait for a tip to expose corporate fraud. Fraud 101, Second Edition provides step-by-step guidance on how to perform detection procedures for every major type of fraud. Its new and detailed case studies reveal how easy it can be for a perpetrator to commit a fraud and how difficult it can be to prosecute. This new edition also offers expanded coverage of financial statement fraud, fraud-specific internal control, and Sarbanes-Oxley.

Pump And Dump: The Rancid Rules of the New Economy

Enron, WorldCom, Global Crossing-the mere mention of these companies brings forth images of scandal, fraud, and large-scale corruption. But do these dark stars of media stories represent a few "bad apples" or does their misconduct provide evidence of a regulatory black hole in the so-called New Economy?

In Pump and Dump: The Rancid Rules of the New Economy, Robert H. Tillman and Michael L. Indergaard argue that these scandals are symptoms of a corporate governance problem that began in the 1990s as New Economy pundits claimed that advances in technology and forms of business organization were changing the rules. A decade later, it looked more like a case of no rules. Endless revelations of fraud in the wake of corporate bankruptcies left ordinary investors bewildered and employees out of work with little or nothing.

Tillman and Indergaard observe that victims were taken in by organized behavior that calls to mind "pump and dump" schemes where shadowy swindlers push penny stocks. Yet, in the 1990s it was high-profile firms and high-status accomplices (financial analysts, bankers, and accountants) who used powerful institutional levers to pump the value of stock-duping investors while insiders sold their holdings for fantastic profits before the crash.

The authors explain how it was that so much of corporate America came to resemble a two-bit securities scam by focusing on the rules that mattered in three critical industries-energy trading, telecommunications, and dot-coms. Free-market hype and policies at the national level set the tone. While Wall Street wrapped itself in star-spangled packaging and celebrated its purported "democratization," in the real halls of democracy congressional allies of business gutted protections for ordinary investors. In the regulatory vacuum that resulted, business professionals who were supposed to watch corporations instead promoted New Economy doctrines and worked with executives to tout their firms as New Economy contenders. Ringleaders in the inner circles that committed fraud made their own rules, which they enforced through a mix of bribery and bullying.

At a time when there is growing debate about proposals to privatize programs like Social Security and to promote an "ownership society," Pump and Dump offers a path-breaking analysis of America's most urgent economic problem: a system that relies on self-regulation and the rancid politics that continue to support the short-term interests of financial elites over the long-term interests of most Americans.