Lazy Man and Money

  • Blog
  • Home
  • About
    • What I’m Doing Now
  • Consumer Protection
    • Is Le-vel Thrive a Scam?
    • Is Jusuru a Scam?
    • Is Beachbody’s Shakeology a Scam?
    • Is “It Works” a Scam?
    • Is Neora (Nerium) a Scam?
    • Youngevity Scam?
    • Are DoTERRA Essential Oils a Scam?
    • Is Plexus a Scam?
    • Is Jeunesse a Scam?
    • Is Kangen Water a Scam?
    • ViSalus Scam Exposed!
    • Is AdvoCare a Scam?
  • Contact
  • Archive

Pizzagate and Financial Fraud

December 19, 2016 by Kosmo 4 Comments

[Editor’s Note: This article is written by Kosmo, our staff writer. If you didn’t know me better, you might think I’d apply this to some other financial fraud that I often write about, but I won’t do that.]

By now, almost everyone has heard of Pizzagate.  If not, here is it is in a nutshell.  Someone spun up an incredible tale that Hillary Clinton and John Podesta were running a child sex-trafficking run out of pizza restaurants in the DC area.  People noticed that the owner of one pizza joint had corresponded with Podesta in emails leaked by Wikileak (the restaurant owner had held some fundraisers for Hillary, hence the emails).  Even more damning, the emails contained words like “pizza”, which were obvious code words for pedophilia (alternate theory: it’s a code word for “pizza”).  Even in the universe of conspiracy theories, it’s pushing the envelope of credulity.  Even if you believe that Hillary would be running a pedophilia ring, why would she run it out of locations that are very visible to the public?  In the words of Bill Engvall, here’s your sign.

In early November, that restaurant began being targeted by conspiracy theorists, including death threats that arrived via text, Facebook, and Twitter.  On December 4, a man from North Carolina walked into the restaurant with an AR-15 and fired shots.  He was there to “self-investigate” the claims, since law enforcement was obviously involved in a cover-up.

Clearly, these types of conspiracy theories present a very real danger to the public – someone could easily have been seriously injured or killed as the result of a theory that was simply created out of thin air.

I believe there is also a more subtle secondary impact.  Conspiracy theories allow financial fraudsters to more easily target victims.  In the past, the most naïve among us had their naïveté shrouded in a cloud of relatively anonymity.  Unless you interacted with a person on a fairly regular basis, you might not realize how gullible a person was.  As a result, you might know who the most gullible people in your immediate social circle were, but you wouldn’t be able to pick them out of your broader circle.

The internet has changed that.  I’m friends with 355 people on Facebook.  Some of them I know very well; some of them I know more casually.  I can scroll down my feed and look for friends/acquaintances who are sharing bizarre conspiracy theories today and make a list of names.  A few days from now, I can repeat the practice.  After several iterations, I can compare notes and find the names that pop up repeatedly.  These are the people with a high gullibility index.  If I wanted to run a Nigerian Price scheme, these would be the people I would target.  Instead of casting a broad net, I could target people who had shown an inclination to believe utter [Editor’s note: bovine poop] and probably have a much higher success rate with my scams.

Naturally, I’m not actually going to do this.  While I won’t claim to be a saint, my moral compass isn’t far enough askew to commit financial fraud.  However, I am quite sure that there are people who would do this.  In fact, I would expect professional fraudsters to start spinning up conspiracy theories for the sole purpose of serving as bait – assuming that they aren’t already doing this.  They’ll set a theory loose into the wild and then track the people who share it.  The moral of the story – use your critical thinking skills before sharing something.  If it sounds too crazy to be true, the most likely explanation is that it simply isn’t true.

Filed Under: Consumer Battles Tagged With: consumer protection

Credit Cards as a Money Tool

August 1, 2011 by Lazy Man 6 Comments

Much of America has is in debt. Sometimes it’s good debt and other times it’s bad debt. I wrote about good debt vs. bad debt last week. Credit cards that you don’t pay off are an example of bad debt. Many of them charge upwards of 20% interest. For that reason some people have decided to not to use credit cards at all.

It doesn’t have to be all doom and gloom with credit cards though. For those with the means and fortitude to pay them off every month, there are definitely rewards. Just be sure you can you handle the responsibility before you try. Here’s a list of the benefits that responsible users of credit cards enjoy:

  • Free Money/Rewards – I get 5% back on gas with my credit card. With my local gas prices at $4.55 a gallon, that’s nearly 23 cents a gallon. (My credit card doesn’t seem to available, but the Chase PerfectCard seems to be a good alternative with 6% for the first 90 days and 3% after that.) I get the same 5% off of grocery and drug stores. I get 3% off of restaurants, home improvement stores, and office supply stores. Every few months Chase sends me couple of hundred dollars. That’s one piece of mail I don’t getting. It is a lot better than using a debit machine that rarely gives you rewards.
  • Free interest – The extra time that I have to pay off the credit cards is time where I’m making a small amount of interest by keeping the money in the bank. Admittedly this is a very minor, but real benefit.
  • Enhanced warranties – Many credit cards double the warranty of many consumer products.
  • Consumer Protection – Have you been wronged by a merchant? Often times the credit card company will go to bat for you. I don’t use this benefit very often. I don’t want to be the one that cries wolf. However, once every 12-18 months, it proves to be a very valuable perk.
  • Building Great Credit – By paying off my credit cards each month, I have been building great credit for years. It paid off when it came time to get a mortgage and I qualified for the lowest rate – the teaser rates that very few people qualify for.
  • Emergency Protection – You never know when something is going to come up. I don’t want to carry that much cash on hand. Debit cards help, but I like to keep money earning the most interest possible. As such, I don’t keep a lot of money in accounts where I have debit cards.
  • Spending History – I can give a service like Mint, or Quicken my credit card transaction file and it will analyze where and how I’m spending my money. If I see I’m spending too much on eating out, I curtail it.

This is just another example how emotional control can add up to very real, tangible gains.

Filed Under: Credit Cards Tagged With: bad debt, consumer protection, Credit Cards, free interest, Free Money

As Seen In…

Join and Follow

RSS Feed
RSS Feed

Follow Me on Pinterest

Search The Site

Recent Comments

  • Steveark on How Many Days of Financial Freedom do you Have?
  • Wesley on How Many Days of Financial Freedom do you Have?
  • Wesley on Should We Worry About the Debt Ceiling?
  • Lazy Man on Thiel’s Scandalous Roth IRA and What You Can Learn From It
  • Nancy Jones on Thiel’s Scandalous Roth IRA and What You Can Learn From It

Please note that we may have a financial relationship with the companies mentioned on this site. We frequently review products or services that we have been given access to for free. However, we do not accept compensation in any form in exchange for positive reviews, and the reviews found on this site represent the opinions of the author.


© Copyright 2006-2023 · Perfect Plan Publishing, Inc. · All Rights Reserved · Privacy Policy · A Narrow Bridge Media Design