A Really Good Investment Deal

On Japanese TV today, there was a story about a con artist who tricked a woman out of $100,000.  The con artist met the woman on a dating site.  His profile said that he earns $200,000 a year as an entrepreneur running a foreign currency trading website.  The two exchanged texts for two weeks, and the guy started to ask the woman out.  He was handsome and sweet.  He told her that he was serious about the relationship and wanted to court her to marry her shortly.  A few weeks passed, the con artist told the woman that he would like to start planning their wedding and needed her support.  His trading website is doing well, but he has all his capital tied up with the venture.  However, he knows the foreign currency trading market well, and if she put $2,000 into his trading site, she can quickly turn a profit of $10,000 to fund their wedding.  Naturally, she trusted him and started trading with his site.  The lady is an amateur investor; consequently, she is careful in placing her trades.  The con artist told her they if she trusted him to trade for both of them, with his experience, he could turn much bigger profits in 10 to 20 times the original seed money.  And they will have the wedding money much quicker.  To do this, he will need more cash to trade.  Hearing this, the lady took out a good chunk of her savings, $50,000.  On top of this, the con artist asked her to borrow an additional $50,000 from the credit card company.  The woman handed the man $100,000 for him to invest in for their wedding.  After passing the cash to the con artist, his behavior turned cold. He stopped calling the woman and even distanced himself when she tried to contact him.  The woman later reported the incident to the authorities, and at this point no resolution to the situation.

In a society where there is a growing number of single ladies looking to find their future soul mate, it is a shame that some ill-intend person would exploit their weakness.  The con artist cheated the woman out of her hard-earned savings and fooled her into running up a debt she did not need.  The world is full of evil individuals with no morals.  They will prey on the innocents and the uninformed.  Sadly, able men would not work hard to contribute to society; instead, they take advantage of others' emotional weaknesses.   For the woman, I do feel sorry for her misfortune and financial loss.  But in the information age, how can a person be fooled into thinking that one can easily make a return on investment 10 to 20 times the principle?  It makes no sense to believe in such sweet deals when the safest government treasury bond in the world gives a meager 1.5% in yearly return.  Hearing stories like this makes me angry and sad at the same time.

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