Honolulu Lite
SEC tries to wise up
’Net chumpsEver wonder how to put together an Internet Web site to bilk gullible investors out of their money?
Your friendly U.S. government is offering point-by-point, how-to instruction on building your own fraudulent Web site and, best of all, it's free!
Of course, it was not the intent of the federal Securities and Exchange Commission to offer instruction to up and coming felons. The SEC wants to use its fake fraud Web sites to warn investors about real fraud Web sites. The result is mcwhortle.com, homepage for McWhortle Enterprises Inc., a company that supposedly makes hand-held biohazard detection devices.
It's a slick Web site that looks legit. It has a biography of fake company prez Thomas James McWhortle, news releases about SEC approval to issue public stock, testimonials and an invitation to invest. But anyone who actually tries to invest eventually is told that the whole thing is a scam of a scam, which is to say, that it is just the SEC trying to keep idiot investors from sending their money to companies as phony as McWhortle Enterprises.
The problem is that McWhortle is so obviously phony, offering suckers up to 400 percent growth on their investments, that only the truly brain dead would fall for it.
Apparently the SEC had so much time (and money) on its hands ignoring a REAL ponzi scheme, the Enron debacle, it could fool around making up dopey sites to protect a few low-level investor chumps.
Where's the SEC Web site that would have saved Enron employees their life savings?
If you want to get into the Internet fraud game, then the McWhortle site is for you. It purports to tell rubes what not to fall for (promises of excessive profits, the use of words like "guarantee," "high return" and "limited offer"). But in doing so, it tells budding scam artists exactly what to do on their Web sites (don't make promises of excessive profits or use words like "guarantee," "high return" and "limited offer.") Also don't pretend to have inside information, don't pressure investors to cough up the dough right now and, basically, "don't sound too good to be true!"
In other words, do everything the directors of Enron did, but try to get out of Dodge before the Grand Jury meets.
The McWhortle Web site has had hundreds of thousands of hits, making it one of the more popular sites on the net.
Which gives me an idea. What if we set up a McWhortle-type site to save investors from themselves? We'll basically just copy the SEC's site, since we paid for it. And once our site is as popular as McWhortle, we'll sell shares in our Web site so that we can build other sites warning investors to be careful! And pretty soon we have an entire financial empire of fake Web sites warning people not to invest in fake Web sites. God bless America.
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Charles Memminger also writes Honolulu Lite Mondays,
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