{"id":212,"date":"2014-10-15T11:03:59","date_gmt":"2014-10-15T15:03:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bringingfreudtofraud.com\/?p=212"},"modified":"2015-03-07T15:25:09","modified_gmt":"2015-03-07T19:25:09","slug":"more-serial-liar-than-investment-banker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bringingfreudtofraud.com\/?p=212","title":{"rendered":"MORE SERIAL LIAR THAN INVESTMENT BANKER"},"content":{"rendered":"

(By Jack Bigelow and Joe Koletar<\/a>) A Wall Street Journal article by Maria Armental describes \u201cThe Curious Case of an \u2018Oxford\u2019 Man,\u201d in which Steven Wessel is described by a U.S. Attorney as \u201c\u2026much less an investment banker than a serial liar.\u201d According to the article, Wessel conducted a classic Ponzi operation. Investors were persuaded by assertions of spectacular returns to invest money that was used to provide spectacular returns to earlier investors. This April, Wessel told an investor he\u2019d be getting back $249,000 for his $200,000 investment, when at the time, Wessel\u2019s bank account had about four dollars in it!
\nThe book, A.B.C.s of Behavioral Forensics (Wiley, 2013) examines the motivations of fraudsters—motivations that go much deeper than greed itself. The Armental article gives us some hints. Wessel is described as \u201ca burly man with a hearty laugh,\u201d given to boasting about his investment banking practice. He\u2019s described as making assertions about Oxford degrees, and employment by former presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush (none of which appears to be true). He set up a charity to help military families, chairing prestigious events to bring in funds for it. Amazingly, he succeeded—for a while—in obtaining investment moneys even though he had served time for bank fraud eight years ago! Why did he do it? And what could have motivated the more recent \u201cinvestors\u201d to unwittingly participate in this scheme?
\nRegular blog contributor Joe Koletar\u2019s reaction: \u201cThis is a typical scam. A little BS goes a long way. All the charity stuff is just cover. The victims could have found out all about this guy by doing a public records data search. I have a friend who\u2019s been doing this for 20 years. He can do a nationwide data search and turn it around in 24 hours for $200. Scams take two parties\u2014the bad guy and a gullible victim\u201d
\nWhich underscores again the questions: \u201cWhy do the bad guys do Ponzi schemes and similar scams and why do the victims allow themselves to be so gullible, even to the point of not even researching backgrounds?\u201d Two follow-on posts by Vic Hartman<\/a> and Daven Morrison<\/a> will\u00a0tackle these questions.<\/p>\n

Join us for more insights into behavioral forensics (behind fraud and similar white collar crimes) from the authors of <\/span>ABCs of Behavioral Forensics<\/span><\/span> (Wiley, 2013): Sri Ramamoorti, Ph. D., Daven Morrison, M.D., and Joe Koletar, D.P.A., along with Vic Hartman, J.D.\u00a0 These distinguished experts come from the disciplines of psychology, medicine, accounting, law, and law enforcement to explain and prevent fraud.\u00a0 Because we are inspired to bring to light and address the fraud problems in today’s headlines, we encourage our readers to come back and revisit us regularly at BringingFreudtoFraud.com. <\/span><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(By Jack Bigelow and Joe Koletar) A Wall Street Journal article by Maria Armental describes \u201cThe Curious Case of an \u2018Oxford\u2019 Man,\u201d in which Steven Wessel is described by a U.S. Attorney as \u201c\u2026much less an investment banker than a serial liar.\u201d According to the article, Wessel conducted a classic Ponzi operation. Investors were persuaded … Continue reading MORE SERIAL LIAR THAN INVESTMENT BANKER<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-audit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bringingfreudtofraud.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bringingfreudtofraud.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bringingfreudtofraud.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bringingfreudtofraud.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bringingfreudtofraud.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=212"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/bringingfreudtofraud.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":367,"href":"https:\/\/bringingfreudtofraud.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212\/revisions\/367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bringingfreudtofraud.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bringingfreudtofraud.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bringingfreudtofraud.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}