The financial news that actually matters
A homeowner who has faithfully paid down the main mortgage for years can still get a letter demanding thousands on a loan they assumed was long gone. These are zombie second mortgages: dormant second liens, some untouched for a decade or more, that suddenly come back to life in the hands of a debt buyer….
A card swipe at the pump can take a few seconds, and that is all the time a hidden device needs to copy the card too. Skimmers planted on gas-station terminals and ATMs quietly capture the data on a card while a legitimate fill-up or withdrawal goes through, leaving no sign at the moment of…
A paper check dropped in an outgoing mailbox looks harmless, but to an organized ring of thieves it can be a blank slate worth thousands of dollars. Criminals are fishing envelopes out of home mailboxes and even blue collection boxes, dissolving the ink on the checks inside, and rewriting them to a new name and…
For millions of older Americans, instant payment apps have quietly replaced the checkbook for splitting a restaurant bill, paying a handyman, or sending a grandchild money in a pinch. What many users never learn until it is too late is that these transfers move money the way handing over a stack of bills does: the…
The call arrives with an air of official menace. A voice claims to be from Social Security, says there is a legal problem tied to the recipient’s Social Security number, and warns that benefits will be suspended within hours unless a payment clears immediately. The threat is fiction, but the fear it manufactures is the…
The message often starts as a wrong number or a friendly note on a dating app, and it can end with a retirement account emptied into cryptocurrency that vanishes overseas. These “romance” investment scams have become one of the costliest frauds in the country. Federal agents are now clawing back the proceeds, seizing sums that…
A phone rings, the caller ID looks like the bank, and a calm voice says the fraud department has spotted suspicious activity. To protect the balance, the caller explains, the money needs to be moved right away into a new “safe account.” It is one of the costliest scams aimed at older Americans, and it…
Gold and silver are pitched to retirement savers as a shelter from market swings, but federal and state regulators say the pitch often hides a punishing cost. Some precious-metals dealers that steer older Americans into gold-backed IRAs sell coins and bullion at prices far above what the metal is actually worth, and the difference disappears…
An investment pitch is only as real as the strategy behind it, and prosecutors say the strategy behind Price Physics was fiction. The fund’s operator told investors a proprietary trading algorithm was producing steady double-digit monthly gains. A federal court has now ordered him to hand over millions of dollars, and the algorithm he sold…
Promises of high returns with low risk are the oldest hook in investment fraud, and a San Antonio investment firm built a $69 million business on them. The company’s founder and chief executive has now admitted the scheme was a fraud that drew in hundreds of ordinary investors. His guilty plea carries an agreement to…