George Hendricks, a 69-year-old from Leesburg, a suburb of Orlando, told ClickOrlando he lost $45,000 after a scammer targeted him with a deepfake video of Musk. Deepfakes are digitally-altered videos often used to impersonate notable public figures.
Now, Hendricks tells the outlet that his wife “wants to get a divorce” over the scam.
No one is giving away money. If they figure out how to make money on something they are not going to let you buy in.
It wasn’t just about a car, the scammers knew Florida Boomers are greedy fucks who expect to make free money, this mark thought he was going to make $120K on a $10K investment.
That whole category of how to get quick rich books is a scammy scam that people who don’t understand money fall for. A lot of times they’re wrapped up in pyramid schemes but not always. Buyer beware.
A significant exception is if they need more money to make their money e.g., they need to build a factory to manufacture the product. If a bank won’t lend to them on agreeable terms, they may try raising equity capital in which case they will be very eager for you to buy in (on their terms of course).
All of this, except no - Not at all for you and I.
At least not until we join the ranks of full fledged billionaires, right after monkeys fly out of my butt.
Yes for you and I… It happens every day. Lending money to businesses is called the bond market. Supplying capital to in exchange for equity is called the stock market.
They are absolutely open to the public if you have the capital. Wealth inequality is a huge problem that we should discuss. When we discuss it we shouldn’t make false claims in our frustration.
You’re right. Thank you.
I don’t mean to claim that markets for us to purchase investments don’t exist. My claim is that those markets aren’t favorable to us.
In particular, it is silly to imagine that a sound investment is going to come to me, instead of to someone with more capital and paid researchers and strong connections.
My (non-billionaire) situation guarantees that anyone courting my investment dollar has a higher probability to be providing either a poor investment or a scam.
Index funds are a wonderful innovation to help address this problem, but they do not completely solve it.