Very good info Legolas. People need to hear this sort of thing. There are a lot of people trying to clean out your wallet. As you said the elderly are quite often the targets of these schemes. I became facinated with this sort of thing after I left the WT. I think because I saw similar technics used to deceive people. I think the first rule to remember is that if you've won something you'rve won something. You shouldn't have to hand them money for any reason and you shouldn't need to buy anything else. I just tell them thank you now send me my prize. If they tell you you need to buy something else just tell them when you send me all the money I've won I'll buy ten subscriptions or whatever it is they want you to get. I once went a seminar in Nevada where they were trying to get us to buy a lot in the desert. They painted a picture of how there was no more land available in NV. The gov owned almost all of the land. This was last chance. I told my wife I didn't believe them but everything they said sounded right. I was amazed at how convincing they were. When I told them I didn't buy anything on the spot and that I would need time to think about it and asked for a business card. They told me I couldn't get a card and that I had to make the decision right away so we walked. After we left we did a little investigation on the area they were trying to get us to buy into. They wanted about $12,000 for a lot. Looking through the paper I found that at that time for $12,000 you could by acres of land in the part of Nevada they talking about.
A few months ago I read Pozi's Scheme by Mitchell Zuckoff. It is a great book. What I got out of reading it was that Pozi ripped thousands of people off yet he was a person you would probably would have liked. He was deceiving his investors by spending their money yet he seemed to really want to make his scheme work for them. He just couldn't figure out how to do it so he kept taking and spending their money. Now if a nice guy can rip people off like that you can only imagine how the bad ones are.