Sam Bankman-Fried may be the most famous person accused of fraud in 2022, but the $8 billion missing from the FTX cryptocurrency exchange is only a tiny portion of the funds conned out of consumers this year.
Con artists, though, are a special kind of fraudster. They often meet you in person, earn your trust, offer financial security, and then walk away with your life savings. The betrayal is as painful as the cash losses.
Movies, television and fiction often give scammers an air of sophistication, perhaps because charm and confidence are critical to their craft. But they are fundamentally thieves, and some cannot seem to stop.
The Texas State Securities Board filed an emergency order last month against Adrian Lamont Gunn to stop offering shares on Craigslist in an planned Houston nightclub for $50,000. I tried to find contact information for Gunn, whose last address was in Lubbock, but was unsuccessful.
Travis Iles, the state’s securities commissioner, has plenty of details, however. Gunn was passing around documents showing that he had a purchase agreement for a bar called J Durham. He needed partners to put in $75,000 in return for half the company, according to the commission’s order.
“The executed Business Sale Offer and Acceptance Agreement is a forgery,” the commission explained in court papers. “Respondent’s representations are false, they have not purchased J…
