OT flying below the radar

[observer5-NOSPAM]

OT

Do you think it's possible for a business in the US that does business, selling equipment costing 100's of thousands of dollars, with US towns or counties, and with foreign governments, to have an appearance on the web, as shown by a google search, that is limited to

3 hits: its own webpage (including 7 subpages), a linkedin page, and a 2 minute youtube video (an animation, with no actual people or things in it)?

Bing had 2 hits in linkedin (including one for its president), and two other hit that google didn't have, both pages similar to linkedin, such as corporationwiki. It also had local.com and yellowpages.com, meaning Bing found more than Google! But still are those pages of any value in judging the company?

Yahoo.com had the 2 hits in linkedin or two other similar pages, and the youtube video.

One of these pages said it has sales of 1.5 million with 15 employees, but isn't this "information" whatever the subject of the page say in the questionairre it submits?

I tend to think the company is a fraud, but my question is not if you agree, but if you think it is *possible* that it's a functioning, growing company that really did have sales of 1.5 million, even though there are no hits from newspapers or business publications?

[trader_4]

Possible? Sure. How much presence a company like that has on the web is largely up to them. 1.5 mil, 15 employees isn't likely to be written up in the media. One thing that doesn't add up is if they are selling equipment worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, total sales of only $1.5 mil doesn't seem right. But is it possible? Sure.

[Frank]

Numerous firms and organizations do the opposite. They will have a huge web presence to inflate themselves when they only have a few employees.

[observer5-NOSPAM]

Yes, I think it's only a maximum of 5 machines, likely fewer.

Time will tell. I didn't invest in it but someone I know did.

[trader_4]

Woooh there Pilgrim. Investing in it is a whole different story.

[observer5-NOSPAM]

And the minimum investment appears to be $400,000.

Plus they have a chart that says ROI is 51.5% in 12 months.

And they have a list of opportunities, but few, maybe not any, said there were actual signed contracts and payments made.

[trader_4]

51% promised rate of return is a good indication of a scam. On the other hand typical scammers are very happy to take $25K. That's the sweet spot, a lot more of those pigeons around and they typically aren't as sophisticated and likely to spot a scam as someone with $400K.

[observer5-NOSPAM]

The guy who invested actually went to where some of the machinery was installed, 100's of miles from his home, and saw it in operation. It wa very impressive, but I spent a lot of time watching Mission Impossible and Hogan's Heroes, and I can imagine their having someone get there 30 minutes earlier and hang a sign with their company name on machinery that was made by someone else. Going on a weekend when there's no one there to know who was contracted and who wasn't.

I hope this friend of a friend doesn't lose money, but if he does, I will likely never know. I don't normally talk to him, and he won't call everyone he knows to tell them he was cheated, and even if it's a total scam, it may not make the newspapers at all, certainly not when I'm reading. And if the scam is really well done, he may not even know he's been cheated.

[trader_4]

That Zbest cleaning company in CA did exactly that. This was an 18 year old that started a cleaning business. Soon he was expanding, multiple trucks, started doing fire restoration cleanup. Big profits, great margins, he grew it and in a few years took it public. The whole thing was a fraud. When the investment bankers got curious and wanted to see one of these restorations, he found an empty floor in a highrise commercial building and took them there. He had previously made some visits under some BS ruse of renting or something so the security guard at the desk had seen him, he'd talked to him. So when he walks in with the bankers, he greats the guard by name, takes them up to the empty floor, I think it was on a Sat too, he might have had a few employees there that were pretending to be doing cleanup work, etc. It worked, he completely fooled them. Eventually the whole thing came out because he had previously cheated some woman on a credit card purchase and she pursued it with the police. Company stock went to zero, there was no real business. It was all cooked books and a sham. He went off to prison.

And in true scoundrel fashion, after this guy got out of prison, he started another scam. He started a business and website to uncover frauds. Then he partnered up with a crooked FBI agent. The FBI agent was feeding him inside info on companies that were under investigation. So, the scammer shorted the stock of the companies, then leaked the info had the stock crater and cashed in. Ultimately he got so bold that he was trying to blackmail companies, threatening to ruin them unless they paid him to go away. They busted him again and the FBI agent too. These people are really good at what they do.