E-mail Scam Spotted Purporting to Offer Pre-IPO Shares of Facebook

U.S-located non-governmental organization FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority) alerted on March 15, 2011 that malicious scams were attempting at taking advantage of people's increased effort for acquiring private shares that belonged to Facebook the website for widespread social networking. PCWorld.com published this on March 16, 2011.

Said Vice-President of Investor Education Gerri Walsh for FINRA, scammers promoting pre-IPOs to serve the need of online-based firms were dispatching fake e-mails as well as introducing deceptive investor videos to YouTube. Bloomberg.com published this in news on March 16, 2011.

Stated FINRA that firms, which hadn't hitherto owned an IPO, occasionally had shares like those issued to member staffs, which were traded privately. Possibly Facebook allowed its employees to give away a high $1bn of their shares for sale, which meant the firm would be valued at nearly $60bn. But investors wanting to invest in private shares required being aware about unsolicited offers, while adopt measures for making sure that sellers weren't simply posing as stockholders, FINRA cautioned. Bloomberg.com reported this.

Moreover, according to FINRA, during December late (2010), just when the Securities and Exchange Commission came to rest, a self-employed seller of securities was charged under federal law because he allegedly defrauded over 50 American as well as foreign investors off over $9.6m through several pre-IPO scams that lasted 8-years. The organization says it also knows about other deceptive campaigns, which posing as trading Facebook shares have lured probable preys. Finra.org reported this on March 15, 2011.

Furthermore, Walsh stated that it was just impossible to count the number of scams, while FINRA had observed the same styles of fraud abusing social-networking companies as those 10-15 years back at the time the Internet began surging for the first time. PCWorld.com reported this.

Meanwhile, FINRA recommends one sure method for warding off unsolicited offers from taking people into their traps i.e. ignoring such offers wholly. Somebody asserting that he has Facebook shares alternatively shares of any other firm providing social-networking service may quite likely turn out to be a hired trader alternatively a scammer attempting at stealing hard-earned cash off potential victims. Finra.org published this on March 15, 2011.

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» SPAMfighter News - 3/23/2011