How trusting are you? What aspects of your life are you willing to trust to others?
Trust can be as simple as enjoying a meal cooked by someone else. It can also mean being brave enough to trust another individual with your finances. Financial advisors can be a useful for investing money so it increases over time as opposed to depreciating. Vigilance is key when entrusting financial transactions to an individual or company.
Eight financial managers of Northwest Capital in Toledo were arrested and are facing multiple felonies, even as many as 93 felonies for some of the managers involved. The managers are accused of engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity, unlawful securities practices, telecommunications fraud, aggravated theft, perjury, money laundering, and several other financial charges. The misappropriation is linked to 741 investments from at least 200 people from January 2011 to December 2021. The scheme involved soliciting investment clients to buy alternative investments that were conflicts of interest and falsifying these investment values in annual statements.
There have been similar cases involving individuals and their financial managers falsifying client records and diverting funds to personal accounts or using business/individual client funds for personal purchases. If the proper procedures are not in place, such as in the case in Northwest Capital, records can be altered so when reconciling accounts and payments, fraudulent transactions can be hidden, often not being uncovered until the fraudster is caught or, in even worse cases, long gone. Having multiple individuals looking over the checks and balances in money management aids in protecting against theft.
Staff, W. (2023, April 11). Toledo financial managers arrested in alleged multi-million dollar investment fraud plot. https://www.13abc.com. https://www.13abc.com/2023/04/11/toledo-financial-managers-arrested-multi-million-dollar-investment-fraud-plot/
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