Pump & Dump

The hotline that did not exist while the app kept promising it did

Forty-six state attorneys general say Cash App sold a safety it never built. The $45 million settlement is the receipt for what happened to the people who believed the pitch.

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Pump & Dump

The notification said someone liked her. The someone did not exist.

Between 2016 and 2018, nearly half a million people bought Match.com subscriptions within 24 hours of getting a message from an account the company already suspected was fake. The $14 million settlement closes a case the FTC originally valued at $884 million.

Ponzi / Pyramid

The down payment was the product. The pool was the prop.

Tracy Davenport sold the dream of an inground pool to more than fifty Kentucky families. What she was actually selling was the down payment itself, and a federal judge just put a number on it.

Ponzi / Pyramid

The yacht, the Bentley, the diamond ring, and the kid who borrowed against his car

For eight years, IM Mastery Academy sold young people a trading education backed by Bentleys and Bulgari watches. The FTC says the trainers had no trading records, the claims were baseless, and the lifestyle was the product. The receipts are now in receivership.

The Daily Brief

Connecticut tightens the screws on a towing playbook that turned cars into inventory

Ray Delgado · May 1

Three out of four products failed. That was not an accident.

Mark Tell · Apr 30

The judge signed the order on a Monday. The $4.72 billion stays on the books.

Mark Tell · Apr 30
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