Timely, relevant counsel on how to avoid con artists.
An attorney offers an all-encompassing exposé of financial scams.
This Rich Dad Advisor book departs from the primary focus of the series—business and investment advice. Instead, Sutton, a practicing attorney and the author of numerous other Rich Dad titles, focuses his attention on financial fraud schemes and how to prevent them. According to Sutton, “over 3.2 million Americans report incidents of fraud each year, and that’s only the people who actually said anything—a great many don’t.” Most chapters offer case studies of a particular type of scam followed by the author’s observations. Each study is engaging and often disturbing; clearly, it was Sutton’s intent to raise concern, if not fear, among his readers about the many ways in which people can be deceived. Some scammers, such as Charles Ponzi, whose name lives on in the term Ponzi scheme, and Bernard Madoff, who was convicted of perpetrating one such scheme that raked in billions of dollars, will be familiar to many readers while others are more obscure. However, these people are less important than the nature of their deceptions, about which Sutton goes into impressive detail. Particularly notable is the sheer breadth of his content; his examples include in-person, telephone-based, and online scams and address such crimes as identity theft (which affects more than 17 million victims annually, according to Sutton); phony sweepstakes; email solicitations; “vanity scams,” such as ineffective weight-loss products; and fraudulent real estate investments, among others.
Sutton cautions that anyone, regardless of age or class, is susceptible to con games, but he notes that “Seniors age seventy and up lose more money, by far, to scam artists and fraudsters than any other generation.” Indeed, some of the more heartbreaking cases here involve the elderly. One such example tells the story of an 85-year-old woman who was bilked by phone into believing that she’d won a Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes in 2018. She lost close to $28,000 to the con artist for “taxes and fees” before the hoax was discovered by the victim’s daughter. Some readers may find these dramatic accounts of personal tragedies to be quite unsettling; for the most part, though, the case studies are instructive and cautionary in tone, showing exactly how several deceptions work in the real world. What’s more, Sutton provides both general and specific guidance on how to identify and protect oneself against such scams. For example, his “profile of your typical scammer” is an insightful list of 11 richly described attributes, such as “They like to tell you how the clock is ticking”; that list is followed by 13 equally insightful “things that make for a good mark,” which may give pause to any reader. The closing chapter’s excellent suggestions for developing “scam radar” supply a comprehensive checklist that’s as solid a resource as one could possibly find. Overall, Sutton’s prose is informative, easy to read, and authoritative without being stodgy. His detailed descriptions and expert advice will be valuable assets to consumers and business owners alike.
Timely, relevant counsel on how to avoid con artists.Pub Date: Oct. 27, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-947588-14-1
Page Count: 240
Publisher: RDA Press, LLC.
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Smart, engaging sportswriting—good reading for organization builders as well as Pats fans.
Prolific writer Benedict has long blended two interests—sports and business—and the Patriots are emblematic of both. Founded in 1959 as the Boston Patriots, the team built a strategic home field between that city and Providence. When original owner Billy Sullivan sold the flailing team in 1988, it was $126 million in the hole, a condition so dire that “Sullivan had to beg the NFL to release emergency funds so he could pay his players.” Victor Kiam, the razor magnate, bought the long since renamed New England Patriots, but rival Robert Kraft bought first the parking lots and then the stadium—and “it rankled Kiam that he bore all the risk as the owner of the team but virtually all of the revenue that the team generated went to Kraft.” Check and mate. Kraft finally took over the team in 1994. Kraft inherited coach Bill Parcells, who in turn brought in star quarterback Drew Bledsoe, “the Patriots’ most prized player.” However, as the book’s nimbly constructed opening recounts, in 2001, Bledsoe got smeared in a hit “so violent that players along the Patriots sideline compared the sound of the collision to a car crash.” After that, it was backup Tom Brady’s team. Gridiron nerds will debate whether Brady is the greatest QB and Bill Belichick the greatest coach the game has ever known, but certainly they’ve had their share of controversy. The infamous “Deflategate” incident of 2015 takes up plenty of space in the late pages of the narrative, and depending on how you read between the lines, Brady was either an accomplice or an unwitting beneficiary. Still, as the author writes, by that point Brady “had started in 223 straight regular-season games,” an enviable record on a team that itself has racked up impressive stats.
Smart, engaging sportswriting—good reading for organization builders as well as Pats fans.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982134-10-5
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
A readable, persuasive argument that our ways of doing business will have to change if we are to prosper—or even survive.
A well-constructed critique of an economic system that, by the author’s account, is a driver of the world’s destruction.
Harvard Business School professor Henderson vigorously questions the bromide that “management’s only duty is to maximize shareholder value,” a notion advanced by Milton Friedman and accepted uncritically in business schools ever since. By that logic, writes the author, there is no reason why corporations should not fish out the oceans, raise drug prices, militate against public education (since it costs tax money), and otherwise behave ruinously and anti-socially. Many do, even though an alternative theory of business organization argues that corporations and society should enjoy a symbiotic relationship of mutual benefit, which includes corporate investment in what economists call public goods. Given that the history of humankind is “the story of our increasing ability to cooperate at larger and larger scales,” one would hope that in the face of environmental degradation and other threats, we might adopt the symbiotic model rather than the winner-take-all one. Problems abound, of course, including that of the “free rider,” the corporation that takes the benefits from collaborative agreements but does none of the work. Henderson examines case studies such as a large food company that emphasized environmentally responsible production and in turn built “purpose-led, sustainable living brands” and otherwise led the way in increasing shareholder value by reducing risk while building demand. The author argues that the “short-termism” that dominates corporate thinking needs to be adjusted to a longer view even though the larger problem might be better characterized as “failure of information.” Henderson closes with a set of prescriptions for bringing a more equitable economics to the personal level, one that, among other things, asks us to step outside routine—eat less meat, drive less—and become active in forcing corporations (and politicians) to be better citizens.
A readable, persuasive argument that our ways of doing business will have to change if we are to prosper—or even survive.Pub Date: May 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5417-3015-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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