Investor's Watchdog.com: Stock, finance and investment protection for investors

We’ve been looking at lessons from the YBM scam, which led the FBI to add its mastermind, Russian mobster Semion Mogilevich, to its Most Wanted list.  Yesterday we covered how Mogilevich spared no expense to hire/bribe impressive professionals (attorneys, accountants, consultants) to help him structure his $150 million scam.  Today we examine why organized crime will continue to focus on raising money through financial scams.First, financial scams are far less bloody.  One of the most memorable lines from The Godfather was spoken by Virgil Sollozzo.  ”I don’t like violence, Tom,”  Sollozzo says to Tom Hagen.  ”I’m a businessman.  Blood is a big expense.”  And indeed it is.  Cops and prosecutors take violent crime very seriously for obvious reasons.  They push to make an arrest quickly.  If they suspect organized crime involvement, they offer a plea deal to the trigger man in exchange for testimony about the boss.  Bottom line:  murder puts the organization at far greater risk than financial fraud.Also, financial fraud can pull in more money with fewer illegal acts involved than any other form of mob-based business.  In drug trafficking, everyone in the chain, consumer, salesman, corrupt law enforcement, is breaking the law.  Not a single transaction is free of the risk that it will be the transaction that ultimately brings down the organization.With financial fraud, though, the consumers are not breaking the law.  There is no law against investing in what you believe to be a terrific investment.  Cops are not staking you out in hopes they will catch you investing your money.  There are, therefore, far fewer points at which the law can access the illegal activity, far fewer acts that serve as a tip off that a criminal enterprise is involved.For these, and other, reasons, organized crime will continue to create and operate financial scams.  The mob has the money to set up well-disguised scams, operations that will check out with all but the most in-depth investigators.  The secret to protecting yourself from these scams, therefore, is to hire an investigator who has seen hundreds of them and who can, therefore, recognize things that others may miss.