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Does anyone get 20/20 on tv. Maybe these guys were your neighbors. A group of 8 or so U.S. individuals, living in Costa Rica have been scamming the elderly in the states of large sums of money for the last few years. Seems they set up a large communication center in a house and managed to persuade people to wire money, transfer accounts etc.. Wonder why it took three years to catch up with them. I’m hoping to see more info on this. It was make a wish scam, you can view it on 20 20 abc news. Costa Rican officials were really pissed off.
There have been dozens of these groups operating in Costa Rica… In telemarketing charities fraud, “investments” and of course people selling “ocean view” real estate without the ocean view….
I reported many “options trading” boiler room scams plus numerous pyramid “investment” scams to the US and Costa Rican authorities over ten years ago and nothing was done…
The Postmaster General in one US state did contact me but but they ended up doing nothing …
These scammers – 98% of whom are from the USA – KNOW how to get around the law and understand that ripping off their fellow US citizens while based in Costa Rica gives them a great deal of flexibility…
The US authorities rarely want to get involved in something international and if Costa Ricans aren’t getting ripped off then the Costa Rican authorities don’t consider it that urgent.
And I can tell you from personal experience, these people tend to hire the best attorneys that money can buy and I have been “encouraged” to remove a variety of my articles over the years which were all truthful with facts and figures to back everything up but… how much time and money am I willing to spend to fight off the best attorneys in the country?
Scott Oliver – Founder
WeLoveCostaRica.comWell Scott maybe you were responsible for the boiler room scam going down. According to the article they arrested most all involved with that in 2006. Seems like they missed a few locals and they started anew. I just mentioned this because we see so little on t.v. about Costa Rica up here in the north and thought you might be interested. I hope the ones caught stay there, I’m sure prison life is a little harsher than in the states. And yes, scammers are everywhere. I appreciate your site, I check in often and enjoy the articles. Dennis
No but funny enough I was blamed by many “investors” for the losses they faced when these pyramid schemes blew up…
This was 5-10 years ago now but the head of the Costa Rica stock exchange (Federico Carrillo who later became the Costa Rica Minister of Finance) and I were both aggressively pushing the SUGEVAL (Costa Rica’s version of the SEC) to investigate DOZENS of these groups who have caused HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of dollars in losses…
Scott Oliver
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