Con Artists

Con artists are cashing in on the recession with telemarketing scams that promise credit cards, loans, even jobs in Kuwait, consumer advocates and regulators say. "The telephone is the weapon of choice" for today's swindlers, and they are using "900" numbers to prey on the jobless, said Linda Golodner, executive director of the National Consumers League.

Ignorance of the new federal immigration law is causing the proliferation of "con artists" who are taking advantage of illegal aliens seeking to qualify for citizenship, State Sen. Art Torres (D-Los Angeles) said Monday. Torres, at a Capitol press conference with State Sen. Nicholas C.

Re "Preying Through the Pulpit," Column One, Jan 13: With all the Ponzi-related stories in the news, it's amazing to me that intelligent adults can still get scammed into parting with their money by snake-oil salesmen promising impossible rates of return. Maybe it's time for our school administrators to consider incorporating life lessons into the curriculum so students can learn how to avoid being conned this way. It takes 10 minutes to explain how a Ponzi scheme works, but apparently nobody is getting the message.

The holidays--and a time of increased charitable giving--are upon us. Unfortunately, it is also a time when con men get serious about their work. Panhandlers and homeless people tend to get more donations during the holidays, whether they are truly homeless or helpless. For many years, I avoided making eye contact with anyone requesting money or food. But then something happened that changed my perspective. I was in downtown L.A.

Tough economic times are fertile ground for a venerable American entrepreneur: the con artist. With more people with less money or out of work during the recession, get-rich-quick or get-a-job-quick schemes are booming nationwide, authorities say. "Right now it is a prime market for swindlers," said James Allen Fox, a professor of criminal justice at Northeastern University in Boston. "When times are good, there are many ways to strike it rich legitimately.

The arrest here this week of an unemployed mechanic on charges of impersonating an immigration officer and defrauding more than 20 illegal aliens out of $2,000 each points up the dangers to unwary aliens in the months ahead, the Western regional commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service said Thursday.

Fraudulent telephone marketers, who bilk consumers out of billions of dollars a year, often escape prosecution because they tailor their crimes to fall through jurisdictional cracks in state and federal law, a top California regulator testified Thursday. In addition, law enforcement agencies are so understaffed that they usually cannot track the extent to which telephone "boiler room" operators comply with laws already on the books, said G. W.

Debt-burdened and desperate, Ronald and Erin Zickefoose ran a classified ad in the Los Angeles Times early in 1985: "Family Farm For Sale," it began. The Zickefooses, whose ancestors had come from the East in covered wagons to help settle the Midwestern prairie, owed creditors $845,000. They were prepared to sell part of their rural heritage to save what they could. Eugene P. Allen, a Californian with a reassuring velvet voice that boasted of a bundle of money, came to the rescue.

A con artist who police say bilked an elderly Pomona woman out of a large sum of money last month returned to her home over the weekend and injured her during a fruitless search for more cash. Pomona Police Officer Mark Shannon said Jessie Moody, 90, suffered "severe damage" to her nose when she was knocked down twice by a man who barged into her home on West 9th Street on Saturday. Moody was treated for her injuries at Pomona Valley Community Hospital and released.