"Project False Hope" Scam Busters
Tuesday, December 12, 2006SUSIE GHARIB: In an effort dubbed "project false hopes," Federal and state law enforcement officials are cracking down on business opportunity scams. You've probably seen the ads promising thousands of dollars a month by working from home. But as Stephanie Dhue reports, many people have learned the hard way that scams like these lead to broken promises.
STEPHANIE DHUE, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: Retired police officer Dale Stange lost more than $30,000 on a bogus business opportunity. After seeing an advertisement, Stange bought into what he thought was a business setting up Internet kiosk machines. He was promised the machines could generate a $100,000 a year in revenue. But he soon realized he'd been taken.
DALE STANGE, INVESTED IN FRAUDULENT BUSINESS: The things that they had promised weren't happening because they were to take care of all the advertising on the machine and that never came about.
DHUE: Stange is far from alone. More than 700 people fell for that Internet kiosk scam and lost more than $18 million. The company that ran it, Pantheon Holdings, is now out of business, its employees in jail. One of them, Blake Ladenheim, was sentenced to five years in prison after being taped in this exchange with a cooperating witness.
VOICE OF BLAKE LADENHEIM, PANTHEON HOLDINGS: We know what we're doing, we're big boys. We know we're taking peoples' life's savings and turning it into our weekly income. That's what we're doing.
DHUE: Under operation project false hopes, law enforcement officials have gone after bogus businesses that bilked investors out of more than $100 million. The government says it will try to recover for the victims, but most will end up with nothing.
PETER KEISLER, ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL, JUSTICE DEPARTMENT: The reality is that money invested in these schemes is generally money lost forever and so while we can take aggressive action to shut these down for the future and protect people in the future, it's much harder to do something for people who've been victimized in the past.
DHUE: To keep from being victimized, officials warn consumers to beware of ads for opportunities that promise an ideal work situation: the ability to set your own hours, be your own boss or work from home. Also beware of claims of certain amounts of money and the promise of little or no risk.
DEBORAH PLATT MAJORAS, CHAIRMAN, FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION: If a business opportunity promises no risk, little effort and big profit, it almost certainly is a scam.
DHUE: Experts also warn that checking out businesses ahead of time, say with the Better Business Bureau, isn't foolproof. In many cases, bogus businesses take the money and run before consumers have a chance to complain. Stephanie Dhue, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT, Washington.
GHARIB: Shares of Sabre Holdings took a one-way trip up today on news the travel services company is being bought by two private equity firms. Sabre is best known for its Travelocity hotel and flight booking Internet site. Texas Pacific Group and Silver Lake Partners are buying it for $5 billion, including debt. Sabre's board has already approved the buyout and is urging shareholders to do the same. This proposed deal comes after another private equity firm, Blackstone Group, bought the competing Orbitz travel site and its parent, Travelport. And that's got the street buzzing, Paul, about possible private equity buyouts of two other online travel agencies. We're talking here about Expedia and Priceline.
