Are you the victim of an investment scam?

If you suspect you've been cheated in an investment deal, you may very well be correct. There seems to be a never-ending supply of unscrupulous people who prey on the unwary, especially targeting the elderly who tend generally to be more trusting of strangers (it's a generational thing!). Investment scams come in many varieties, but the common goal is separate the innocent and unsuspecting from their bank accounts.

If you think you may have been scammed, the important thing is to take action quickly. Conmen and women generally arrange their affairs so that they can be mobile, pulling up stakes on short notice and disappearing with their ill-gotten gains. The longer you wait to take action, the less likely the authorities and the courts can track and recover your money.

Signs that something is going wrong with an investment relationship include:

• When they meet with you, they always set the meetingi for someplace other than their offices.

• They send documents to you, and have you send your payments to them, via private courier services rather than the U.S. mail. They do this to avoid federal Mail Fraud charges if they are caught.

• They won't respond to your letters or emails. or respond with vague and receptive responses meant to "lull" you into a sense of security so you won't take legal action.

• They don't take your calls, or don't return your calls within a reasonable time, or else they don't respond at all.

• Often, they don't provide a physical address, or the physical address turns out to be phony or the building vacant.

Typically, these warning signs start to appear a month or two after you've invested, or when you try to get an update on the investment, or ask to withdraw some of the profits they say you have earned. You'll get a lot of stalling and excuses, while the scammers recruit other victims until they think the well is about to run dry or the cops are getting close, then that will be the last you see or hear of them.

Tip-offs that an investment opportunity might not be legit.

Of course, the best strategy is to avoid getting sucked into a scam investment in the first place. Scammers sometimes go to great lengths to give the appearance of being a legitimate business, often with color brochures and fancy websites to give the appearance of being substantial companies, but they don't stay in one place very long and may skip town with your money at any moment. Often, however, there are tip-offs that an investment offer may not be on the up-and-up.

"New Technology." Often, scammers claim that you will be investing in some new or breakthrough technology, a "ground-floor opportunity" to invest in the "next big thing." You are told that the technology is proprietary, a trade secret, or will disrupt existing industries like oil or computing, or that they have "secret patents" (those don't actually exist), and that's why they cannot give you detailed information about their business. There are such things as "sealed" patents that are not included in the public patent database, such as with new weapons or other technology where national security is a concern, but the owners of those patents are not going to be looking to small, individual investors for funding. Legitimate companies want the world to know what they have to offer, so any cloak of secrecy around the company's activities should immediately arouse suspicion.

"Referral." Another common tactic is to bring you in as a "referral" by someone you know personally who has herself invested. In the early stages of the scam, they will often actually pay out profits (but not the principal) to establish credibility, then solicit referrals of friends and family to jump on the gravy train, and of course suggest that the original victims keep re-investing to make even more profits. They often print phony account statements to show profits on paper. At some point, they cease payments to the investors, fold their tent, and go off to create the next phantom company and imaginary investment program. So be wary of friends coming to you with a great investment opportunity, as they may well be victims themselves and just not know it yet.

"Secret stock trading strategy." Oftentimes the supposed investment is in the form a secret or "proprietary" strategy for trading stocks or commodities. Legitimate brokers are required by various laws and regulations to keep your funds segregated from those of the broker and other investors. So if they tell you your investment will be "pooled" and for that reason they cannot give you an accounting of the status of your investment, beware that it is probably a scam. Promoters of bogus investments usually avoid real estate, as it is too easy to check on titles and mortgages. For example, if you are supposed to be investing in a strip shopping center, you can fairly easily talk to the merchants and find who they pay rent to, and search the title to the property in the public records. Scammers prefer business models where your funds will supposedly be traded in the promoter's own account, so you have no way to verify that your funds are actually being invested as represented.

"Gold mines." Mineral exploitation is still a common form of investment scam. The promoter may claim that they have acquired claims to property that contain gold, silver, copper, or other valuable minerals, and that they just need to raise enough capital to put the mine into production and everyone will be repaid handsomely. Many of us have dreamed reaping "free" wealth from the ground, like the "forty-niners" of the California gold rush days, but these deals are rarely legitimate, as mineral development is extremely expensive and must be done on a large scale to be profitable. So mineral development is done mostly by very large, established companies having the necessary equipment, scientists and engineers. These large companies get their funding from Wall Street, banks, and professional investment groups, so if someone is asking you for $10,000 or $30,000 or even $50,000 to build a mine, they are almost certainly not positioned to develop a mine profitably and may plan to abscond with your money.

"Closed mines and tailings piles." For scammers, success often lies in providing a level of detail that makes their claims believable. Nowadays, most people recognize that building a mine takes a great deal of money, such that it cannot likely be financed by a group of individual investors. Creative scammers get around that objection by claiming that they are not building a new mine, but are just "reopening a mine that was closed when it ceased to be profitable, but that because precious metals prices have increased they can now mine the remaining ore at a profit with minimal startup costs. These are almost always scams, and it turns out that the mine was abandoned because it was barren. Legitimate mining companies know how to tell if a property is worth hanging on to until prices rise or technology improves. If they abandon a mining property, it's a good bet that the experts saw no future in it.

A variation on the "reopen" theme is to claim that the promoters have acquired a valuable "tailings pile." Mine tailings are the "waste" product of mining. The claim is that in the past, the available technology was inadequate to remove ALL of the valuable metals from the ore, but now with new technologies that mine waste can be re-processed and the remaining metals removed profitably. So no mining need be done, but rather just shoveling the tailings into modern machinery will reap a bonanza. While there may be some validity to the theory, it's more likely that if the tailings have been abandoned by the original mining company, its because its scientists and engineers have pretty much decided that the tailings had no prospect of becoming valuable in the future. Thus, the idea of reprocessing those tailing profitably is pretty much a pipe dream. It's not reasonable to believe that some small business, financed by small investors, is going to come along and reap a windfall where the experts had already given up all hope. If you are offered one of these "opportunities," please undertake a thorough investigation before giving them any of your money.

"Other red flags." A big red flag pointing to a fraudulent investment offering is "urgency." Usually, scammers will give you reasons why you have to make your investment decision immediately, or forever lose the opportunity. Of course, the reason for that is that the scammers don't intend to be around for long. They will harvest as many "marks" as they think they can fleece before they start to get pressure from disgruntled investors or until law enforcement begins to close in,

Another indicator is that they fraudsters insist that the opportunity is "so good," you should put in all of your liquid funds. No responsible promoter of a legitimate investment would do that. Every investment that is not bank certificate deposition or a U.S. Government Bond or Treasury Bill carries risk of loss, in many cases, the risk of TOTAL loss of the investment. Prudence dictates spreading the risk among various investments, so that if one doesn't pan out, the others may do well enough to make you whole or even get ahead of the game. A promoter who suggests you put every available dollar in his own investment is not one you want to trust, and he surely is putting his own interests ahead of yours.

If you have any doubts or suspicions, the time to act is NOW.

As we cautioned you previously, investment scammers are agile and secretive. They can disappear quickly and leave few clues to their identities, and move your invested money offshore or into entities that can be difficult or impossible to trace. At the first indication that you have been the victim of a scam, you MUST get help from law enforcement or from a law firm knowledgeable in these areas, so immediate steps can be taken to identify the scammers and secure your money before it disappears forever. In many cases, it will be worthwhile to file suit against the scammers and get the court to freeze their assets so that they will be available to pay a judgment. Nevada Business Law attorneys are well equipped to intervene in these cases.