Based on complaints, Michigan’s Office of Financial and Insurance Regulation investigated and recently ordered John Missitti, a Flint tax preparer affiliated with Nevada-based GetMoni, as well as the firm’s president, Ron Brito, to cease selling investment products, mainly because they weren’t registered in Michigan. Older investors are being targeted with increasingly complex investment scams involving unregistered securities, promissory notes, charitable gift annuities, viatical settlements, and Ponzi schemes all promising inflated returns. Michigan investors need to be on guard against a rise in investment scams that prey upon members of groups or affiliations, such as religious or ethnic communities, the elderly or professional groups, known as affinity group fraud. The Ponzi scheme is a house-of-cards swindle in which high returns are paid to initial investors out of the funds of later investors, who end up losing all or most of their money to the promoter. With the high price of gold, investors should beware of gold bullion scams in which the seller offers to retain “purchased” gold in a “secure vault” and promises to sell the gold for the investor as it gains in value. read more

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