How Floyd Mayweather Helped Two Young Guys From Miami Get Rich

While there may not be one born every minute, apparently they are born often enough to enable ridiculous fraudsters like this to ply their trade. Bon chance to all those involved.

Sounds as if Sharma, Trapani and Farkas are using Trump as their mentor.

the most ridiculous part of this story is that an endorsement by Paris Hilton and the likes is considered a good validation for an investment.

I wonder how many of the posters ridiculing people suckered in by celebrity endorsements bought into Sanders' promise of universal free college tuition paid for by a minuscule tax on stock transactions? One night, out of curiosity, I did a cursory crunching of the numbers & found Sanders' calculations were off by many tens of billions of dollars.

Rich people didn't get and remain rich by selling for relative peanuts (still all money is green) the "secrets" that enabled to amass great wealth — including a certain NYC real estate magnate with a gift for self-promotion. P.T. Barnum had it almost right. There's a sucker born every 10 seconds.

Mr. Mayweather and other celebrities may be experts in their own arenas, but taking financial advice from them is foolish, especially in virtual coins that are not regulated and can become worthless easily.

Would that those who dabble in this fantasy of the rich who subconsciously are looking for meaning in their lives would use their wealth to better the world around them. But I recognize that we are now living in a world where people are in their own reality bubbles. Guess these virtual financial scams work well into the fantasy game.

Just when I think people can't get any stupider, there's this...

Stupid is as stupid does. Better freeze the acounts now of these street grifters of our increasingly virtual age as this will undoubtedly end badly for all involved. Whom does our society listen to now? Elevate? Respect? Elect? It is necessary of course to protect the weakest members of our society from predators..... but what if those weakest are increasingly the majority?

The entire 'virtual currency' arena is rife with con men, and dubious "products". These new "financial innovations" are almost Trumpian in their ability to bring fortune to the founders while dumping the risk and the losses onto the chumps who fall for the big name's endorsement. It is well know, best by the con men themselves, that the mark's greed is one of the drivers behind the entire con; its very very hard to con a mark who isn't greedy... and at the same time greed blinds people to the many signs that 'something is not right about this...' - the little and sometimes big indicators of fraud they might otherwise notice. The flim-flammers make big vague promises, then grab all the money while never delivering on their promised benefits. Sounds a lot like Trump, eh? As another comment says - anyone who believes what a celebrity says about "winning" if only they buy into the 'product' deserves what they get. For flim-flam 'virtual currencies' only the investor gets burned; for the Trump flim-flam we're all taking the losses.

Even the most questionable of these assets will hold their value better than the USD over the long term. Once tax cuts for the rich get jammed through, the US is going to have to print maney like crazy to make up the deficit. Paris Hilton and Floyd Mayweather have nothing on the scammers running this country.

The author brings up a very important point, that is endorsements by any celebrity outside their area of expertise, are basically worth less than the paper used to describe them. Intelligent folks should run directly away from any such companies that are endorsed. Yet time and again we see those with millions from sports or acting caught up in scans designed to separate them from their money, along with using them in the worst way, eroding any trust that they may have. It would be better to adopt the idea that if someone like Mayweather is endorsing something, better leave it all to him, so he can lose his money and not yours, rather than this must be really something. Branding is a similar process, with those who can least afford it spending their hard earned money to buy league merchandise and overpriced products such as shoes and athletic gear. A few moments though will lead most people to the realization that it is OK to be a fan and admire the person, but to buy endorsed products surely doesn't make you like that person or have their talent in any way. A fool and his money...

At the beginning of the article I thought to myself, "Hmm. I don't think it's a great idea to invest in a product that is endorsed by Paris Hilton or by a man who gets hit in the head for a living." By the end of the article it appears that my gut was right.

Since when does Paris Hilton's endorsement offer legitimacy to an investment? Attention, yes, but legitimacy? This is tulip mania all over again.

The statements made by these unsophisticated fraudsters don't even make grammatical sense. Their crypto assets should be immediately frozen, then returned to investors, then they should serve time in jail. Perhaps sharing a cell with Bernard Madoff.

Anyone who 'invests' in virtual currency because the likes of Paris Hilton or Jamie Foxx tells you to probably deserves exactly whatever ends up happening to them.

The good times too of high prices almost always engender much fraud. All people are most credulous when they are most happy; and when much money has just been made, when some people are really making it, when most people think they are making it, there is a happy opportunity for ingenious mendacity. Almost everything will be believed for a little while, and long before discovery the worst and most adroit deceivers are geographically or legally beyond the reach of punishment. - Lombard Street written 1873 In other words a fool and his money are soon parted.

A great book is "The Big Con". It explains well the perfect storm of the early 1900's in America. Thanks to train travel, city slick hustlers no longer had to travel to the suckers but instead just waited for those newly rich from Wall Street or manufacturing or cattle to come to Chicago or NYC and deliver themselves unto evil. Today, the internet provides the same delivery system of the greedy to their undoing. The difference in 100 years of conning is that the 1900 OG's lured their pigeons in with style over bling. One wonders who amongst the sober looks at Money May or DJ Khaled as investment strategists and thinks anything but "Run!"

Would Mr. Mayweather accept payment for his services in funny money tokens? Right, and neither should anyone else. Chuck E. Cheese tokens will hold their value better than these scams.

"DJ Khaled, lent a patina of credibility..." really? If you're taking financial advice from DJ Khaled and Floyd Mayweather, you don't deserve your money.

As PT Barnum is said to have stated many years ago - "there's a sucker born every minute." There will always be confidence men (aided and abetted by paid endorsers) who are happy to separate fools from their money.

This is all going to end badly.

These are the same old hucksters, time and time again, with a trendy, technological veneer.

A Bitcoin-style start-up scam promoted by a world-famous girlfriend-beater? It's like they're just taunting the FBI, SEC, and IRS now. The sad part is they'll still get right away with it too. Don't get me started on social media influenzas in general. Most call them "influencers", but like the actual contagion they go viral, make us sick, siphon our money, and offer nothing of value.

If these type of investments fail, and the celebrity endorsers got paid for their promotional efforts, will they also be liable for any damages investors sustain due to fraud on the part of the crypto-companies?

There is just no reason for anyone to purchase this type of currency. When you see a man with bricks of $100 bills taped to his body, run away. He only wants more money. He is not interested in helping you get rich as well. FIGURE IT OUT!