There are plenty of fraudsters and scammers in this world. A large percentage of them seem to live in Utah County. Or maybe that’s just how it looks from where I sit. A recent one called himself “The Bull,” and there were doctors among his victims.
A man named Jeremiah ‘The Bull’ Joseph Evans, the owner of Alpha Influence LLC, was charged with securities fraud and money laundering, and in January 2025, he pleaded guilty to both counts that cost more than 500 victims a total of about $21 million.
He was later sentenced to 96 months in prison.
From KSL.com:
“From July 2019 through July 2022, Evans ‘devised and intended to devise a scheme and artifice to defraud investors, and to obtain money and property by means of materially false and fraudulent pretenses, representations, promises and omissions of material facts,’ the charges state. ‘During the course and scope of the scheme, approximately $20,894,674 was wired or otherwise sent to accounts held in the name of Alpha Influence and controlled by Evans by approximately 530 victims.’
In court documents, federal prosecutors allege Evans defrauded victims by making false or misleading statements or leaving out material facts, including:
- Alpha Influence had been operating successfully for years when it had not.
- That the investment would generate consistent, predictable monthly returns when it did not.
- That investment principal would be recouped within 12-18 months when it was not.
- That the investment would earn an average of 7%-10% return on investment per month in profit after expenses when it did not.
- That Alpha Influence and Evans had connections with high-ranking Amazon staff at Amazon’s corporate headquarters in Seattle who were readily accessible to solve problems that might arise with the Alpha Influence investment when he did not.
- That Alpha Influence employed a legal team to assist with resolving issues for individual investors when it did not.
- Failed to disclose that Alpha Influence was unable to resolve store suspensions and could not get many stores operational after they were shut down for violation of Amazon policies.
- Failed to disclose that several testimonials provided in support of Alpha Influence and the success of the investment offered were made by relatives of Evans or others who received commissions from investor proceeds.”
Want to avoid being scammed? Here’s tip No. 1: Don’t invest with someone who calls himself “The Bull” and puts on an event called “AlphaCon.” I mean, come on.
Seriously, though, scams happen. Fraudsters exist. Let’s see if I can help you avoid being a victim.
7 Tips to Help You Avoid Being Scammed
Follow these tips, and you will minimize the likelihood of being the victim of scams and fraudsters—or at least decrease the damage if it does happen.
#1 Practice Good Cybersecurity
There are really two types of scams and frauds. The first type is just stealing from you without you ever getting to know them. They send a phishing email or text. Somehow, they get you to share passwords and other information with them, and they break into your accounts or establish credit in your name and steal from you. They might file a false tax return. Maybe your ne’er-do-well parent opens a credit card in your name and runs up a huge bill. Plenty of variations exist.
You can protect against this first type of scammer/fraudster by just being on your guard. Don’t click on links in emails and texts from people you don’t know. Use two-factor authentication for your accounts. Use real passwords using a product like LastPass. Check your credit report periodically. Recognize that real financial companies don’t call you up and ask for information they should already have.
More information here:
How This Financially Literate Doctor Got Scammed Out of $75,000
Beware of Pump-and-Dump Schemes
#2 Avoid All Private Investments
The second type of scam usually involves some type of private investment. This might be in some sort of cryptoasset, online business, real estate, or oil and gas. Fraud was a real issue in the run-up to the Great Depression. So, the US government passed all kinds of laws to help decrease it, such as the Investment Company Act of 1940. The US Securities and Exchange Commission is far from perfect, but the truth is that true fraud and scams among publicly traded companies and funds are incredibly rare. That’s why Enron was such a huge deal.
Most investment scams are not public investments closely monitored by regulators and monitored by hundreds of analysts. They are private deals. That doesn’t mean most private deals are investment scams, of course. There are lots of great investments out there that are not publicly traded. But you can avoid 99% of investment-related scams by just avoiding all private investments because that’s just where fraudsters hang out most of the time. If you, like me, choose to invest some of your money into private investments, recognize that your risk of fraud has just 100Xed and be prepared to deal with that.
#3 Be a Real Accredited Investor
Most private investments require you to legally be an accredited investor. That means you have an income of $200,000 or more each of the last two years or at least $1 million in investable assets. No, those numbers are not indexed to inflation, and they have not changed for way too many years. I would suggest that, if you want to invest in private investments, you be a real accredited investor, not just a legal one. The spirit of the accredited investor law is
- That you are sophisticated enough that you can evaluate the merits of an investment without the assistance of an attorney, accountant, or financial advisor, and
- That you are wealthy enough that you can lose your entire investment without it affecting your financial life.
Frankly, being a legal accredited investor probably doesn’t get you #2 (maybe double both numbers and require both to be present), and it certainly has nothing to do with #1.
#4 Diversify
Diversification protects you from what you don’t know and what you can’t know. Real accredited investors don’t need to spend much time crying over getting scammed out of $10,000. But getting scammed out of $600,000 of your $800,000 nest egg is a very different story. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. If you do decide to put all of your eggs in one basket, you’d better watch that basket very closely. In fact, you’d better know more about and have more control over that basket than anyone else on the planet.
More information here:
Don’t Invest in ‘Too Good to Be True’ — Lessons Learned from an Alleged Ponzi Scheme
#5 Use Minimum Investment Amounts and Watch
Most private investments have a minimum investment amount. While that might be $50,000, $100,000, or more, it is often significantly less. It might be just $5,000, $10,000, or $25,000. Take advantage of that minimum. While it might be an expensive hassle to have to deal with another K-1 and a bunch of due diligence for a $5,000 investment, it gives you a relatively inexpensive opportunity to watch the operator/manager for a couple of years before investing real money.
I’ve lost principal on two separate real estate deals over the years: one syndication due to fraud and one fund due to incompetence, impatience, and bad debt management. In both cases, the issues came to light in less than two years, and our investment was at the minimum ($20,000 and $25,000). One reason Bernie Madoff was so infamous was the sheer length of time (at least 15 years and maybe longer) he ran his scam. Most fraudsters and incompetent managers blow up much faster. Take advantage of that fact. Make the minimum investment and just watch for a couple of years. There’s no rush.
#6 Know What Realistic Investment Returns Look Like
Many times, people get sucked into an investment because of the promise of outlandish returns. We once rejected a talk for WCICON primarily because the submitted slides talked about 40% returns as though investors should routinely expect returns like that. Guess what? You shouldn’t.
If you could get 40% returns every year, you would own the entire world in less than your lifetime. The world’s net worth is something like $454 trillion as I write this. If you start with $1 million and earn 40% on it every year, your net worth will be $454 trillion in just
=NPER(40%,0,-1000000,454000000000000) = 59 years
No, 40% returns are not realistic. I’m not saying an investment can’t earn 40% returns in any one year, but you certainly shouldn’t ever expect it, especially in the long run. Long-term US stock market returns are in the 10% range. When someone starts talking about returns of 20%, 25%, 30%, or 40%, you need to recognize the bizarreness of that claim. And when you hear someone like “The Bull” telling you to expect returns of 7%-10% per month (100%+ per year), you should recognize that the likelihood this is a scam is now approaching 100%.
#7 Understand the Risk/Reward Spectrum
Although there is plenty of uncompensated risk in the world, risk and return are generally highly correlated. As mentioned above, long-term US stock returns are in the 10% range. And the US is the big winner when it comes to stock returns historically. They’ve been much lower in other countries. Ignoring the big long-term “deep” risks like hyperinflation, deflation, confiscation, and devastation and just focusing on “shallow” risk (volatility), those 10% returns have come at the cost of numerous 40%-50% declines in value and one big fat 90% drop in value during the Great Depression. If that’s the risk you’re facing to get 10% returns, what kind of risk do you think you’re taking to get 15% or 20% returns, much less 30%-40% returns? In many investments, you can easily lose your entire investment or even more.
A 1939 film was titled “You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man,” and there is some truth to that (although lots of honest people get cheated all the time). Maybe it should have been titled “You Can Only Cheat a Greedy Man.” If you understand the risk/reward spectrum, you’ll recognize the problem when people promise you very high returns with very little risk.
More information here:
Can You Spot the Unbelievably Bad Financial Advice on These TikToks and Tweets?
How to Get Rich
I have met many wealthy people in the course of my work here at The White Coat Investor. They generally all followed the same pathway:
- Earn a lot: They earned a lot of money in their profession or business.
- Spend much less: They carved out a big chunk of what they earned and used it to build wealth.
- Invest in a reasonable way: They invested the difference between what they earned and what they spent in some sort of reasonable way. They made sure their money was working as hard as they were.
- They protected against loss: You can lose money to disability, death, divorce, speculative investments, and scams. Wealthy people protect themselves from these as best they can.
What do you think? Ever been the victim of fraud or a scam? What happened? What do you do to minimize the risk of fraud?
