Thumbs Down: They Have Some Nerve

When a financial scam goes under,investors who got connedmay become targets for crooks whohold out the promise of recovering allor part of the funds that disappeared.In some cases, the new scheme mayeven be the brainchild of the bad guyswho dreamed up the original scam.When the British financial companyImperial Consolidated Group wentbust in 2002, costing investors tens ofmillions of dollars, an outfit calledMatrix Investigations managed to milkan additional $184,000 from gulliblemarks before it too went down earlierthis year. In filings with the British government,the listed home address ofMatrix's head honcho is the same asthe address of one of the principalsin the Imperial scam. Getting yourmoney back from investments thathave gone sour isn't easy—from 1995to 2001, the SEC managed to recoverjust $426 million of the estimated $3.1billion investors lost to scammers duringthe 6-year period.