| Issue #33, November 10, 2006 |
Twentysomething…By David Lion Rattiner
Stocks, The Mafia and E-mails
Just about every day I get ten to twenty e-mails that trick me into thinking that they are not spam. I log onto my computer, open up my e-mail and see messages that are all from people that I’m not really sure if I know or not. The subject of the e-mail might say something like, “Hey it was good to see you the other day” and I say to myself, Oh boy! Who could this be?
But then, I open up the e-mail and read what ends up being a report heavily promoting a stock on the stock market. “PNCV.SK is ready to sky rocket! You better get in on this stock now, it is only .38 cents and is ready to go to the moon next week! Don’t miss out on this opportunity! We have inside information on this stock that guarantees it will soar to ten dollars!”
I’m used to the Viagra ads, the penis enlargement spam and the porn spam. After all, selling porn on the Internet is solely responsible for just about every advancement in computer technology today. I’m also even used to the scam artists that say they need to transfer $30,000,000 into a U.S. bank account and want to use yours. All they need is your account information to do it.
But this whole stock scam is relatively new and really makes me angry.
The reason it makes me angry is not because I have fallen for the ploy. Obviously, these “stock tips” are a boiler room scam where a group of criminals are trying to drive the price of a stock up based on phony information so that they can sell their own shares of the stock at a profit. It’s an old idea and works a lot of the time too. Boiler rooms are kind of this romantic crime, kind of like mafia guys. There is something sexy about it.
So what really makes me angry with these fake stock tips that I get on my e-mail is the fact that all of the glory has been taken away from being a boiler room stockbroker. When I was a teenager, being a stockbroker was this glamorous career because of the boom of Internet and computer companies such as Microsoft and Yahoo. You could make a million bucks in a very short time and everybody knew it. Movies like Boiler Room, Wall Street and even American Psycho portrayed the stock market as this sexy, dangerous and exciting place.
But now, boiler rooms are not a pit of telephones with fifty or so hotshot twenty-something brokers cold calling people all day and telling people about a hot new stock tip where fist fights break out between brokers in suits. A boiler room today isn’t this buzzing, screaming, illegal, whacky place filled with adrenaline and drama. Now a boiler room is just a bunch of computer dorks hanging out on the Internet and e-mailing people all day. Where is the excitement in that?
You know what’s next? The Mafia. That’s right, the Mafia is going to lose its glory because of the Internet. Somehow they are going to figure out how to whack a guy using e-mail and even that line of work will be less interesting. You know who is really going to suffer from this entire thing are the Mafia movie writers. If modern day Mafia guys turn into a bunch of fat Italian computer geeks instead of a bunch of fat Italian gangsters, life is going to be a lot less interesting and the guys that write the mafia movies aren’t going to want to write anything about modern day mafia guys. Who the heck wants to watch a movie about a bunch of guys that sit around on their computers all day sending threatening e-mails? It’s just really not that interesting.
The trouble with computers these days is that they are taking the glory out of things. There is something interesting about a boiler room, even though it’s illegal. But a bunch of guys sending out e-mails is just lame. Can you imagine going to prison for that?
“What are you in for?”
“Stock fraud.”
“Worked for a boiler room huh?”
“No a chat room.”
Good luck in the showers later when that word gets out.
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