How can OTC scams affect you?
"Am I being absurd? No. Should I be worrying? Yes. If I sell in the morning, I've only lost a couple hundred dollars, and   learned a valuable lesson. Is there any reason to believe it won't be   that simple? If you're lucky, you'll be able to dump your stocks to someone like you who'll be punching himself in the face tomorrow night. If not - you're stuck. You may end up selling them to your broker as worthless. You might have become a victim of a ""pump and dump"" fraud. Those are hard to identify in real-time, but after been burned like that myself (for much lesser amounts than you though), I avoid any ""penny"" stocks that go up for no apparent (and verifiable) reason. In fact, I avoid them altogether."
The bullshit out of your mouth is absolutely ridiculous.   It's all about a higher risk from a drug addicted loser. Sure there's other shit, but the risk of injury and lawsuits goes way up and no business should deal with it.   Drug users are less reliable too. Actually I think direct financial kickbacks are a minor factor in this problem. In most cases a physician makes nothing from the writing of a prescription. What does influence a physician is the never ending attempts of pharmaceutical companies to 'educate' them. This goes far beyond simple drug reps visits given that most medical conventions and a goodly number of 'continuing education' events are manufacturer sponsored. There are many hidden benefits that flow from this tactic, and few could be expressed as 'direct payoffs'. It's a race between professional ethics and marketing tactics, and at least in the USA ethics are often left in the dust.  There is also another factor which may have even greater weight - the demand from patients, one's medical education/indoctrination and society in general to ''do something''. The value of literally doing nothing isn't emphasized enough in medical education; nor is it appreciated by the general public. Sometimes ''doing something'' is fairly benign. Wave your hands, prescribe a pill or engage in alternative/voodoo medicine. Most diseases will get better on their own despite the doctor's best efforts.   Once more this situation is at its worst in the USA. American physicians are notoriously aggressive and are very prone to overtreatment. Given the long standing and well documented failure of the American system to measure up in terms of outcomes compared to other countries this aggression has nothing but negative empirical support in its favour. The dismal performance of US  medicine isn't only because of its gross inequalities. There are other factors at play, and overtreatment is one. You won't necessarily get *better* treatment because you are either wealthy or have wonderful insurance, but you will definitely get *more* treatment. Because it's a con. People give you money because you promise them more money, and then you walk away with their money. There are more steps but they don't matter.  You can probably ignore the MLM drone who doesn't realize he's a cover for abusing those hyped kids. These companies are minimally different from outright fraud. If a business repeatedly assurse you it's legal, that's a warning.   You can definitely ignore the edgelords whining about government. These days more and more people have the feeling that they may have high blood sugar level. But this may or may not be true. If you are looking for some quick cash and if you have diabetes test strips that are unexpired then there are a few vendors online who would buy the same. "Well, I'd probably need to buy a lot more [Tide](http://nymag.com/news/features/tide-detergent-drugs-2013-1) to hide any purchases I don't want Uncle Sam to know about (not just drugs, either - When's the last time you paid sales tax at a yard sale?).   Other than that, I doubt it would matter much.  99.9% of my financial transactions are *already* on plastic, and I regularly keep the same ""emergency $20 bill"" in my wallet for months at a time." Age old rules about money scams: If a person A wants to send money to person B, they do the following: Person A sends money to person B. Neither of them sends money to you, and you don't send money to either of them. It doesn't make sense! If you give someone money, be prepared that you might not receive that money back. If someone gives you money, be prepared that they can get that money back. Illegal money laundering can put you in jail, even if you pretend to be a blameless victim of a scammer. "The way they are tricking you is that they will ask you to send some of the proceeds of the check back to them, after you deposit it in your bank account. So, lets say they send you a $2000 check. You deposit it, send them $500 over western union. And then the bank pulls all $2000 out of your account (the value of the check), leaves you with a negative $500 balances and freezes your account because it took them 3 days to figure out the check was bad. You'll also be in trouble with several authorities. (Whether you send the actual fraudsters money or not) The people that ""enlightened you"" made some money. They get away with it because you don't know their name or anything, the check was written in your name, which is the main paper trail. There is no temp agency." "The 'desperate hustle' profits from bending and breaking laws worldwide, fueled by hipsters who think they're ""puttin' it to the man"".  Whine all you want about 'anti-competitive exclusionary blah blah'; if you think the laws are unfair, **change them**, or have your life run by gray-market carnys." The worst thing about Wholesale Deals UK is that they won’t get back to you in time and their excuses are ridiculous. The suppliers listed there are equally arrogant. I hate how some brainy conmen use internet to trap people. I am rather stunned to see how low someone can get to make money. Business dealings work on fair rules and if the bridging body is so wicked, what good further contacts can do to you? It's called the Stark Law.   Most of us would eat and run, sleep a little bit during the dry lecture.   Had no effect on practice whatsoever, since you're following guidelines anyway.   Mostly was for antibiotics and cholesterol meds, insulin, stuff like that. Can't ever remember getting one about opiates - although based on the amount of new brand name opiates on the market, I'm sure someone is getting these lunches. how are the ways he could scam me? There are hundreds of different ways the scam can progress ... broadly; The typical scam is that they overpay you - 'accidentially', or for some obscure reason they claim, and they ask you to wire the extra money either back or to someone else. Because you wire it, that money is gone for sure. Then they undo the original transaction (or it turns out it was fake anyway), and you end up with a loss. Maybe he claims that he wants to buy some more stuff, and the fees are high, so he sends you all the payments in one amount, and you pay the other sellers from it, something like that. There are honest nigerians though, actually most of them. Either way, the real problem is that the original payment is fake. Whichever way it comes to you, you need to make sure that it cannot be reversed or declared invalid after you think you have it. Wire transfer is the only way I know that is not reversible. Bank transfers are reversible; don't think you have it just because it arrives in your bank account. Talk to your bank about what all can happen. If you make the deal, when you send the bike, think about insuring it (and make him pay for that too). That way, you are out of any loss risk. This just happened to me to! At target. I have no idea if its a scam but that is the same thing i am thinking. They Lady who told me about it didn't tell me anything about her business. Just to go to the link....which isn't working. Idk its feels pretty shady. She did everything you said above. "My fiancee is a resident physician. I think the title of ""received"" is a bit misleading as directly receiving payments is a big no-no these days. The days of doctors being sent on Caribbean vacations and receiving cars, although I'm sure happens behind closed doors on occasion, is regulated and illegal in most cases.   So what happens today more so is a pharma rep comes to the hospital and likes to target the residents (physicians, but still ""in training"" for a few years under a bit more guidance of the more senior attendings) who are burnt out and sometimes working 80+ hour work weeks. They offer free lunch, coffee, pizza, subs, etc. if you come listen to a presentation for an hour over lunch time. And even this has disclosure requirements. An exhausted overworked resident is the perfect audience though.    Now most residents are there for the free food, intelligent enough to see past a sales rep with a business/sales degree's pitch, or simply sleeping through it. But in a room of lets say 30, all it takes is 1 to internalize their info, start recommending their drug, and the pharma's investment is very quickly worth the cost of some pizza and coffee.   Now is this moral or good? I'd say no. We'd like our doctors to be impartial medical scientists. But drug companies will try any way to influence and increase sales and doctors are still humans susceptible to influences despite how intelligent and educated they legitimately are.   All that to give some perspective to maybe disagree with a bit of a sensationalist headline, while adding perspective to what is actually occurring as far as where I'm sure most of that money is going." I'd imagine it is the same for an adult. The money probably gets withdrawn and that's it.  However, if the scammer were to go to a branch in person, I'd imagine there would need to be some sort of photo identification to withdraw money. If it were online, then the scammer would also need the account holder's username and password.  Either way, chances are that once the money is gone, it's gone - unless the scammer can be found. Even then, the scammer might not have that money anymore.