I’m not going to lie to you and tell you I know how all of this works, but from experience, the people running these scams are rarely the people who suffer.

Here’s one I’ve seen myself:

There’s a new hot startup. Wall Street rolls up to the C-suite of this company and makes an offer: Go public and we’ll give you thousands of “special” shares. (Some companies might even get multiple of these offers from different Wall St. investors.)

Once the company agrees to go public, Wall St. gives that company’s C-suite Special Shares. Wall St. also gives these shares to friends, family and power people they would like to reward and/or influence.

On the big day, the company goes public. (To the Moon, Baby!) Everyone with Special shares can sell anytime they like. Company employees have a 6-month “blackout window”. The general public is encourages to “invest now before the shares go up so they can sell after they go higher!”

After the stock climbs in value, the Special Stock holders dump their shares and rake in the cash. Everyone else is left holding the bag.

So who in this scenario are the losers? The people who bought the stock and watched it lose value? The people who sold their Special Stock after it went up and before it crashed? Who gets punished? Who goes to jail? Where does the money go?

You saw this whole scam condensed to it’s essentials during the Crypto Currency scams a few years back.

So many different variations on this scam. Keeps working too, so long as you don’t get sloppy and steal from rich people like Bernie Madoff did.