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Frauds Ripoffs and Con Games
1988 New. Frauds Ripoffs and Con Games. By Victor Santoro. Published by Loompanics Unlimited. Amazing how a book 23 years ago still contains the Frauds, ripoffs and Con Games many use today.
188 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1988
22 people want to read
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
February 12, 2018
Q:
This book will give you an education, as well as provide entertainment. (c)
Some very old info. Then again, this book is old!
Still, for some professions this might be a very good manual (and I'm not speaking pro-con here!). At some point the book crosses over into the how-to become or not become a writer. Overall a very short read conccerning these two topics.
Also quite a bit of scare-mongering on some national and race issues can be identified here, which is downright unpleasant.
Q:
One facet of corporate crime that usually goes unreported is industrial espionage. Professor William C. Glueck of the University of Georgia said that this is most common in the defense and aerospace industries.
Why are “defense” expenditures so high? One possible answer lies in price fixing and bid rigging. The president of North Broward Industries, Inc., was convicted of rigging $13 million in bids on military contracts. There was some bribery, too, involving some Defense Department employees. (c)
Q:
One interesting way of stealing is payroll padding. This can be done by inserting false employees into the payroll or by “padding” time cards. Sometimes it’s as simple as one employee having another employee punch out for him at a later time. In more sophisticated cases, it involves computer tampering to insert spurious identities. (c)
Q:
Some editors are incompetent, just as in any occupational group. Others are dishonest. (c)
Q:
Some editors steal ideas. This was the subject of a major article in Writer’s Digest. The article’s author stoutly denied that editors ever steal ideas, but the reality is quite different. If ever you send in an article, and find it rejected at the same time that a suspiciously similar article appears under the editor’s name, you’ll have good cause to be suspicious. This happened to me once.
Some editors follow a practice that’s not illegal, and that some would say isn’t even unethical. However, the author gets hurt. The editor assigns a theme to two or three authors, knowing in advance that he can use only one article. When he gets them in, he makes his choice and returns the others. The problem here is that there are bound to be losers. Again, I know about this because it happened to me. You won’t find a hint of this in the literature put out by writer’s schools. (c)
Q:
Keep in mind that all of the material you can get from a writer’s school is available free at your local public library. This might surprise you, but English is not a restricted, top-secret subject. There are absolutely no writing “secrets” that will assure you success. It’s all in the public domain. (c)
Q:
If ever you get a chance for a personal introduction to an editor or publisher, take advantage of it. It may not pan out to anything, but it can’t do any harm, unless you chew his ear off about your talents and how he’s making a mistake by not accepting everything you write. Be discreet. (c)
Q:
World War II resulted in a new discipline coming to light. This was “operations research,” which was mainly a new, untraditional way of planning military organizations and operations. Scientists found that traditional military planners were dominated by tradition instead of practicality, and suggested workable changes. One example was that bayonet training was still a large part of a recruit’s basic training in the armies of the 1940s. Bayonet wounds were very rare, a fraction of a percent of total battle injuries, and the attention given to bayonet training was therefore largely wasted.
The end of the war found operations research being applied to business. This was legitimate, but unfortunately the executives treated operations research as a cure-all, which it was not.(c)
Q:
There was another attempt at reducing the human personality to a set of numbers. The “Managerial Grid” classified managers according to whether they were more people-oriented or profit-oriented. Each person found his place on the grid in a hyphenated number such as “8-9.” (c)
Q:
“Zero-Based Budgeting” came about during the 1970s. This was the idea that, to control costs, each year’s budget had to be figured anew, not picked up from the previous year’s. Each item required fresh justification for its existence. This is a simple idea, and it’s hard to believe that several books could be written about it. (c)
Q:
That’s the way the “system” works, however. You can’t come out and express a simple idea and expect managers to accept it. You have to write a book to prove that it’s worthwhile and academic. You earn royalties on a book, not on a paragraph.
It helps if you can produce a book with lots of obscure references, footnotes, and language. The harder it is to understand, the more convincing it is, even to those who should know better.
Once you get your book published, you may be able to set yourself up as a “consultant” on the strength of your fame. Being a consultant is superb. You go in, diagnose the problem, offer your solution, collect your fee, and leave. Others are faced with the task of making your system work, and if you have enough nerve, you can leave them with the feeling that if it doesn’t work, it’s because they’re not bright enough to make it work. (c)
This book will give you an education, as well as provide entertainment. (c)
Some very old info. Then again, this book is old!
Still, for some professions this might be a very good manual (and I'm not speaking pro-con here!). At some point the book crosses over into the how-to become or not become a writer. Overall a very short read conccerning these two topics.
Also quite a bit of scare-mongering on some national and race issues can be identified here, which is downright unpleasant.
Q:
One facet of corporate crime that usually goes unreported is industrial espionage. Professor William C. Glueck of the University of Georgia said that this is most common in the defense and aerospace industries.
Why are “defense” expenditures so high? One possible answer lies in price fixing and bid rigging. The president of North Broward Industries, Inc., was convicted of rigging $13 million in bids on military contracts. There was some bribery, too, involving some Defense Department employees. (c)
Q:
One interesting way of stealing is payroll padding. This can be done by inserting false employees into the payroll or by “padding” time cards. Sometimes it’s as simple as one employee having another employee punch out for him at a later time. In more sophisticated cases, it involves computer tampering to insert spurious identities. (c)
Q:
Some editors are incompetent, just as in any occupational group. Others are dishonest. (c)
Q:
Some editors steal ideas. This was the subject of a major article in Writer’s Digest. The article’s author stoutly denied that editors ever steal ideas, but the reality is quite different. If ever you send in an article, and find it rejected at the same time that a suspiciously similar article appears under the editor’s name, you’ll have good cause to be suspicious. This happened to me once.
Some editors follow a practice that’s not illegal, and that some would say isn’t even unethical. However, the author gets hurt. The editor assigns a theme to two or three authors, knowing in advance that he can use only one article. When he gets them in, he makes his choice and returns the others. The problem here is that there are bound to be losers. Again, I know about this because it happened to me. You won’t find a hint of this in the literature put out by writer’s schools. (c)
Q:
Keep in mind that all of the material you can get from a writer’s school is available free at your local public library. This might surprise you, but English is not a restricted, top-secret subject. There are absolutely no writing “secrets” that will assure you success. It’s all in the public domain. (c)
Q:
If ever you get a chance for a personal introduction to an editor or publisher, take advantage of it. It may not pan out to anything, but it can’t do any harm, unless you chew his ear off about your talents and how he’s making a mistake by not accepting everything you write. Be discreet. (c)
Q:
World War II resulted in a new discipline coming to light. This was “operations research,” which was mainly a new, untraditional way of planning military organizations and operations. Scientists found that traditional military planners were dominated by tradition instead of practicality, and suggested workable changes. One example was that bayonet training was still a large part of a recruit’s basic training in the armies of the 1940s. Bayonet wounds were very rare, a fraction of a percent of total battle injuries, and the attention given to bayonet training was therefore largely wasted.
The end of the war found operations research being applied to business. This was legitimate, but unfortunately the executives treated operations research as a cure-all, which it was not.(c)
Q:
There was another attempt at reducing the human personality to a set of numbers. The “Managerial Grid” classified managers according to whether they were more people-oriented or profit-oriented. Each person found his place on the grid in a hyphenated number such as “8-9.” (c)
Q:
“Zero-Based Budgeting” came about during the 1970s. This was the idea that, to control costs, each year’s budget had to be figured anew, not picked up from the previous year’s. Each item required fresh justification for its existence. This is a simple idea, and it’s hard to believe that several books could be written about it. (c)
Q:
That’s the way the “system” works, however. You can’t come out and express a simple idea and expect managers to accept it. You have to write a book to prove that it’s worthwhile and academic. You earn royalties on a book, not on a paragraph.
It helps if you can produce a book with lots of obscure references, footnotes, and language. The harder it is to understand, the more convincing it is, even to those who should know better.
Once you get your book published, you may be able to set yourself up as a “consultant” on the strength of your fame. Being a consultant is superb. You go in, diagnose the problem, offer your solution, collect your fee, and leave. Others are faced with the task of making your system work, and if you have enough nerve, you can leave them with the feeling that if it doesn’t work, it’s because they’re not bright enough to make it work. (c)
Displaying 1 of 1 review