Is all money good money? This question is one that I wondered about for a long time and has recently come back to me upon entering UBC. Simply put, I have come to a conclusion to my long-awaited answer. No, it’s not.
I recently found an article on Dailymail which described that actions that card sharks were involved in to steal money from a variety of the population. It truly astonished me to see the various amount of techniques used such as card cloning, interception, social engineering, etc. What scared me the most was how successful these attempts were. In fact, “Card fraud accounted for 7.5p in every £100 of plastic spending in the first half of this year” (2017, Sally Hamilton, p. 5) in the UK. I used to think attempts like these were futile acts of desperation to catch the
Picture from: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/beatthescammers/article-4958296/Card-sharks-1-5m-day-spree-cash.html
By: Shuttershock
most gullible people on the earth, but it turned out to be more sophisticated than I original thought.
A big example of fraud happened last year where a “massive alleged scam helped wealthy health-care operator Philip Esformes, 47, fund a lifestyle that included private jets, a $600,000 watch, meetings with escorts in hotel rooms, and a private basketball coach for his son”. (2017, Dan Mangan, p. 3) The total of fraud money added up to 1 billion dollars. How did something like this go unnoticed for so long? The Esformers built up the cash flow by billing hospitals and medical institutions with extra charges. These charges “were disguised as payments to charitable donations, payments for services and sham lease payments.” (2017, Dan Mangan, p. 17) A huge lesson I learned from this was that even the most innocent things could be cash scams and you wouldn’t even know it. By trying to be a nice person and helping a charity, you could unwillingly be paying for a private basketball coach for someone else. Not to say that donating money is bad idea, but it’s important to follow up where your investments are going.
Picture from: https://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/22/1-billion-alleged-medicare-fraud-money-laundering-scheme-leads-to-florida-arrests.html
By: Getty Images
These scammers seem to also know how to intrigue the general community to falling for their scam by promising “high returns and low risk with the pressure to buy now.” (2017, Ontario Securities Commission, p. 8)
So where do we draw the line between making money and being ethical about it? What exactly is considered good money? It seems like a simple answer of just seeing the difference between good and bad and acting on good, however, with these scammers existing and being successful, who knows anymore? These are questions left in the air that can be only answered by the individual along with their own sense of morality.
Word count: 427
References: