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My Profile Top News Reuters top ten news stories delivered to your inbox each day. Subscribe You are here: Home > News > Technology > Article Home Business & Finance News U.S. Politics International Technology Internet Entertainment Sports Lifestyle Oddly Enough Environment Health Science Special Coverage Video Pictures Your View The Great Debate Blogs Weather Reader Feedback Do More With Reuters RSS Widgets Mobile Podcasts Newsletters Your View Make Reuters My Homepage Partner Services CareerBuilder Affiliate Network Professional Products Support (Customer Zone) Reuters Media Financial Products About Thomson Reuters Ponzi scam victims fight back online Sun Feb 1, 2009 7:09pm EST Email | Print | Share | Reprints | Single Page [-] Text [+] By Jason Szep BOSTON (Reuters) - Nearly four months before this week's arrest of the boss of a New York investment firm on charges of defrauding at least 1,500 investors of more than $370 million, Howard Stevens suspected the company was a sham. Stevens went online and warned other investors. Using the nickname "hBomb," he wrote on an Internet message board that Agape World Inc, the firm run by Nicholas Cosmo who was arrested this week, "is a 100 percent fraud." "Please DO NOT invest your money with these scam artists. Nick Cosmo should change his name to Nick Ponzi," he wrote. The Internet is offering early warning signs, and in some cases filling a regulatory void, as the year-long recession exposes growing numbers of multimillion-dollar Ponzi schemes that pay older investors with money from new clients. Stevens posted his warning on www.scamvictimsunited.com a week after meeting with Cosmo at Agape's office on New York's Long Island. In an interview with Reuters, he said Agape's office looked shoddy and unprofessional, and Cosmo dodged his questions. "He gave us a hard time. When we tried to see some of the contracts, they refused to show us anything," he said. "Nick Cosmo wore a suit but we bumped into a few brokers that looked very out of place for a business handling so much money. They wore jeans, or had hats turned back or were wearing earrings." Stevens invested $20,000 and lost $10,000. "I tried to take out all of the money but he said that I had to wait until January 27 before I could get back the other $10,000," he said. Operating in the largely unregulated world of high-interest, high-risk commercial loans, Cosmo falsely promised big returns through short-term "bridge" loans to businesses provided by his company, according to federal prosecutors, the FBI and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. They accuse Cosmo, 37, of using investor money for personal expenses such as jewelry, limousine rides and hotel stays, and to pay more than $212,000 in court-ordered restitution to investors following a prior fraud conviction. While the money is a fraction of the suspected $50 billion scheme masterminded by former Wall Street legend Bernard Madoff, federal regulators say the number of such Ponzi scams -- or "mini-Madoffs" -- in recent weeks is adding up. "We're expecting a 25 percent increase this year in the number of cases that we actually file," said Stephen Obie, the head of enforcement at the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission. He said leads to possible Ponzi schemes had doubled in the past year. In January alone, the CFTC has filed three cases. "The challenge in investigating these cases is that most of these miscreants are unregistered, operate below the radar and create an illusion of profitability through deceit," he said in a telephone interview. REGULATORY GAP That's keeping Jeff and Shawn Mosch busy. The Minneapolis couple run www.scamvictimsunited.com and saw a huge spike in page views since Cosmo's arrest on Monday. "The first day the news broke my husband was checking the hits on the site before he went to lunch. He came back and was like 'Oh my God, we have had 2,000 hits while I was away from my desk for half an hour,'" she said. Continued... View article on single page Share: Del.icio.us Digg Mixx My Web Facebook LinkedIn Next Article: Ex-Fannie Mae programmer says not guilty of virus Also on Reuters Video Video: Bush shoe monument stamped out Obama administration says rescue plan "on track" Slideshow Slideshow: Simulated refugee camp More Technology News White House expects digital TV delay until June Ex-Fannie Mae programmer says not guilty of virus Broadband link to U.S. jobs exaggerated: experts Human error at Google sends the wrong message Dell plots smartphone foray, eyes Apple: report More Technology News... Editor's Choice Slideshow A selection of our best photos from the past 24 hours. 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