The Internet gives bogus companies opportunity to "take money and run" with less chance of getting caught than in offline world. It's fairly easy to hide behind a website and an, oftentimes fake, e-mail address.

I recently came upon this program, Invest With Gold, (http://www.investwithgold.com) when asked by one of my newsletter subscribers to try and find out whether it was legitimate. It only took me about 5 minutes to make my decision on this one.

Here's a direct quote from main page:

"Welcome to InvestWithGold.com, Consistantly paying out our investors since 1998! The only site on internet utilizing currency exchange markets for our investors, and making them money. We offer you up to 800% PROFIT in 2 weeks, GUARANTEED, and completly hands free! And best of all, you are NEVER in danger of losing your investment capitol!"

So they invest their clients money into foreign currencies and make a profit. The profits, less a 1% service fee, go back to clients, thus earning money on their investment.

It sounds pretty good, doesn't it? 800% profit in 2 weeks? What a deal! And they've been in business for 6 years, so they must be good, right?

Not so fast! Keep reading before you hand over your money.

The second paragraph on page invites website visitor to "Just look what our investors have to say" which is a clickable link to a message board for investors to add their comments.

The problem is message board is empty! I'd assume happy clients would post *something* there. (Well, maybe they're working on that page. I'll give them benefit of doubt.)

I continued reading main page and saw this:

"Although we can not "legally" say you will never lose any money, we can tell you that we have NEVER LOST MONEY in over 6 years! If you're interested, take a look at tracking section, to see how other people's investments are doing, and then read message board, and comments from our clients."

I'd venture to say that "they" probably haven't lost any money, but their clients, if they have any, probably have. I already knew message board was empty, so I decided to check out tracking section.

Here's where it got *really* good. I went to page and, lo and behold, I found a list of e-mail addresses of this company's clients! They didn't list complete extension (.com, .net or whatever) but rest was there.

Wait a minute! Don't they have a privacy policy? I wouldn't want to have *my* e-mail address plastered there for whole world to see. How unethical!

I slowly scrolled down page and certain things caught my attention. I recognized 10-15 names as Internet business owners, several of whom are quite well-known. So I e-mailed 8 of them to ask if they've really invested money with this company and, if so, whether or not it was a good investment.

I wasn't surprised to learn that, of 4 people who have replied to me so far, *none* of them has ever heard of this company, much less invested money with them. (I e-mailed them less than 48 hours prior to this writing, so hopefully remaining 4 will reply to me soon. But I don't expect their answers to be any different.)

I also noticed as I scanned listing of "clients" that approximately 75% of e-mail addresses looked like this:

Before you get too excited lets take a moment to understand mechanics behind arbitrage – an age old concept that has been used by banks and businesses for centuries. Arbitrage simply is an inconsistency in market – where for example due to global differences same product or service is charged at different prices in different locations. How is this applied to sports betting? An arbitrage opportunity is formed when different bookies have different prices for different outcomes in a particular sporting event. The bottom line is that we can place bets to cover both (all) outcomes with different bookmakers and get back more than we invested each and every time. It’s important to remember that this is a form of investment and not betting – with arbitrage you know your exact return before a ball is kicked or a stroke played. It’s also important to remember that arbitrage returns are generally low – on average yielding 5% to 10% per play – but for an investment that lasts for a couple of hours, that’s pretty good.

An Example Let’s take a look at a real life example of sports arbitrage. During a ladies single game at Wimbledon between Davenport and Clijsters bookies Tote and Victor Chandler priced outcomes differently: Tote - 3/1 Clijsters to win Victor Chandler - 2/5 Davenport to win To return £100 with Victor Chandler above we would have to invest £71.42. To return £100 with Tote for a Clijsters win we would have to invest £25. Our total collective investment would be just £96.42 - and whoever won game our total return would be £100. We have just made a guaranteed 3.58% on your money within 2 hours. You can find plenty of these arbitrage opportunities each and every week. How did we calculate how much investment is required to return £100 (including our stake)? We do a very simple calculation: 1. With V.C. odds for a Davenport win was 2/9. To find out how much you need to invest to return £100 simply make following calculation: (a) 2/5 + 1 = 1.4 (b) 100/1.4 = £71.43 2. With Tote odds for a Clijsters win was 3/1. To return £100 (including our stake): (a) 3/1 + 1 = 4 (b) 100/4 = £25 Total Investment (£71.43 + £25) = £96.42 Total Return REGARDLESS OF OUTCOME £100 Total Profit (£100 - £96.42) = £3.58 risk free. Do you see beauty of this? No matter who won game you are guaranteed a certain profit of 3.58% - this is a very good return for an investment lasting just a couple of hours that carries absolutely zero risk. The good news is that arbitrage opportunities like these happen many times on a daily basis, and with a little practice you can find quite a few to invest in as you please.