My father lost more than $74,000 after responding to hundreds of letters in the mail. Investigators spent more than a month looking into this case. My dad took the bait after receiving hundreds of luring letters that offered the promise of prizes.

“They made a very good story. You just thought, well maybe there is something to this. They were saying, ‘You’ve won $1-million, or you’ve won $1.5-million,’ or whatever,”

The father made no mention to the sweepstakes to his son. His son said he made the startling discover while helping his dad move. Each contest said in order to collect the money you have to pay a registration fee. So the dad did. He mailed hundreds of checks to mysterious companies – companies that were identified only by initials.

His dad was receiving the letters by the dozen every day and answered nearly every one, spending more than $74,000. “He was writing four to five check books per month. “It was really incredibly hard to find out who was behind this, because they do everything possible to conceal their identity.

That’s when he called the investigators. After digging through corporate reports, we found all of the sweepstakes companies were linked to the same two men. The BBB handles cases similar to this everyday. They say while the front of the letter looks like it’s for a sweepstakes, there is a fine print paragraph on the back that explains you’re really paying for a list of sweepstakes and contests you can enter.

There are companies out there that are willing to take advantage of people. Be careful out there.

To appropriately answer if they are, I want to remind everyone of a Yogi Berra story. He was about to fly back to New York with the Yankees when one of his team-mates asked him “What time is it?” In typical Yogi fashion his answer was at first bewildering, and then funny. He responded, “Do you mean ‘now’? Of course poor Yogi meant, do you mean in New York or LA, but everyone got a kick out of the answer.
So are top executives compensated appropriately…do you mean ‘now’? Probably they were compensated appropriately according to past benchmarks, market acceleration and loose government/public awareness. But today, well, no they are probably not…but then again the only ones who are going to lead us out of this mess are going to be business leaders and investors…how that will play out is anyone’s guess…except of course if we socialize the whole economy…which will “cost much and produce little”.

So it goes like this. A new CEO is hired. He quickly appoints a number of long time “business associates” to the Board of Directors – with no industry experience – which insulates himself from any true accountability or concern of being voted off the island. The good ol boy network at work like a well oiled machine. The company is publicly traded and the message boards were buzzing for months even years but nothing happened. And that is the story. A weak CEO continually paid significantly more money than he was worth — new options replacing underwater options all the while business is dwindling down to just about nothing. And his friends on the Board receiving a chunk of change.

Bosse – regarding your last post, you’re a dreamer!

Grrrrr…..I think executive pay has increasingly been getting out of whack, and some CEOs are coming around to the same conclusion. I just read an article —yes, for a dog I am pretty clever –about the CEO of Spokane-based education travel company Ambassador Group Inc. In 2008 the CEO took a voluntary pay cut of about 65 % in the face of an announcement to lay off 20% of its work force. And he is not alone. You will find that executives in many other parts of the world are as competent/or incompetent as our US executives, but maintain their motivation with more modest compensation schemes. This whole conversation ultimately boils down to personal values and a sense of collective responsibility for the woes and challenges of human kind. Correct me if I am wrong, but didn’t corporate American thrive several decades ago when compensation levels of CEOs and other senior executives were significantly lower (adjusted for inflation of course)? Ultimately I think what executives really care about goes beyond compensation: it’s things like working for a company with a cause they can relate to, with a leadership team they respect, with a CEO that cares….I hope this is the case and that we can start a journey as a country towards re-calibration, values re-alignment and culture change…..Absent a meaningful mission, money is a poor substitute. And, because it is a poor substitute, it just takes more and more of it….this conversation is making me really hungry…

Arf, Arf.. this debate has to do with a sense of equity and responsibility to not only yourself but all our fellow human beings, and I mean this in a global sense…. It just does not make sense to me that some people through the luck of the draw and no doubt hard work – but you will find some folks making minimum wage that work extremely hard as well – should be making the kind of money we see some executives make today. I think the same holds true for sports stars, film stars and others….oh, oh….wonder if this doggie I will get hate email now…. With all the huge problems we have as a society and in the world, we need to put our own desires for materialistic rewards and consumerism – some would call it greed – aside for the collective good of all. Hrmph……I am very hungry right now…thinking some chow would be good. While fifty bucks may mean nothing to a CEO making millions of dollars, it could mean several grocery bags of food and a huge difference for someone making minimum wage. And hey, a hungry dog like me could get 300 hot dogs for that amount of money…or kibbles for several months……mmmm!!!

We needed to hire a branch manager for a remote location – pronto! The company was about to be sold and the position needed to be filled before the deal closed. To save time, and money we interviewed a candidate via video conference. He was qualified and references checked out ok – not great but ok. We hired him. The staff in that branch was furious! You see, the SMELL of someone is not detected in a video conference. And he stunk. I felt so bad for the staff that inherited him as their manager.