Book Review and Book Excerpt

 Review at MyShelf.Com

     What do you do when you find a college course you are teaching is so popular it can't accommodate all the students interested in the subject? You write a book, of course.

     UCLA recently instituted a class that addresses small-business fraud. The instructor, Alex Kwechansky, wrote Never Underestimate Who Can Cheat You in order to reach those who couldn't take the class.

     Although inspired by academic issues, this is a book written with a great deal of humor from the introduction (the author urges the reader not to skip over it) to the last page. It is full of secret dangers that everyone, not just business people, need to protect themselves from. If ya' don't understand the crooks, how you gonna protect yourself against them, right?

     I've read way too much recently about shady bookkeeping practices in the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere. The big guys aren't the only ones who are happy to take advantage of the unsuspecting. This book tells a reader what to watch for in the marketplace, about the hazards and deceptions in investing, and other frauds and scams you didn't even know existed. Feeling paranoid? Perhaps we all should.

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Genre: Nonfiction / Business

Reviewed: 2003

Book Sample 

Elements of a Con

A Primer on Personality Traits (It gets a bit uncomfortable here so bear with me)

These are some pointers in dealing with or trying to find out if someone may cheat you or if you may have already been cheated. 

--Someone who claims to be very patriotic

--Someone who claims to be very devoted to their religion.  Usually the same religion as yourself.  They claim to pray regularly.

--Someone who claims to be very devoted to their family.  They have pictures to show you. 

--Someone who claims to come from a very moral family and who was raised “right” and who claims to act ethically.

--Someone who claims to be a staunch supporter of a political party, probably the same party that you support.

--Someone who claims to be a strong supporter of a very main stream, uncontroversial charity.

–Someone who speaks while at the same time maintaining a smile on their face. HUH???

Try this exercise:  Phone someone you can talk to for about ten minutes.  While talking on the phone keep a smile on your face the entire time.  You will find in very little time that this smile feels uncomfortable and fake.   This will show you that a person who speaks with a constant smile is acting falsely. 

Also keep close watch at politicians, religious leaders and others you see on television or live who speak with a constant smile.  If it was fake for you, it is fake for them.  So, why are they doing it?

–It is someone who wants you to think they are very much like yourself.  And, you like them.

The victim of a con frequently laments that a con was “such a nice person”. 

NOTE: When I use the word, “claim” in this section, read it as “boast,” it will sound better.

Now, let’s discuss this…….

The following excerpt was originally printed in Dynamic Business, September, 2002.  It is a brief chapter plus an introduction.