Campaign Targets Investment Fraud

WASHINGTON — A campaign of enforcement and consumer education programs to combat an ever-increasing array of sophisticated high-tech investment scams was announced Wednesday by federal and state regulators.

Called “Project Field of Schemes,” the effort is aimed at new types of investment fraud involving such areas as movie production, Internet “shopping malls” and snail ranching--as well as old standbys like pyramid schemes and conventional telemarketing fraud.

“Losses from these nontraditional investment schemes are outpacing the amount defrauded from consumers in all other kinds of telemarketing scams,” said Mark Griffin, president of the North American Securities Administrators Assn. Such losses were estimated at $40 billion a year.

Griffin’s association includes securities regulators from the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and Mexico. Securities regulators from 21 states and two Canadian provinces are involved in the campaign.