Ten of the Most Audacious Swindles Ever

Hook, Line and Sinker:

Ever since the invention of money there have been con artists out there ready to swindle the unwary out of their cash. Last year around 28 million Britons were targeted, according to the government, and £1 billion was lost in financial scams.

Fortunately, most victims suffer a greater dent to their pride than their bank balance. But some involve the loss of millions or even billions of pounds and cause real financial hardship. Here are ten of the most audacious financial swindles ever.

1. Dave Rhodes, whoever he or she may be, has a lot to answer for. His is the name at the top of the most famous chain letter in the world – which more often than not is sent by e-mail nowadays. The original letter titled “Make Money Fast” and signed by Rhodes began doing the rounds about 20 years ago. Who the original Dave Rhodes was, or if he even existed, has never been ascertained. (A website reputed to be by the original Dave Rhodes is thought to be a hoax.)

Recipients are usually told to send money to the first name or names on a mailing list and then copy the letter to hundreds of other addresses. In return, they are promised huge profits for their small investment. “It is an undeniable law of the universe,” goes one letter promising £40,000 in cash within the next 60 days, “that first we must give to receive. Do this with a big smile on your face because “as ye sew (sic), so shall ye reap.” If you say so.

2. Canadians are usually thought of as law-abiding and frankly boring souls. But they were implicated in one of the nastiest swindles of recent years – the Canadian lottery scam. This involved organised criminals telephoning unsuspecting Brits – often elderly people – claiming they had won a fortune on the Canadian lottery. To claim the prize you had to send money to cover processing fees. In some cases, victims lost more than £40,000.

Those targeted were often chosen because they appeared on “sucker lists” circulated among criminal gangs because they had fallen victim to similar cons in the past.

3. The notorious Women Empowering Women pyramid selling scheme made headline news in 2001 after it swept across the country and left people with heavy losses. The swindle claimed to have women’s interests at heart. “Our main goal is the empowerment of women by providing for them the financial and emotional abilities to support themselves, their loved ones and the community", claimed the schemes’ gushing mission statement.

The scheme encouraged women to sign up family and friends by promising that they would generate £24,000 for each person who invests a £3,000 stake. While a few profited, thousands lost their £3,000 'joining' fee. The scheme resurfaced in 2003, in a more exclusive mode, under the name Hearts, targeting well-heeled society figures including Lady Elizabeth Anson, the Queen’s cousin, and celebrities such as Cilla Black.The government has since attempted to outlaw such scams, but driven by greed, it can only be a matter of time before it rears its ugly head again.

4. Have you ever received an unsolicited e-mail claiming to be from the family of a dead Nigerian dictator or someone high up in that country’s civil service? They will almost certainly have desperately needed help getting the family’s millions out of the country (their bank accounts have been frozen, you see). Did they ask you to provide them with money and supply your bank account details to help them transfer money out of the country? Then you’ve been targeted by the infamous Nigerian “419” scam. In return for your help they promise a handsome reward: in reality they empty your bank account.

These 419 scams have been so widespread that some enterprising individuals have started to fight back by scamming the scammers with some very funny results. Check out 419eater.com or thescambaiter.com

5. They say love is blind, which is perhaps why fraudsters are increasingly targeting victims through online dating services. It’s the ideal time to catch you with your defences- and maybe even your pants - down. Malihu Ramu, a married Singaporean woman was sentenced to six months in jail earlier this year after conning a man in America out of $45,000 (£22,000) after she promised to marry him.

Ramu used a false name and photographs of Bollywood actress Gayatri Joshi on an online chat room to seduce her prey. Using all the arts of seduction, she asked for the money to cover her mother's funeral expenses and for a friend's wedding. It was only when she asked him for more cash that his suspicions were aroused and he called in the police. To find out more take a look at romancescam.com.

6. One of the most popular scams is the pyramid scheme, and in 1920 trickster Charles Ponzi gave his name to the granddaddy of them all – the Ponzi scam. Ponzi raked in millions of dollars from Americans who were taken in by his promise to double their money in 90 days by trading hoax postal coupons. About 40,000 people invested about $15m (£7m) all together – which is worth about $150m in today’s money.

Returns were paid to the first investors out of the funds received from those who invested later – with Ponzi siphoning off a large chunk of the cash for himself. The simple arithmetic of the scheme meant that soon thousands and then millions of people were needed to keep passing money up through the pyramid chain. The scheme collapsed, Ponzi ended up in jail and the swindled investors got back only about a third of their funds, but it hasn’t stopped it being replicated thousands of times since.

7. Millions of Albanians lost their life savings in what must the most damaging pyramid selling trick ever: it caused rioting in the streets, brought down the government and sparked a near civil war in this desperately poor Balkan state in south-west Europe. About two-thirds of the population of the former Communist dictatorship were duped by a series of these schemes in the 1990s, which initially received the support of the government.

Thousands sold their houses and farmers flogged their livestock to invest in them, entranced by the promise of huge riches- more than 100 per cent a year at the peak of the mania. The dream didn’t last and the schemes crumbled leaving many Albanians penniless while thousands died in the ensuing violence.

8. Most con men are shady characters who try to keep a low profile, but they don’t always hide from the public gaze. The Barlow Clowes affair is one of Britain’s most notorious frauds. In the eighties, the firm attracted the savings of 18,000 private investors who believed they were putting their money into risk-free government bonds. In fact, hundreds of millions of pounds of this money was being diverted into the bank account of co-founder Peter Clowes, who spent the cash on private aircraft, cars, homes and a luxury yacht. Barlow Clowes collapsed in 1988 after the con was uncovered.

9. Some con-artists really know how to tug on the heartstrings. Eugene and Kathryn Stabe were charged with swindling $13,000 out of people in their home town of Huntington Indiana by claiming their daughter was dying of leukaemia. They said they wanted to fulfil as many of her dreams as possible before she passed away and used the generous donations to take the whole family to Disney World in Florida. The child was in fact in perfect health.

10. It only had to be a matter of time before financial scams made it into the virtual word. Earlier this year, Ginko Financial, a bank in the life simulation game Second Life tempted customers with the promise of unrealistically high returns of 40 per cent to 60 per cent. It quickly collapsed leaving some people nursing large real life losses. Then another bank, imaginatively called “The Bank” became embroiled in another scandal after it stopped processing customer withdrawals and its owner “Jasper Tizzy” and his staff – Paydayloan Lindman and Teanna Nomura - disappeared In Second Life players use "Linden dollars", which are converted into and out of real cash using a special exchange. Some residents lost 2.5m Linden dollars when the bank went bust – that’s the equivalent of about £5,000.

Whether these were actual scams or business mistakes have yet to be ascertained. But with no official law and order in Second Life, one thing is guaranteed: investors can wave good bye to the money they have lost.

List compiled by David Budworth. (http://timesbusiness.typepad.com/money_weblog/2007/11/hook-line-and-s.html)

Times Money's top 10 investment gurus

Times Money's top 10 investment gurus

Genuine stock market experts are a rare breed, and their investment thinking is never more valuable than when the financial world is in turmoil, as it is today.

So here at Times Money we have come up with a list of our top ten stock market gurus of all time.

1. Benjamin Graham

He is generally regarded as one of the most influential thinkers on investment management. His book, the Intelligent Investor, is still selling more than 50 years after he wrote it.

Mr Graham’s basic idea was that you should be looking to buy companies worth ten dollars a share for five dollars a share. The way you determined which companies were selling at way below their book value was to make a detailed study of their balance sheets. He believed in cautious investment following thorough analysis and abhorred ill-informed speculation.

2. Warren Buffett.

The ‘sage of Omaha’ has put his investment skills to good use and is now the world’s richest man. In the process he has made millionaires out of many of the shareholders in Berkshire Hathaway, his main investment vehicle.

Mr Buffett’s basic idea is that there are a handful of truly outstanding businesses around - and a lot of mediocre ones. The investor’s skill comes in identifying the rare great businesses and then in waiting for the moment when a great business is selling at a really attractive price. He is down to earth - he won’t invest in a business he doesn’t understand - and very patient. He is prepared to wait a long time for the right sort of company to turn up. As he would put it, he is like a baseball player who is ready to stand at the plate for ball after ball until he finds one he can hit into the stands.

3. Philip Fisher

Mr Fisher, the father of Ken Fisher, was a renowned growth investor who was a passionate exemplar of the "buy and hold" approach.

His main idea was that the best way to invest is to buy a limited number of outstanding stocks and simply hold them for years and years. If you have chosen the right stocks in the first place - and that’s obviously a big if - then their real quality will shine through over the long term.
He was very definitely not an in and out trader. As he put it: “If the job has been done correctly when a common stock is purchased, the time to sell it is - almost never.”

4. T Rowe Price

Mr Price shared the long-term perspective of investors such as Philip Fisher. He, too, believed in the virtues of "buy and hold" and practised them with a vengeance. In 1972, looking back at a portfolio he had started in the 1930s, he found that he had held a number of stocks, such as Merck, the pharmaceutical company, and Black & Decker, the household tool company, for more than 30 years. Over that time they had made him a lot of money.

5. John Templeton

Sir John, who died earlier this year, was a classic contrarian investor. He embodied the dictum : "Buy when others are frantically selling and sell when others are greedily buying". While others were looking for gems in a jewel shop, he would be looking for diamonds in a dustbin. He was quite happy to buy what others were throwing away and believed that the stocks offering the best value would be those that other investors had completely neglected.

His most celebrated coup came in 1939, just after war had broken out in Europe. He reasoned, correctly, that although the immediate outlook was bleak, the war would provide a massive boost to US industry. He instructed his broker to buy 100 dollars’ worth of every single Wall Street stock that was priced at a dollar or less. Within four years he had sold his unusual portfolio of stocks for four times its original value.

6. Mark Mobius

Dr Mobius is from the Templeton stable of investment managers and has become a specialist in emerging markets. He shares something of Mr Templeton’s contrarian style. As he puts it: “We seek out shares that other investors have rejected. We go where others fear to tread.”

But above all he is a value-based stockpicker. He focuses on putting together a portfolio of good quality stocks, irrespective of which country they are from. One of his great strengths is that he immerses himself in his subject, travelling tens of thousands of miles each year to visit companies and meet their managements. He says:, “At Templeton we like to get out from behind our desks. We are also active investors, ready to get alongside management and take a seat on the board.”

7. Anthony Bolton

Mr Bolton is perhaps the best known UK fund manager of recent years, though he has now stepped back from the hands on running of funds. Like Mark Mobius he is a contrarian investor, as he demonstrated recently by indicating that he was putting some of his own money into bank shares just when everyone else was seeking to make a rapid exit from the sector.

One of his great skills is correctly anticipating market trends. He foresaw the end of the most recent bull run some months before the market peaked in the summer of 2007 and had already battened down the hatches before the market storms set in.

8. Neil Woodford.

Mr Woodford has taken over Mr Bolton’s mantle of best known UK fund manager and one of his great skills is being able to achieve very good performance with enormous sums of money that would weigh down a lesser investor. His two principal funds contain more than £13 billion of investors’ money.

Mr Woodford, like Mr Bolton, is something of a contrarian investor, and he shows considerable skill in keeping ahead of the investment pack. He had been warning about the excessive levels of debt in the UK and US long before the credit crunch struck and had sold all his bank and property shares before those two sectors collapsed.

He takes a top-down view of the economy and is not afraid to make big sector bets. In the past few years he has invested heavily in tobacco and utilities at a time when they were distinctly unfashionable areas to put your money.

9. Nils Taube.

Mr Taube, who died earlier this year, was Britain’s longest-serving fund manager. Like John Templeton he was fond of buying stocks that had been overlooked by other investors. He made a name for himself by keeping a cool head during the stock market slump of 1973-74 and was investing when most other people had despaired of shares ever recovering.

He called the market right again in 1987, when he anticipated the October crash of that year and was selling stocks short in the months running up to the dramatic drop in share prices.

10. Robin Geffen.

Mr Geffen might be viewed as something of a "new boy" because his company, Neptune Investment Management, was launched only in 2002. But Mr Geffen has nearly 30 years of investment management experience under his belt and it is now showing in the outstanding performance of his Neptune stable of funds.

Mr Geffen takes a thematic approach to investment and, like Mr Woodford, is prepared to take big sector bets. He is not constrained by index weightings and will seek out value wherever he finds it. He is quite prepared to go against the trend where he thinks this makes sense. For example while energy companies make up 60 per cent of the Russian stock market Mr Geffen’s Russian fund has just 22 per cent of its portfolio in energy.

(http://timesbusiness.typepad.com/money_weblog/2008/10/ten-investment.html)

The 10 biggest winners from the financial crisis

High street retailers, estate agents, Iceland…the casualties of the economic crisis are all too familiar. But while there are losers, others have profited from the doom.

We’ve rounded up ten credit crunch Houdinis who’ve escaped the financial crisis and are laughing all the way to the ailing bank.

1. Andrew Lahde
Andew Lahde, a California based hedge-fund manager, made 888 per cent profits last year when his company Lahde Capital bet against US sub-prime mortgage assets. In September this year Mr Lahde decided he was rich enough to retire, closed his fund and released a letter, which has become an internet sensation.

The opening paragraph begins: “Today I write not to gloat, given the pain that nearly everyone is experiencing, that would be entirely inappropriate.” In a petulant rant he then, bizarrely, goes on to ask the American government to recognise the benefits of growing marijuana and urges bankers to bin their blackberries and go on holiday.

2. John Paulson
Last year, John Paulson, a New York-based hedge fund manager, outsmarted Wall Street and made nearly $2 billion by betting against mortgage backed securities. Much derided for cashing in on others' misery, he has shown few regrets, telling the Wall Street Journal: “I've never been involved in a trade that had such unlimited upside with a very limited downside."

3. Barack Obama
The final straight of the presidential race has coincided nicely with the meltdown of the global financial system, providing a serendipitous marketing tool for Mr Obama. As voters watch the stock market plummet, the Democrats have offered to clean up the economic mess that the Republicans will leave behind.

4. Gordon Brown
A couple of months ago the Prime Minister was against the ropes. Now he’s being lauded as the rescuer of the banks. In an article in the New York Times entitled “Gordon does good” Paul Krugman, who two weeks ago picked up the Nobel Prize for economics said: “Luckily for the world economy, Gordon Brown and his officials are making sense… they may have shown us the way through this crisis.” Mr Brown’s polls ratings are starting to creep up and Labour, it seems, are back in the game.

5. Ronald McDonald
Don’t expect to bump into Ronald in the dole queue any time soon. As slightly pricier restaurant chains stare at gloomy sales figures, cheap and cheerful fast food joints are watching profits soar. McDonalds has seen two million extra customers a month compared with last year and is intending to create 4,000 new jobs in response.

6. Karl Marx
Dust off your headscarf, Marx is making a comeback. German bookstores have experienced a 300 per cent increase in sales of Das Kapital in recent months, and visitors are flocking to Marx’s birthplace in Trier – 40,000 so far this year. Jörn Schütrumpf, head of the Berlin publishing house Dietz, which brings out the works of Marx said: “We have a new generation of readers who are rattled by the financial crisis and have to recognise that neo-liberalism has turned out to be a false dream.”

7. Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase
With more than $900 billion in deposits, JP Morgan Chase is now America’s biggest savings business after it bailed out the failed Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual. Despite the market turmoil, its employees, not least its chief executive Jamie Dimon, can expect a nice Christmas box this year – staff have already been paid £700m in bonuses. Even better news for Dimon if rumour is to be believed, is that he will replace Hank Paulson as Treasury Secretary if Barack Obama makes it to the White House.

8. The Magic Circle
The paperwork is piling up on the desks of lawyers at Magic Circle firms such as Clifford Chance, Linklaters and Allen&Overy since the collapse of Lehman Brothers and Icelandic banks. Some top City lawyers are now demanding up to £900 an hour to dish out their advice on insolvency and restructuring. Fraud litigators are also feeling plush, as fraudsters are easier to spot during economic downturns.

9. Emilio Botin, chairman of Santander
Spanish Santander has been fattening itself up on high street banks rather than subprime mortgages, and thanks to a tough stance on exotic investment is now the world’s fifth largest bank based on the profits it generates. Already the owner of Abbey, Santander’s rescue of Alliance & Leicester and Bradford &Bingley mean that Mr Botin oversees almost 25million UK customers.

10. Bart Becht, chief executive of Reckitt Benckiser
The world’s biggest household detergent group and the makers of Cillit bang, Reckitt Benckiser has posted record profits of £373m for the last quarter. Apparently, as none of us can afford to leave the house or go out to eat we are staying in to clean the loo and stack the dishwasher instead.

List compiled by Laura Whateley (http://timesbusiness.typepad.com/money_weblog/2008/10/the-10-biggest.html)

Ten people who predicted the financial meltdown

The financial events of recent weeks have filled many of us with shock and panic. Surely no one could have predicted that we would be in this mess? Well, actually, they did. Here are ten people who saw the financial meltdown coming...

1. Vince Cable - deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats

Here is a question Mr Cable’s posed to Gordon Brown, then Chancellor, during Treasury Questions back in November 2003: “The growth of the British economy is sustained by consumer spending pinned against record levels of personal debt, which is secured, if at all, against house prices that the Bank of England describes as well above equilibrium level. What action will the Chancellor take on the problem of consumer debt?”

Mr Brown did not answer how he would solve the problem, merely replying that: “We have been right about the prospects for growth in the British economy, and the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Cable) has been wrong.”

2. Christopher Wood – chief strategist of CLSA, a broking firm in the Asia-Pacific Market.

In October 2005 Mr Wood wisely declared: "Investors should sell all exposure to the American mortgage securities market." In an interview in 2007, he said: "Some institutions have been behaving like leveraged speculators rather than banks… The UK economy is heading for a sharp shock. It just remains to be seen how bad."

3. Founders of www.stock-market-crash.net – website aimed at investors

The writers of this site claim that predicting crashes is, in fact, easy: “One of the greatest myths of all time is that market crashes are random, unpredictable events. The lead up to a market crash is often years in the making. Certain warning signs exist, which characterize the end of a bull market and the start of a bear market. By learning these common warning signs, you can liquidate your investments and prosper by shorting the market.”

4. Henry Weingarten - astrologer

Mr Weingarten is head of the Astrologers Fund, a New York firm that advises businesses on the basis of planetary movements. He forecast a major economic downturn in March 2007 – so hopefully his clients took note.

His website claims he has in fact made numerous successful predictions about worldwide financial affairs, including “both Mexican 1995 crises, the first 1995 dollar crisis, the 1998 oil collapse and 1999 recovery, and the decline of the Euro after its 1999 birth.”

5. Nouriel Roubini - economics professor

Aka Dr Doom, Dr Roubini is an economics professor at New York University. On September 7, 2006, at an International Monetary Fund meeting, he announced that a crisis was brewing. He said that the United States was likely to face a once-in-a-lifetime housing bust, an oil shock, sharply declining consumer confidence and, ultimately, a deep recession.

Homeowners would default on mortgages, trillions of dollars of mortgage-backed securities would unravel worldwide and the global financial system would shudder to a halt. These developments, he said, would cripple major financial institutions like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

As Mr Roubini stepped down, his host said: “I think perhaps we will need a stiff drink after that.” They do now.

6. Nikolai Kondratiev - Russian Marxist economist

In the early 1920s, Mr Kondratiev proposed a theory that Western capitalist economies have long term (50 to 60 years) cycles of boom followed by depression. These business cycles are now called "Kondratiev waves", or grand supercycles. He predicted an imminent dip, and he was proved right with the Wall Street Crash in 1929.

The current crisis may mean he is about 10 years out – but, still, not a bad prediction for a man who died in 1938.

From the archive: William Rees-Mogg on Kondratiev (1980)

7. Founders of Housepricecrash.co.uk – property website

HousePriceCrash.co.uk was established in October 2003 after its founders predicted “one of the potentially biggest economic boom bust events in living memory” was coming. Its aim, apparently, is to provide a “counterbalance to the huge amounts of positive spin the housing market receives in the main media”.

Whist there is not currently a lot of positive news about the housing market to counter, the site does provide a plethora of information, statistics and forums for those interested in the great house price crash.

8. Lord Oakeshott - Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman

He may not have predicted the entire financial meltdown, but he did warn the Government of the possible collapse of Icelandic banks back in July. He said last week: “"Alarm bells were ringing all over about the Icelandic banks and the Treasury must have been blind and deaf not to hear them."

In a written question to the government in July, he asked: "What steps [have] the United Kingdom financial authorities taken to satisfy themselves, independently of the Icelandic financial authorities, of the solvency and stability of Icelandic banks taking deposits in the United Kingdom?”

Lord Davies, for the Government, replied that there was no concern about the liquidity or capital base of Icelandic banks operating in the UK.

9. Stephen Roach - senior executive at Morgan Stanley

In November 2004, Mr Roach predicted an “economic Armageddon”, in part due to the record US current account, trade and government deficits. His outlook was largely dismissed at the time.

Having being proved right, he recently went on to accuse central banks of being “asleep at the switch” in failing to stop the escalating crisis. “The lack of monetary discipline has become a hallmark of unfettered globalization,” he said.

10. Ron Paul - Republican Congressman

Back in September 2003, Mr Paul told a House Financial Services Committee that: “Ironically, by transferring the risk of a widespread mortgage default, the government increases the likelihood of a painful crash in the housing market.

“This is because the special privileges granted to Fannie and Freddie have distorted the housing market by allowing them to attract capital they could not attract under pure market conditions.” Of course, if we are going to give Mr Paul credit, than we should also highlight the efforts of Peter Schiff, his economic advisor and long-time economic hawk.

(http://timesbusiness.typepad.com/money_weblog/2008/10/10-people-who-p.html)

The world's 10 richest pets and pampered pooches

It is the search that is gripping the US nation: which pooch will president-elect Barack Obama choose to be the White House puppy?

A pampered life awaits the dog that gets the nod, what with the run of the 132-room White House and its spacious gardens. Then there's the presidential jet Air Force One to look forward to. A trip to the countryside will never be the same again.

Not that life is going to be easy, what with all those photo shoots and life lived in the public eye. Nothing less than a shiny coat and perfect teeth will do. The press can be so cruel on those bad hair days. And "cavorting" with other canines will definitely be out.

But let's not play down the job's advantages. Mr Obama says that he is ideally looking for a mutt from a shelter home: a rags to riches story that sums up the American dream.

However, it won't be the first pet to embark on a life of luxury and excess. Here are some of the richest animals ever to have walked this earth.

1. Gunther IV - Germen Shepherd

Worth: £90 million

German Countess Karlotta Liebenstein left a staggering fortune of 139 million German marks (about £43 million) to her beloved pet dog Gunther III when she died in 1991. When Gunter III died, the fortune passed to his offspring – imaginatively named Gunther IV – who used it, through a mysterious group of human beings, to, among other things, buy Madonna’s eight-bedroom villa in Miami. Gunther’s property portfolio is also said to include estates in the Bahamas, Italy and Germany and is estimated to be worth £90 million.

A website dedicated to the pampered Alsatian shows him living the Playboy mansion lifestyle. There are photos of Gunther splashing around in swimming pools while bikini-clad women and bronzed muscle men look on adoringly. Read the accompanying text and it gets even weirder. These “five gifted youngsters” it informs you are the Burgundians, the “most talented among a selected group of boys and girls of international origin endowed with special features, beauty, intelligence and independence”.

You couldn't make it up, or maybe you could. Some cynics have questioned whether it is all just an elaborate hoax. Make your own mind up by taking a look at Gunther's website

2. Toby Rimes - Poodle

Worth: £45 million

Toby Rimes, worth the equivalent of £45m in dollars, is a descendant of a pooch left £15m in New York in 1931.

3. Kalu - Chimpanzee

Worth: £42.5 million

Kalu, a chimpanzee, was adopted by Patricia O’Neill, daughter of the Countess of Kenmore, after she found her tied to a tree in Zaire. On her death Mrs O'Neill stunned her husband, the former Australian swimming champion Frank, by leaving her entire estate near Cape Town, South Africa, to Kalu. She said she couldn’t bear the thought of what might happen to the chimp after she died. All together now- Awwwww.

4. Pepe le Pew, Ani and Frankie – Two cats and a Chihuahua

Worth: £18 million

Chihuahua Frankie and cats Ani and Pepe Le Pew each had a third of a San Diego mansion worth around £10 million left to them. The reclusive millionairess who granted them the house also left £8.1million in cash for the three to share. I wonder what they've spent it on - Tuna sachets and dog bones?

5. Flossie – Labrodor mix

Worth: £3 million

Drew Barrymore, the actor (above), placed a £3 million Beverly Hills mansion in trust for her dog, Flossie, in 2002 after it woke up her and husband, Tom Green, in time to escape from a house fire. As the blaze caught hold in the early hours of the morning, Drew's faithful dog ran upstairs and banged on their bedroom door with its tail to alert them to the danger.

6. Trouble - Maltese Terrier

Worth: £1.1million

New York hotel magnate Leona Helmsley, dubbed the "Queen of Mean" during a 1989 trial for tax evasion, left $12 million of her estimated $8 billion estate for the upkeep of her Maltese terrier Trouble. Two of her four grandchildren meanwhile got nothing. Unsurprisingly, the request by Helmsley, famous for her quip that "only the little people pay taxes," sparked nothing but trouble. After the will was contested, the pooch, who was spoon fed gourmet foods by maids, was stripped of $10 million by a Manhattan judge. Fortunately the $2 million left is enough to keep Trouble in the lap of luxury. The mutt's annual expenses come in at $190,000, including $100,000 for round-the-clock security, $60,000 for his guardianship fee, $8,000 for grooming and $1,200 for food.

7. Tinker - Cat

Worth: £450,000

Tinker, an eight-year-old cat from North London, inherited a £450,000 fortune after Margaret Layne, an elderly widow who found him as a stray, left him a three-bedroom house in Harrow and a £100,000 trust fund. Her will makes clear that the black cat, aged about eight, should not stray again. "If Tinker abandons the property permanently the trustees shall at their discretion be entitled to bring the trust to an end," says the will.

8. Tina and Kate - Collie crosses

Worth: £450,000

Tina and Kate, owned by Nora Hardwell, were left £450,000, the run of their owner’s home and five acres in Peasedown, St John, near Bath. The will also demanded that a carer must be employed to look after the two dogs, and that the house must be kept clean at all times.

9. Silverstone - tortoise - and friends

Worth: £100,000 plus

Silverstone the tortoise and a number of cats were provided for from the £59million estate of Christina Foyle, the late owner of Foyle's bookshop in London. When she died in 1999 Ms Foyle left the cats a house in Essex and £100,000 to her handyman to look after the tortoise.

10. The Queen Mum's collection of livestock

Worth: £8,000 each

150 Aberdeen Angus cattle and 200 North Country Cheviot sheep were the beneficiaries of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother's will. She left a £3 million trust to protect the herds on the Castle of Mey Farm which is shared with a collection of goats, pigs, chickens, ducks, rabbits and two lovebirds. Each is worth about £8,000. Good on you, ma'am.

(http://timesbusiness.typepad.com/money_weblog/2008/11/the-worlds-10-m.html)

25 reasons to avoid the new iPhone

The wait is over. The iPhone 3G goes on sale today, and no doubt hordes of Apple fans will be queing outside Carphone Warehouse and outlets of O2 mobile - the only supplier - to get their hands on the hugely hyped handset.

Here at Times Money we were pretty scathing of the original iPhone (take a look at 50 reasons not to buy an iPhone), but Apple claims that its new version is a huge improvement. It is being billed as twice as fast and half as expensive as its debut model.

Given that Apple kept the phone under wraps ahead of the launch it's difficult to know whether the new phone is all its cracked up to be. If the hype is true it will certainly be a huge improvement on the original model. But there are downsides. Maybe not 50 this time around, but here are 25 things to consider before parting with your cash.

1. It's less expensive than its predecessor but still not cheap. The 8GB version is free to O2 customers who spend £45 a month or more on a new 18-month contract. The handset, available from 02, Carphone Warehouse and Apple outlets will cost £99 on a new £30 monthly tariff and the existing £35 per month tariff.

2. For the more powerful 16GB version it will cost £159 on the £30 and £35 tariffs, £59 on the £45 tariff and will only be free on the £75 tariff. So the cheapest deal over 18 months - the 8GB version on the £30 tariff - costs £599. For that you get "unlimited" internet surfing but a measly 75 free calls a month and 125 texts. You can compare it with existing deals here.

3. It will not be available on Pay & Go till later this year. This has angered some O2 customers. Moreover, it is in super-short supply even on contract, with only a few dozen initially supplied to each O2 store.

4. The touch screen isn't great if you're an obsessive texter. This was a problem with the first iPhone, although this guy seems to have cracked it.

5. Like the Model T-Ford the 8GB model is available in any colour - as long as its black.

6. Go for the more expensive 16GB version and you can get it in white too. Rumours had been that Apple was going to be a little more adventurous.

7. Its camera is rubbish. At just two megapixels with no flash it's worse than many standard phones leaving even fans feeling short changed. Phones such as the Nokia N95 boast five megapixels.

8. You can’t use it to take videos, leading some critics to the conclusion that it’s not sexy enough.

9. Like its predecessor the 3G handset is large and bulky. Not something you can just stick in your pocket and forget about. True, the new phone is thinner at the edges and weighs slightly less than the debut model, but otherwise the measurements are the same. It’s even been nicknamed the monolith.

10. To enable Apple to cut costs something had to go. The original iPhone had a hard-wearing silver aluminum back; the new one a less durable black plastic skin. So will it be able to cope with a beating like this?

11. The absence of a metal back means that it is unlikely to blend as prettily as its predecessor.

12. It’s going to be popular with terrorists if Apple's official ad is anything to go by.

13. Battery life is poor - just five to six hours of 3G calls or web browsing. One reviewer found that the indicator fell below 20 per cent by early to mid-afternoon on some trial days.

14. The battery is sealed into the handset, which must be sent off for replacement when it starts to wear out. This is a hassle and means that you can't carry around a spare for use on the move.

15. It inspires people with anger issues to post pointless and mistitled videos at Youtube.

16. If you are an Apple fan, you already own the old iPhone. Much of the new handset's improved functionality is already available in the free 2.0 software update.

17. If you are not an Apple fan, you may be an Apple "hater". In that case, you wouldn't want one.

18. If you live away from the big cities, you may well not have 3G coverage (check here). That would make the whole 3G phone thing pointless...

19. It has no instant messaging function - forcing users to SMS. But it doesn't have multimedia messaging (MMS), which means that users must send and receive photos by email.

20. The web browser has limited Adobe Flash support, so cannot display videos from many sites.

21. Incredibly for a "smart" phone, it has no copy and paste ability. Duh.

22. Who needs a phone with GPS? Anyway, it can't find a decent pizza when you need one.

23. The iPhone is sometimes termed the "Jesusphone". Tasteless.

24. Bluetooth enables headset voice calls on the new handset. A less-limited Bluetooth profile could have enabled wireless music streaming and file sharing, too.

25. Its unveiling by Steve Jobs, of Apple, was predictably and unbearably smug.

(http://timesbusiness.typepad.com/money_weblog/2008/07/reasons-to-avoi.html)

The world's 10 RICHEST female models!

The 10 richest models in the world

The age of the supermodel is definitely not over. The world’s top models have proved their earning power this year despite fashion designers downgrading their runway shows because of the recession. For the second year in a row, Gisele Bündchen, the Brazilian model tops Forbes magazine'd richest models list, based on estimated earnings from June 2008 – June 2009.

1. Gisele Bündchen, pictured above, £15 million

Despite earning US$10 million less this year, due to the loss of Victoria’s Secret and other contracts, this Brazilian beauty has topped the list for the second year in a row. With her own shoe line and success from campaigns such as Versace, Dior, and True Religion jeans, the 28 year old earned about £15 million last year. She also found time to hold two wedding receptions with her husband, American football player Tom Brady.

2. Heidi Klum, £9.7 million

At 35, this mum of three (soon to be four, with husband Seal) and Victoria’s Secret Angel has made her fortune through TV and endorsements. When she wasn’t busy hosting her hit TV series Project Runway and Germany’s Next Top Model, she designed a range of sandals for Birkenstock. Klum endorses brands that range from Diet Coke and Volkswagen, to McDonalds and LG.

3. Kate Moss, £5 million

This year Moss shot down rumours of a pregnancy by saying she's "just fat" and was also attacked for being old (yes, she is 35), but the supermodel isn't going anywhere. She achieved great successes in the past year as the face of Longchamp, Versace, and David Yurman, and her range for Topshop, which also debuted in New York, has made her the third highest earning model.

4. Adriana Lima, £4.8 million

Another angel, famous for her sultry poses, Lima's career has taken off with the support of the lingerie brand. Although her contract with Maybelline ends later this year, the one-time Ford “Supermodel of the year” is busy away from the catwalk too. She appeared on Ugly Betty last September, and is now expecting her first child with her husband, basketball player Marko Jaric.

5. Doutzen Kroes, £3.6 million

This Dutch model, the latest to join the entourage of Angels, recently signed up with Seven For All Mankind jeans after her contract with DeBeers expired. At just 24, Kroes is also the face of cosmetic company L’Oreal, and the fragrance Calvin Klein Eternity.

6. Alessandra Ambrosio, £3.6 million

Last autumn, the 28 year old returned to the Victoria’s Secret runway just three months after giving birth. Having starting modelling for their PINK line, she is now one of the brand’s biggest names. Ambrosio is also a model for the European retail outlet C&A and the Mexican department store Liverpool.

7. Natalia Vodianova, £3.3 million

This Russian-born beauty has not forgotten her roots, using some of her fortune to run Naked Heart Foundation, which helps provide playgrounds for children in Russia. Vodianova, 27, is most recognisable for her work with Calvin Klein fragrance Guerlain, but over the next three years, she will be designing and modelling various collections for French lingerie company Etam.

8. Daria Werbowy, £2.7 million

After winning a modelling competition, this Polish-born Canadian has shot to fame as the face of Lancome and Louis Vuitton. Werbowy’s other campaigns include H&M, Balmain, Roberto Cavalli, and Vogue Eyewear. At just 25, she was inducted into Canada’s Walk of Fame, alongside film director James Cameron.

9. Miranda Kerr, £1.8 million

Equally famous for being Orlando Bloom’s leading lady as for her sultry Victoria’s Secret campaigns, this fresh-faced Aussie made her mark signing on to be the new face of Maybelline and XOXO. Following the devastating Australian bush fires earlier this year, Kerr lent a hand to the Australia Unites fundraiser.

10. Carolyn Murphy, £1.8 million

The long-time face of Estee Lauder has proved her staying power in the industry, at 35. She is also the only American on the list. Having posed for Playboy and Sports Illustrated swimsuit in the past, her most recent campaigns include Banana Republic and Lord & Taylor.

By Vanessa Kortekaas

(http://timesbusiness.typepad.com/money_weblog/2009/07/top-ten-richest-models-in-the-world.html)