(More colon news:)

The world’s first punctuation scam

You. cannot. make. this. stuff. up. From yesterday’s edition of the US Securities and Exchange Commission naughty boys (and occasionally girls) page, the tale of something called colonendparenthesis.net. A cunning little scheme that, in just over 20 months, scammed some $12 million—at $20 a throw—out of 5,000 people, all sharing the common trait of being too stupid to have money, by promising returns of 2 percent a day.

...Reed and Kimbrell omitted to disclose to CEP investors that CEP had no record of its investments and that neither CEP nor CEP Trust have reliable financial records. Moreover, Reed and Kimbrell, through CEP, made numerous other misrepresentations and omissions of material facts...

Regrettably, the SEC’s abacus didn’t run to the prospective annual return, or the dollar earnings, on $20, compounded at 2 percent a day for 360 days. So, a free lifetime subscription to NakedShorts for the first reader to fire up the old HP 10bII (or similar) and do the math. Answers in comments, or by email to the grinning idiot on the right.

SEC v. CEP Holdings, Inc. d/b/a Colonendparenthesis.net
US Securities and Exchange Commission
Litigation release Jul. 11 2007

Comments

[NakedShorts]

And we have TWO! winners:

JT, from somewhere east of Halifax (NS), has the correct answer: $24,951.22.

Deb, from west of Halifax, correctly computed the compound return of 24,656%...however she make the rookie mistake of not reading the question and based her calculation based on $1 invested. She did, however, show her working--1.02^360-1=1246.56--thereby earning extra credit.

Posted by NS

[Deborah]

1.02^360-1=1246.56

So, the rate of return would be 124,656%...