Prosource Wireless Looks like a scam

Internet Deals: If it is took good to be true, it is NOT.

I was browsing Amazon.com's deals my ASUS 1005HA netbook on the eve of Black Friday when I was served up some ads claiming $ 70 Android netbooks. I said to myself, "sure why not, let me check this out". So I click the link on  and go to prosourcewireless.com and see that they have really nice looking pictures of all the tablets and other electronics. They also use wonderful descriptions like Android tablet, Windows tablet etc.. but never do they mention the actual brand of the tablet they are selling.

Now, on the one hand you have tablets like iPad, ASUS transformer, Samsung's Galaxy etc.. and on the other you have PanDigitial, Mirius (?) etc's low end cheapo versions. In fact, I saw one of PanDigital's tablet advertized in a Kohl's flier. Kohl's - where people I know shop for curtains, kitchenware and some clothing - not the latest in electronics! No knock on PanDigital, but they are sold at Amazon for the same $ 79.99. And Amazon has a great return policy, so you are better off buying cheap tablets at trusted websites like Amazon, Target.com or local Walmart etc than via random websites on the net..

These pathetic products also provide ONLY 2 GB of storage space.. that is less than most common Flash drives nowadays.

One clue toward the professionalism of any company/website can be from the typos in product descriptions. The exhibit below gives some hints in "ava

Links from other customers who have been scammed/ripped off are here at pissed consumer and at ripoff report.

Disclosure: If you happen to shop via the links on this blog linking to amazon.com do provide a rebate to me when I shop at Amazon.I appreciate such actions by you but that does not mean I am recommending that you shop solely at Amazon for the products listed in the post above.

Satyam Computer Scam 2008 - 2009

Happy New Year 2009 everybody. For Satyam (SAY) shareholders this new year does not look happy at all. The chairman of the company came out with a confession letter yesterday detailing how he kept the profit books cooked for several years at the company.

It is sad to hear to this and your blood will boil if you happen to be a shareholder of Satyam, either in the Indian markets or the ADS listed on NYSE (SAY).

The auditors (PWC) are definitely getting chastised by many people, but now the board members will also be clearly under scrutiny. More details are emerging too, ranging from missing bank statements, to the real meaning of the insider transactions (sales of shares) in Sep 2008, by top mgmt.

While some say (sorry) that this will tarnish India's shining image of growth and affect outsourcing, I feel that a knee jerk reaction would not last long to affect business with India. What might really happen is a closer scrutiny of the entire business model in India and a consequent improvement in corporate governance and a healthy skepticism at profit bubbles.

What really caught my eye was this phrase from the confession:
"It was like riding a tiger, not knowing how to get off without being eaten" (link to the scanned letter)

There you go, he has himself given suggestions towards the kind of punishment that may be meted out to him. Get a tiger (man-eating or non man-eating, Indian or Siberian), find a forest and then set him on the tiger and of course, track him with a webcam attached to a bird. J/K, but you have to have a small chuckle at the guts of this guy (R. Raju) to in giving analogies when talking about billion dollar losses.


If you want to follow more discussion on SAY, you can visit some popular South Asian blogs - Sepia Mutiny and Indian National Interest.

The Original Ponzi Explained

I read cnn.com regularly, almost everyday and the sensational $50 billion Madoff investment scam had definitely attracted my attention. I had always wondered about who the original Ponzi scheme perpetrator was or how that name came about for that type of fraud.

Only I had been lazy enough that I never bothered to type those few letters into google or wiki and find out for myself. Thankfully, cnn.com ran an article on the original scheme. Once I was done reading that article I got interested in the victims of this fraud, who might have earned some but then eventually lost quite a bit or all of their investment, by the time 2009 arrives.
While glancing through the list, I did a double take when I came across one name : .an individual investor named "Ira Roth".

On my first glance I assumed it was somebody's ROTH IRA investment, but upon reading again I was amazed to see that somebody's name happens to be the same as a tax free retirement vehicle. Granted, Roth does derive its name from a Senator Roth (source), but still it sure was fun to see someone with a first name IRA and last name ROTH.