Some boiler rooms create persuasive Internet sites by appropriating the text or design of a legitimate investment firm's site.

Others have gone so far as to appropriate photos, professional biographies and even names from the online homes of actual brokerages.

Here's a picture of the Internet home page for Richard Watson Associates, which has appeared on global warning lists. (Close each image window to return to this page.)

And here's a screenshot of the page for the firm's namesake founder and other members of the team.

Typing two key phrases from Watson's biography into a Google search -- "founded the corporate finance group" and "strategic corporate development" -- yields the page for a site called Downer & Co. -- a legitimate firm. You'll meet Wade Kennedy, a former St. Louisan whose image was stolen by the boiler room

Photos of other members of the Downer team also appear on the Richard Watson site, with different names and altered biographies.





Downer was tipped off last fall about the identity theft and wrote about the problem in its monthly newsletter. Click to see a PDF of the article: http://www.downer.com/press/pdf/November2003.pdf