Many of these products are manufactured for retail sale to the investment public with names like "secure fund," "principal protected notes," or "interest bearing preferred," but they are actually some of the riskiest investments available. In one case involving the IMH Secured Loan Fund, these securities were sold as marketable and insured investments, when the securities could only be redeemed at the discretion of the company, who also disclosed in its public filings that their primary business was making high risk loans to borrowers whose financing needs are not met by traditional lenders.
It also appears that many of these newer investment fraud cases have a common theme in that they are sold through securities broker dealers that have adopted the "franchise" type business model, and operated from a series of small one or two person "independent," and otherwise unsupervised offices, geographically disbursed across the county.