If you've watched any of those awful late-night real estate investment infomercials, you've heard of cash-back-at-closing real estate deals. You know, the ones where the guy with the buckteeth holds up the check for $11,000 and says, "I bought a house with no money down and got $11,000 back at closing!"

In an excellent article on RISMedia, Ralph R. Roberts explains how these schemes work and why they're so bad for the real estate industry:

On its surface, cash back at closing seems to benefit everyone involved. The buyer pockets some extra cash. The seller unloads his house at or near the asking price. The real estate agent gets a bigger commission. The loan officer chalks up another successful loan. And the lender stands to earn more interest over the life of the loan. Everybody wins.

Yes folks, that's what the man said, "You can make 10% profit a month using our system." He said it with a straight face in an infomercial, which was preceded by a station announcement that they are not responsible for the content or validity of the following program.

How about a statement that is more straight forward like, "The following presentation regarding the stock system you are about to see is full of crap! If you believe any of it you are a fool and deserve to lose your money."

For those of you who are not adept at math, if the claims made on this infomercial were true, a $10,000 nest egg would pass $50 billion midway through the 14th year and $80 bilion by the end of it, (passing Buffett and Gates) if you did not get bored with making money long before. Of course if you kept going you could pile up all the equity on planet Earth in less than one lifetime so you would have tremendous incentive to find life in another solar system somewhere that has a stock market so you could suck up all the equity on that planet too.

What if two people decided to use this system for any length of time, I fear the world would not be big enough for the both of them. But I take this too far. The snake oil salesman in the infomercial is the best evidence of the failings of his own system because he has not earned jack by using it himself, only by selling it. No one worth two cents would give him the time of day ... unless of course they were to serve him a notice -- like cease and desist.

I can't believe there is not a federal or state prosecutor somewhere that is chasing this guy and his fraudulent claims. I am sure there are lot of people like me that get burned up when we see someone taking advantage of people like this infomercial tries to do. I think after I finish this post I will write a letter to our attorney general about this. Perhaps there are some prosecutors reading this post that might shed some light on this subject and how these blatantly dishonest broadcasts can continue.

HAPPY FATHERS DAY!

Those of you who are new to BloggingStocks can check out my other stories and read Chasing Value or Serious Money to find potential opportunities and verify my track record as well.

Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the vice president for design and research at an architecture & planning firm. Check out his other posts for BloggingStocks here.

In what may be a first, a company is buying air-time to show infomercials without the intent of really selling us anything. The world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) is buying late night airtime on cable stations like Lifetime and USA Networks to show infomercials, basically with the intent of convincing employees and consumers that the company really isn't so bad after all.

They've pulled out all the stops. You get to hear from Wal-Mart workers serving in the military, watch footage from the company American Idol-like competition for employees, hear about the company's organic initiatives, and even listen to singer Beyonce talk about how much she "loves" Wal-Mart.

If this seems bizarre, it is. It's unheard of, but it might not be such a bad idea. It will show the company's employees that they want to do something about their reputation, and may even win over a few consumers who are on the fence about the company. A Wal-Mart spokesman said that the infomercials weren't that expensive, and that this is seen as a kind of low-risk gamble.

This seems smart. Since there is so much coverage of Wal-Mart in the media (BloggingStocks's Brian White has an excellent Wal-Mart Weekly feature on the company), much of it highly negative, it seems right for Wal-Mart to air its side of the story.

It would be pretty exciting if this catches on -- Will anyone facing negative press start buying airtime to defend themselves? Could Paris Hilton film infomercials of herself teaching chess to her fellow inmates to win over public opinion?