Rags to richest 2015: Billionaires despite the odds -By Keren Blankfeld

Entertainer and producer Oprah Winfrey arrives to introduce a clip from her Best Feature nominated film "Selma"

Most of the world's wealthiest people work hard to earn their bread. In fact, two thirds of this year's 1,826 billionaires are self-made. While many of these entrepreneurial moguls had some advantages to start with -- a family business, an Ivy league education or seed money -- some succeeded in spite of the starkest odds.

Mohed Altrad is a case in point. Altrad lived through his father’s abuse, his mother’s death when he was 4, and his grandmother’s banning him from school. An orphaned Bedouin, he lived on just one meal a day when he first moved to France almost five decades ago. Today he heads one of the world's leading manufacturers of scaffolding and cement mixers, with revenues exceeding $1 billion. "I knew I was condemned and my only chance was at school," Altrad told FORBES reporter Katia Savchuk this February.

Around the world, several billionaires gave up some of their childhood and began working early out of necessity. Asia's wealthiest person, Li Ka-shing, for instance, was forced to quit school at age 12 to help support his family after his father died of tuberculosis. In Italy, eye wear mogul Leonardo Del Vecchio was sent to a Milan orphanage when he was 7 -- his widowed mother couldn’t support him -- and began an apprenticeship in an eyeglass factory at age 14. His empire today includes Sunglass Hut, LensCrafters, Ray-Ban and Oakley.

In the U.S., several billionaires show that the American Dream can be a reality for just about anyone, whether you’re an immigrant on welfare (see WhatsApp cofounder Jan Koum), you’ve been homeless (see John Paul Mitchell System’s John Paul DeJoria) or a war vet (see Dole's David Murdock).
Following are  FORBES’ 10 picks for the best tales of rags to riches billionaires who persevered against tremendous odds.

HONG KONG
Li Ka-shing
NET WORTH: $33.3 Bil
Asia’s wealthiest man quit school at age 12 and took a job at a watch-strap factory to support his family. Li got his start selling plastic toys and other items in Hong Kong in 1950 and later retooled his factory to focus on making plastic flowers. Today his interests expand from retail to property, ports and technology, employing 270,000 people in 52 countries.

ITALY
Leonardo Del Vecchio
NET WORTH: $20.4 Bil
When Del Vecchio was 7 his mother sent him to a Milan orphanage because she couldn't afford to care for him. At 14 he began an apprenticeship in an eyeglass factory. Eleven years later he founded Luxottica. Now the company manufactures glasses for luxury brands around the world, including Burberry, Bulgari, Chanel, Coach, DKNY, Dolce & Gabbana, Armani, Prada, Ralph Lauren, Tiffany and Versace.

U.S.
Jan Koum
NET WORTH: $6.6 bilWhatsApp's cofounder emigrated from Ukraine at 16 with his mother and swept floors in a grocery store to help pay the bills. They lived off her disability when she was diagnosed with cancer. Koum put himself through college and worked at Yahoo as a security and infrastructure engineer. In 2009 he started WhatsApp, the world's biggest mobile messaging service. Facebook bought it for $19 billion in cash and stock in 2014.

RUSSIA
Roman Abramovich
NET WORTH: $9.1 bil
Abramovich was orphaned by age 4 and raised by relatives. After dropping out of college he served with the Soviet army before selling plastic toys from his apartment. Abramovich made a series of oil-export deals in the early 1990s and in 1995 teamed up with Boris Berezovsky to take over oil giant Sibneft at a fraction of its market value.

INDIA
Micky Jagtiani
NET WORTH: $5.2 bil
Jagtiani dropped out of accounting school to clean hotel rooms and drive a taxi in London before moving to Bahrain to help run his family's baby products shop. He was suddenly in charge after his brother, father and mother all died within a year of one another. Today his retail empire Landmark Group generates $5 billion revenues annually from more than 1,900 stores across the Middle East, Africa and India.

U.S.
David Murdock
NET WORTH: $3.1 bil
A dyslexic, Murdock dropped out of high school in the ninth grade to work at a gas station before being drafted into the Army in 1943. When he returned from WWII, he borrowed $1,800 to open a diner. He eventually becoming the chairman of Dole Food, today the world's largest producer of fruits and vegetables.

U.K.
Christos Lazari
NET WORTH: $2.1 bil
The London real estate investor moved to the U.K. from a small village in Cyprus at age 16 with 20 pounds on hand. In London, he washed dishes and waited on restaurant tables, saving enough money to enroll in a London Fashion Design course and to set up the hit Drendie Girl label. In 1978 he began investing in real estate. Today his Lazari Investments owns 2.5 million square feet of London real estate, mostly office rentals.

U.S.
Sheldon Adelson
NET WORTH: $31.4 bil
The son of a cab driver, Adelson grew up sleeping on the floor of a Boston tenement house. He bought his first newspaper corner with a $200 loan from his uncle when he was 12. Over the decades he built a fortune running vending machines, selling newspaper ads, helping small businesses go public, developing condos and hosting trade shows. He now runs the largest casino company in the world, Las Vegas Sands.

U.S.
John Paul DeJoria
NET WORTH: $2.8 bil
DeJoria spent a brief period of the 1980s sleeping in his car in LA's Sunset Strip. The navy vet sold shampoo door-to-door, transforming $700 in savings to hair giant John Paul Mitchell Systems, which he cofounded with Paul Mitchell. Today his empire extends from s and most recently the wireless phone business (ROK mobile).

U.S.
Oprah Winfrey
NET WORTH: $3 bil
The media mogul was born to a teenage mom and raised by her grandmother on a Mississippi farm. She became a TV newscaster in Nashville, Baltimore before joining a Chicago TV station and transforming a third-rated morning show into the nation’s No. 1 talk show. Today Winfrey's entertainment empire spans from broadcast to Hollywood and publishing.

Culled from Forbes in Yahoo Finance

Fake IRS agents target more than 366,000 in huge tax scam-By Stephen Ohlemacher

Investigator says fake IRS agents demand money from more than 366,000 in nationwide tax scam

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WASHINGTON (AP) -- Fake IRS agents have targeted more than 366,000 people with harassing phone calls demanding payments and threatening jail in the largest scam of its kind in the history of the agency, a federal investigator said Thursday.
More than 3,000 people have fallen for the ruse since 2013, said Timothy Camus, a Treasury deputy inspector general for tax administration. They were conned out of a total of $15.5 million.
The scam has claimed victims in almost every state, Camus said. One unidentified victim lost more than $500,000.
"The criminals do not discriminate. They are calling people everywhere, of all income levels and backgrounds," Camus told the Senate Finance Committee at a hearing. "The callers often warned the victims that if they hung up, local police would come to their homes to arrest them."
The scam is so widespread that investigators believe there is more than one group of perpetrators, including some overseas.
Camus said even he received a call from one of the scammers at his home on a Saturday. He said he had a stern message for the caller: "Your day will come."
Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., said he got a similar call, but realized it wasn't a real IRS agent.
"It was a very convincing, convincing phone call," Isakson said.
So far, two people in Florida have been arrested, Camus said. They were accused of being part of a scam that involved people in call centers in India contacting U.S. taxpayers and pretending to be IRS agents.

"These criminal acts are perpetrated by thieves hiding behind telephone lines and computers, preying on honest taxpayers and robbing the Treasury of tens of billions of dollars every year," said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. "Taxpayers must be more aware of the risks and better protected from attack and these criminals must be found and brought to justice."

The IRS and the inspector general's office started warning taxpayers about the scam a year ago, and it has since ballooned. This year, it tops the IRS list of "Dirty Dozen" tax scams.

Tax scams often increase during tax filing season, and with millions of Americans preparing their returns ahead of the April 15 deadline, the IRS is seeing many cases of identity theft and refund fraud.

In recent years the IRS has stepped up efforts to detect large numbers of tax refunds going to the same address or bank account. Using computer filters, the agency identified more than 517,000 suspicious returns and blocked $3.1 billion in fraudulent returns, as of October 2014, Camus said in his testimony.

In 2012, the IRS started working more closely with U.S. attorneys' offices around the country to combat tax refund fraud by people using stole identities, said Caroline Ciraolo, acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's tax division. Since then, the tax division has opened nearly 1,000 investigations and brought prosecutions against more than 1,400 people, Ciraolo told the Senate Finance Committee hearing.

"Given the sophistication of this criminal activity and the fact that a lot of it comes from overseas, this looks to me like an emerging type of organized crime," said Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat on the Finance Committee.

The inspector general's office started receiving complaints about the telephone scam in 2013. Immigrants were the primary target early on, the IG's office said. But the scam has since become more widespread.

As part of the telephone scam, fake IRS agents call taxpayers, claim they owe taxes, and demand payment using a prepaid debit card or a wire transfer. Those who refuse are threatened with arrest, deportation or loss of a business or driver's license, Camus said.

The callers can manipulate caller ID to make it look like they are calling from an IRS phone number. They might even know the last four digits of the taxpayer's Social Security number, Camus said.

They request prepaid debit cards because they are harder to trace than bank cards. Prepaid debit cards are different from bank cards because they are not connected to a bank account. Instead, consumers buy the cards at stores, and use them just like a bank card, until the money runs out or they add more.

Real IRS agents usually contact people first by mail, Camus said. And they never demand payment by debit card, credit card or wire transfer.

"Our message is simple," Camus said. "If someone calls unexpectedly claiming to be from the IRS with aggressive threats if you do not pay immediately, it is a scam artist calling. The IRS does not initiate contact with taxpayers by telephone. If you do owe money to the IRS, chances are you have already received some form of a notice or correspondence from the IRS in your mailbox."

Culled from Associated Press

Managing Customer to have the best -Odunze Reginald C

Image credited to ncsl.com

In 1897, an Italian Economist, Vilfredo Pareto came up with a principle which he called (Principle of Least Effort).  He stated that 80 percent of our success comes from 20 percent of our effort. The rule went on say that 20 percent of our customers give us 80 percent of our business. And 80 percent give us 20 percent of our business. Hence the need to focus more on those that gives us the greatest business.

He called it the 80\20 Rule but his admirer called it “The Pareto Principle” with the advent of the 80\20 Rule came with it other rules, like 90\10 Rule of Money

But according to Robert Kiyosaki (2000) he stated that “The 90\10 rule of money states that 10 percent hold 90 percent of the economy and 90 percent hold 10 percent of the economy”.

From these presentations, it should be noted that the principle of least effort expected us to find ways of satisfying those customers who give us the greatest business, provide us with the necessary incomes to boost our business, is it not wise to device special means of satisfying these customers.

These customers have the enabling economy to provide for us all that we need as an organization to meet our obligations to shareholders, government, to our employees and to the board.

Continuing Kiyosaki “noted that there are two types of money problem, one problem is not enough money and the other is too much money.” He went on to say that it has been said that that there is nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come and there is nothing as detrimental than someone who is thinking old ideas,”

Odunze Reginald C is the Lead Consultant, Chareg Consulting.

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