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By JANE J. KIM

As the financial system reels from one disaster after another, financial planners, estate planners and bank officials say they’ve been receiving calls from panicked savers concerned about the safety of their deposits.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. guarantees bank deposits up to $100,000 per person, per insured institution. But what if you have a lot more cash than that?

For years, savers have gotten around the FDIC’s $100,000 limit by spreading their cash across multiple institutions. It’s certainly safe, but it’s an onerous process. Now, growing numbers of people are turning to other means that allow them to keep hundreds of thousands of dollars safely stowed away under FDIC protection.

One product that has been attracting attention lately is an informal trust account known as a “payable on death,” or POD, account. To set up a POD account, depositors must name a beneficiary or beneficiaries who will receive money if the primary account holder dies. For each qualified beneficiary, the FDIC will boost insurance coverage by up to $100,000.

Other strategies include:

Brokered CDs. Buying multiple certificates of deposit at once through a brokerage firm provides a fast way to spread out money across different institutions, capturing the full FDIC protection.

In recent weeks, Dan Kohn of New York started using brokered CDs through Vanguard Group’s Vanguard Brokerage Services as a way to quickly spread out his money across different banks. He could probably find higher yields by searching for local deals, but brokered CDs provide a “mixture of convenience and safety,” says the 35-year-old Mr. Kohn, the chief operating officer of the Linux Foundation, a nonprofit group that promotes the use of the Linux computer operating system. “I don’t want to set up eight new accounts.”

CDARS. This deposit-placement service, short for Certificate of Deposit Account Registry Service, disperses deposits into different individual CDs of up to $100,000 each, up to a maximum covered amount of $50 million. Customers deposit their money with a participating bank, and CDARS — which is run by the Promontory Interfinancial Network LLC in Arlington, Va. — disperses the deposit in individual CDs up to $100,000 in 2,350 member banks across the country.

Retirement accounts. Money deposited in IRAs, Roth IRAs and certain other retirement plans is insured up to $250,000.

Joint accounts. Deposit accounts owned by two or more people are insured up to $100,000 for each account holder listed.

Credit unions. Deposit insurance for credit unions works in much the same way as FDIC insurance does for banks and thrifts, except that the funds are insured by the National Credit Union Share Insurance Fund.

Revocable trusts. Under this estate-planning strategy, the owner assigns beneficiaries but retains control of the assets during his lifetime. The FDIC insures the interests of each beneficiary up to $100,000 each. Some are formal trusts, which are typically set up by an estate attorney. Others, such as POD accounts, can be created when the account owners add certain terms and the names of the beneficiaries to the bank’s account records.

William Wright, a financial planner in Wichita, Kan., says he’s working with one client who has over $1 million at a local bank to move the money into other types of deposit accounts, such as trust and joint accounts, and products such as annuities.

On the basis of ease alone, POD accounts appear to be finding a larger audience lately. The FDIC doesn’t publish data on the number of these accounts, but the agency confirms it is getting more questions from consumers about how to set them up and has been seeing more of them on the books when it takes over banks after they fail. So far this year, there have been 11 bank failures, and 117 banks that were on the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s “watch list” at the end of the second quarter.

Last spring, Robert Ring of Boise, Idaho, added his three children as beneficiaries to a money-market deposit account at IndyMac Bank. That meant his account, which totaled $300,000 at the time, was fully insured.

Thanks to that move, “it was a total nonevent for me” when IndyMac collapsed in July, says the 39-year-old software engineer. “I heard about the closure on a Friday afternoon, and all my money — about $150,000 at the time — was there the following Monday.” He’s also using PODs to protect money he’s parked in a savings account at Alliant Credit Union in Chicago.

For savers, PODs can be a quick way to extend their FDIC coverage without the hassle and paperwork of opening multiple accounts across several institutions. “It’s a convenience factor,” says Mr. Ring. “You can get your FDIC coverage by setting up accounts at six different banks, but that’s just a headache, come tax time, with all the extra paperwork and 1099s you have to wait for.”

POD accounts do come with certain limitations. For starters, only certain relatives count as qualified beneficiaries. Spouses, children, grandchildren, parents and siblings are OK. Nieces, nephews and grandparents aren’t. The depositor retains control of the account until his death, in which case the money is distributed to the beneficiaries.

When the POD account contradicts the depositor’s will, it can send family members to court to fight over the estate. Austin Frye, a financial planner and estate attorney in Aventura, Fla., says he’s seen cases where clients inadvertently disinherited their children in a POD account.

Mr. Frye recalls one case in which one of his clients had been added to his father’s CD to help manage the account. When the father died, the money in the CD went directly to that son — even though his will had specified that the money was to be split equally between the custodial son and another son who lived out of state.

“You could ruin your estate plan,” Mr. Frye says. “The courts are loaded with these cases.”

Geoff Sauter of Dover, Mass., says he got some conflicting advice on how to set up a POD account. Based on the advice of one representative at T. Rowe Price Group Inc., he decided to add his wife and three children to a CD to make sure his $400,000 was fully covered. A few days later, after his wife’s broker questioned that strategy, he called back the firm and spoke with a different person who told him his deposits weren’t fully covered. “So I panicked and started calling other people,” he says.

The 58-year-old engineering-firm salesman says T. Rowe Price eventually got back to him and told him that his money was, in fact, fully covered. “Apparently, there is some confusion in the industry,” he says.

“It’s unfortunate that in the course of several conversations, Mr. Sauter was given some conflicting information,” says Brian Lewbart, a spokesman for T. Rowe Price. “But in the end, we’re certainly pleased he ended up with the correct information.”

Despite the multitude of options, many savers still choose to spread their risk around by simply opening accounts at different banks. D.C. Harris, a retired accountant who lives in the San Francisco Bay area, had her money parked in a CD at Wachovia Corp. But worries about the solvency of that bank and others, such as Washington Mutual Inc., recently prompted her to put her savings in CDs at other banks, including Citigroup Inc.’s Citibank.

“I’m more scared than I’ve been in my life about our economy and our banks,” says the 65-year-old. “I’m thinking about moving my money to United Bank of the Mattress.”

Write to Jane J. Kim at jane.kim@wsj.com

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page D1

By SIMONA COVEL

Lisa O’Masta thought social networking and online video could help bring customers to Interwrite Learning, a maker of classroom technology tools.

But simply throwing videos on YouTube.com wasn’t going to work, she believed, because they would just get lost in the crowd. And she didn’t know how to find her company’s target audience — teachers — on social-networking sites like MySpace.

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“Educators tend to deliver messages best by interacting,” says Ms. O’Masta, vice president of marketing and professional development at Interwrite, which is now known as eInstruction Corp. “We wanted to encourage that behavior and spread the word” about Interwrite.

So, Ms. O’Masta and her marketing team came up with the idea of a song-parody video contest. Teachers and students were invited to send in videos of themselves performing their favorite songs, rewritten with new lyrics expressing the importance of technology in their classrooms. Interwrite spread the word through the local and trade press, and partnered with other educational companies.

The six-week competition, called Interwrite Makeover, generated more than 200 videos — about four times the company’s expectations — and hundreds of teachers and students learned about Interwrite’s products. The company estimates that it collected contact information for 27,000 leads, including teachers, parents and other members of local school communities. The contest cost about $40,000, including the prizes.

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“What made this successful wasn’t that it was about videos that got posted,” Ms. O’Masta says. By allowing Web visitors to comment on and help choose the winners, “we created a community.”

Community-generated video can be a smart — and low cost — marketing tactic for small companies, which often depend on strong bonds with customers.

“Savvy companies are going to let their own customers tell the story for them,” says Jeremiah Owyang, senior analyst in San Francisco at market-research company Forrester Research Inc., Cambridge, Mass. Sometimes, for a small company “recognition of community members is even more important than getting paid.”

Mr. Owyang suggests that company executives consider posting user-generated videos on their Web sites. Holding a video contest may not be an option, but simply trolling YouTube could turn up some clips made by enthusiastic customers.

Help From Peers

Interwrite, which had 180 employees at the time, reached out to video company Shycast LLC of Princeton, N.J., to build a Web site (interwritelearning.shycast.com/contest/1/) that would allow participants to sign up, submit videos, comment on entries and vote on their favorites. (In January, Interwrite was bought by eInstruction of Denton, Texas. The combined company has about 300 employees.)

To help get the word out, Interwrite partnered with TeacherTube LLC, a company that runs a community site for educators, where some existing customers already had posted demonstration videos about Interwrite products. TeacherTube offered Interwrite advertising on its site in exchange for using the TeacherTube name in the competition.

Other companies donated technology tools to the prize package in exchange for putting their names on contest materials and in the contest’s site. That doubled the grand prize for each of the three categories — roughly for elementary, middle and high-school entries — to $15,000 in classroom technology tools.

Sifting Through the Laws

From the winning video in the kindergarten-through-fifth-grade category

The team quickly realized, however, that executing the competition wouldn’t be as easy as sending out a press release and waiting for responses to roll in. Contests are governed by laws that vary among states and countries and cover a range of steps, including disseminating rules and collecting votes.

One hurdle: In the U.S., companies aren’t allowed to advertise contests to young children, so Interwrite had to focus on teachers. Sifting through the laws and regulations pushed back the competition’s start by about 10 days.

As the competition moved toward its September 2007 launch, the company worked with its public-relations firm to craft five press releases, which ultimately found the most success in local publications and on education-focused blogs.

After the launch, hits on Interwrite’s Web site rose to 7,000 a week, from 7,000 a month before. And the marketing team captured those leads by requiring visitors to complete a form with their names and email addresses before voting on, rating or commenting on a video.

Courtesy of the company

Lisa O’Masta

All that buzz presented some challenges, though. Each of the 220 entries generated dozens of comments from students, teachers and community members. Though most comments were positive, Shycast’s chief executive, Drew Peloso, says at the peak of the competition, he spent three hours a day scanning the site and removing offensive comments.

Contest management is the most time consuming and expensive service that Shycast offers, Mr. Peloso says, often comprising as much as 30% of client fees. Interwrite paid Shycast about $20,000 in all for the program.

Lessons Learned

Now that Interwrite has crowned its champions — the winning kindergarten-through-fifth-grade video was a rousing send-up of pop singer Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl” — the company is planning its next competition.

This time, executives say, they’ll avoid certain hiccups, like stating the contest deadline in Greenwich Mean Time, which seemed to make sense for international contestants but led to widespread confusion. Next time, the company plans to list the deadline in multiple time zones.

While traffic on Interwrite’s Web site fell off after the contest ended at the end of November, it’s about 4% higher than before the launch. Customers are beginning to cash in $50-off coupons given to those who submitted a video.

More important, Ms. O’Masta says, when the company’s sales team visits a school, teachers and administrators often mention the competition.

“Companies know how to spend a whole lot of money on [marketing] that’s traditional,” she says. “I think there’s a whole new way of networking.”

Write to Simona Covel at simona.covel@wsj.com

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page B5

Por KELLY GREENE

Nos Estados Unidos, as autoridades do mercado financeiro e os promotores públicos estão lutando contra o que eles qualificam de uma escalada em nível nacional das fraudes em investimentos contra pessoas acima de 50 anos.

Em muitos casos, as vítimas aplicaram em investimentos arriscados para tentar compensar os prejuízos sofridos durante a crise financeira — tendência que, segundo os reguladores, está se acentuando.

Segundo as estimativas dos reguladores estaduais, o número de casos envolvendo investidores de 50 anos de idade ou mais deve bater o recorde este ano.

No ano passado, houve 1.241 denúncias criminais, ordens de cessação e outras ações regulatórias emitidas em nível estadual envolvendo investidores de 50 anos ou mais, segundo a Associação Norte Americana de Administradores de Investimentos, um grupo de reguladores estaduais. O número é mais que o dobro dos 506 casos de 2009.

O problema corre “desenfreado” em todo o país, diz Matt Kitzi, da comissão de valores mobiliários do Estado de Missouri e presidente do comitê de execução da associação.

A comissão de valores mobiliários dos Estados Unidos, a SEC, que regula empresas de consultoria e investimentos com US$ 25 milhões ou mais em ativos sob gestão, não segmenta as fraudes alegadas segundo a idade da vítima. Mas as autoridades têm se preocupado com a vulnerabilidade dos investidores mais velhos, a ponto de a agência planejar para breve o lançamento de “orientações adicionais sobre possíveis golpes em investimentos, para que os americanos mais velhos possam estar atentos”, disse a presidente da SEC, Mary Schapiro, em comunicado ao The Wall Street Journal.

Keith Grimes, de 56 anos, de Mulberry, Estado da Flórida, afundou US$ 500.000 — “cada centavo que ganhei na vida”, diz ele — em um fundo dirigido a investidores mais velhos, que prometia retornos de 14% a 24%. Vendido como um fundo administrado por um gestor com histórico de sucesso em negociações com ações e outros investimentos, o esquema acabou se revelando uma fraude, com o dinheiro dos novos investidores sendo usado para pagar rendimentos aos demais e esconder a ausência de ganhos reais.

“Às vezes a pessoa pensa: ‘Quem sabe isso é excesso de ganância?’”, diz Grimes. “Mas a gente tenta conseguir o melhor retorno possível, quando economizou durante toda a vida profissional para poder se aposentar.”

Depois de perder quase todas as suas economias, Grimes está morando em um trailer emprestado e administrando uma firma de fibra de vidro industrial.

O administrador do fundo, James D. Risher, de Sanibel, Flórida, foi condenado em 6 de dezembro a mais de 19 anos em prisão federal, após se declarar culpado, em setembro, no Tribunal Federal Distrital de Tampa, Flórida, das acusações de fraude postal e lavagem de dinheiro. Em 29 de agosto, a SEC entrou com uma ação civil relativa ao caso.

O advogado de Risher disse que este não estava disponível para comentar. Ele não respondeu à ação movida pela SEC.

Segundo a denúncia da SEC, Risher captou US$ 22 milhões de mais de 100 investidores, mas aplicou apenas US$ 2,5 milhões em contas de corretagem e perdeu cerca de US$ 890.000 nas suas negociações.

Mais de US$ 8 milhões foram para “honorários de gestão e desempenho”, enquanto Risher gastou US$ 4,5 milhões em jóias, presentes, imóveis e despesas pessoais, segundo a queixa da SEC. Foram distribuídos aos investidores US$ 3,6 milhões, diz a queixa.

Há cerca de 77 milhões de “baby boomers”, como é conhecida a geração do pós-guerra, ou 25% da população, e os mais velhos começam a fazer 65 este ano. Muitas de suas carteiras de investimentos para a aposentadoria foram devastadas pela crise financeira, destruindo bilhões de dólares em ativos.

Apesar de uma recuperação acentuada desde março de 2009, a Média Industrial Dow Jones caiu 15% desde o pico registrado em outubro de 2007, fazendo com que muitos “baby boomers” à beira da aposentadoria buscassem retornos mais elevados. Isso torna esses investidores especialmente vulneráveis a fraudes, segundo os procuradores e as autoridades reguladoras.

A capacidade de uma pessoa comum de tomar decisões financeiras efetivas atinge o auge aos 53,3 anos, e vai baixando depois disso, segundo estudo feito no ano passado pelo Centro de Pesquisas de Aposentadoria da universidade Boston College.

Investimentos exóticos e não registrados, tais como notas promissórias, colocações privadas e contratos de investimento, aparecem como os principais veículos de fraudes envolvendo investidores mais velhos. Das ações executadas em 2010 com investidores de 50 anos ou mais, os casos envolvendo títulos não registrados foram mais numerosos do que os relacionados a títulos de renda fixa e ações tradicionais, em proporção de cinco para um, segundo a associação de administradores de valores mobiliários.

Os investidores mais idosos muitas vezes compram esses papéis através de contas de aposentadoria individual com gestão própria — um fundo de aposentadoria com incentivo fiscal que os americanos conhecem pela sigla IRA. Esses fundos permitem à pessoa aplicar seu dinheiro em investimentos que vão além das tradicionais ações, títulos renda fixa e fundos mútuos, tais como imóveis, ouro e poços de petróleo.

A SEC alertou os investidores em setembro sobre fraudes generalizadas em promoções destinadas a portadores de IRAs.

Desde outubro, investidores entraram com ações nos Estados de Geórgia e Carolina do Norte, alegando que o empresário Ephren Taylor Jr. solicitou investimentos, principalmente de membros mais idosos de igrejas, feitos em notas promissórias em carteiras de IRAs.

Quando as notas deviam vencer, com juros, os investidores não foram reembolsados, segundo as queixas.

O gabinete da Secretaria de Estado da Geórgia está conduzindo uma investigação sobre Taylor, “envolvendo violações da Lei de Valores Mobiliários da Geórgia”, diz Matt Carrothers, porta-voz da Secretaria de Estado da Geórgia.

Taylor não respondeu a e-mails pedindo comentários. Um homem que atendeu a um número de telefone já usado por Taylor não quis se identificar, mas disse que Taylor “não faz comentários”.

O número de fraudes também aumentou muito, segundo reguladores e promotores, assim como a fraude imobiliária e os casos em que as aplicações são apresentadas em seminários tipo “almoço grátis” oferecidos pelos promotores dos investimentos.

O aumento ocorre em meio a amplos esforços para impedir os delitos. Desde 2007, pelo menos 19 Estados americanos endureceram suas leis, normalmente aumentando as penas para crimes financeiros ou violações das normas para valores mobiliários que prejudicam pessoas de 60 anos de idade ou mais.

O número de casos em nível estadual é vastamente inferior à verdadeira extensão da fraude, dizem os reguladores.

Cerca de 14.000 investigações foram realizadas por reguladores estaduais em 2009 e 2010, segundo a associação de valores mobiliários, muitas das quais podem levar anos para ser concluídas.

New York’s Tuthilltown Gristmill is a long way from Nasmyth Road, a quiet, nondescript Victorian terrace in the suburbs of West London. Around 3,500 miles, if you had to put a figure on it. But the spirit of the Hudson Valley farm distillery isn’t far from a small, disused garage near the River Thames where a 2½-year-old copper still lies gently hissing away, distilling one of London’s newest gins.

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That gin is Sipsmith, praised for its zesty aromatics and dry “London style.” Such is its success—it is now stocked in a swathe of upscale bars, including London’s Savoy Hotel, Boca Grande restaurant in Barcelona and Soho House in Berlin—that Sipsmith has added sloe gin, vodka, damson vodka and a summer cup to its portfolio. There are also plans for a second still and a U.S. export deal. For a brand that began life barely three years ago, it’s been quite a ride.

The story goes back to 2002, when, in a Lower Manhattan coffee bar, childhood friends Stamford Galsworthy and Fairfax Hall found themselves thinking of home. The drinks business had led them from England to the East Coast of America, where Mr. Galsworthy was working in the export department of U.K. brewer Fuller Smith & Turner PLC in New York and Mr. Hall held a job with Diageo PLC’s strategy department in Philadelphia. Inspired by the small distilleries they encountered on their travels around America, such as Tuthilltown, Hangar One Vodka near San Francisco and Bluecoat Gin in Philadelphia, they had the genesis of an idea: to create their own microdistillery in London.

 

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“There were so many things about the microdistilling culture in America that were great,” says the 35-year-old Mr. Galsworthy. “The quality of production was so much better. There was a real energy around all these little microdistilleries popping up everywhere, and we saw how consumers loved the buzz of an artisanal product.” But it took them five years, says Mr. Hall, 36, to “talk themselves into it.” After quitting their jobs, they moved back to England and set up shop in a West London premises that once belonged to the late whisky writer Michael Jackson. Employing the services of master distiller Jared Brown and commissioning a copper still from Germany’s oldest producers, Christian Carl, they set about creating a classic London-style gin, with unique botanical flavorings—a nod to the long-lost recipes of England’s West Country gins.

“It was a dream project,” admits Mr. Brown. “The evening I met Sam and Fairfax, we got talking about our general philosophy and what made a good gin, and we all agreed that the best that could possibly be done in the modern age is to take today’s better equipment, better-controlled ingredients and apply those to the formulas and understandings that came up over the centuries of making gin.”

Gin’s origins stretch back to the Middle Ages, when it was served as a remedy for various ailments. The modern form is said to have been introduced to Britain by soldiers who had drunk it in Holland during the Eighty Years’ War (hence the expression “Dutch Courage”). It grew in popularity, reaching its height in the mid-18th century, when its distillation was so widespread the era became known as the Gin Craze. An increase in taxes, licensing requirements and a change in taste eventually led to the closure of many distilleries, leaving Beefeater as London’s major premium producer.

The process used to create gin—distilling spirit, water and juniper berries and various citrus botanicals such as coriander and cinnamon—hasn’t really changed since 18th century. But despite the one-time proliferation of stills in England, “Prudence” (the name Messrs. Hall and Galsworthy, inspired by a favored phrase of former Prime Minister Gordon Brown when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, gave their still) was the first to be launched in London in nearly 200 years.

In order to create a unique taste, Jared Brown went through a raft of historical recipes from the 1,000-drinks-book library at his home in Gloucestershire, and started experimenting with ingredients such as Italian orris root and Chinese cassia bark. “The whole process took around six months,” he says. “The challenge was not the recipe, but tailoring it to the still.” And a desire to create a bit of gin-making history as well.

Corrections & Amplifications

The modern form of gin is said to have been introduced to Britain by soldiers who had drunk it in Holland during the Eighty Years’ War. An earlier version of this article said it was introduced during the Thirty Years’ War.

Write to Will Lyons at wsje.weekend@wsj.com