Following Madoff'case last year, this is the next Ponzi scheme scam where celebrities are ripped off. Most anti-scam sites would simply say "Oh its easy, just don't believe in deals that are too good to be true".

Scammers aren't stupid either, especially those who deal with big-time, complex Ponzi schemes and with the gut to target celebrities. But their basic tactics are in fact quite simple. they followed another rule:

1) Show them the carrot (high returns, lottery, large sum of money, etc)

2) Fake a few "trial runs" to gain confidence (hence some coined scams as Confidence Trick)

3) When the time is ripe, go in for the kill or harvest.

Before Kiefer was allegedly ripped off to the tune of $869,000 -- Sutherland actually profited more than $100,000 in a previous deal with the suspect -- a deal that, cops say, was made to bait Kiefer into dropping the mother lode.

According to court documents, obtained by TMZ, Kiefer fronted the suspect -- Michael Wayne Carr -- $550,000 for a cattle deal in 2006 in which Carr claimed he would buy cattle in Mexico and sell them in the U.S. for a profit.

Kiefer told investigators that within 30 days of the initial investment, Carr wired him $685,000 -- a $130,000 profit, according to the documents.

Just a few months later, Kiefer claims Carr approached his financial advisers with a similar deal -- one that required an $869,000 investment.