Financial planners will often give away a financial plan for free because their ulterior motive is to get at your money, invest it, and earn fees and commissions.

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Mr. Carpenter says his officers have no financial motive to issue tickets because the agency is funded from state vehicle-license fees.

WSJ: A Question of Law and Order

And again, I'm speaking in a broader sense here, not with regard to what happened in Wisconsin, because I cannot make judgments about motive there while it's under investigation.

WHITEHOUSE: Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jay Carney,

Because the defendant had little or no motive to conceal the account, the court concluded that he was not willful.

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And to kill a man for something he cannot help, such as his race, seems much worse a motive than to kill him because he is rich, or successful, or owes you money.

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An economic-motive requirement is, finally, unnecessary, because legitimate free-speech claims may be raised and addressed in individual RICO cases as they arise.

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Which means that it is very difficult to detect a rational motive for the taking of real bets matched by offsetting fictional ones, because it is very difficult to see how any individual could have profited by such a stratagem.

BBC: The how but not why of UBS's losing bets

Because so few of the murders have been investigated, in many cases it is hard to determine the motive.

ECONOMIST: Colombia

No motive has been established, but police say they have not ruled out the possibility that Khan was killed because of the lottery win.

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