Saturday, December 25th, 2021

December 2021

25 Dec 2021 | : blog

I haven’t posted here for a while as malware removal and link repairs have used up time.

But after a very enjoyable month as Santa Jay,  it’s time to start again.

Lots has happened in the world, my life and yours that I could have commented on.

But after dreaming about this topic, I awoke several nights ago thinking about my experience with gold and silver investing.

Several years ago, I bought some silver coins.  When I got the coins that cost more than spot price, I became the recipient of two years of the company’s newsletter.   Well after several years when the price was up and I needed some cash, I thought to sell the coins.

The local coin shop wouldn’t pay spot price but only about a third of it, so the could make their big profit.

So I sold them back to the people I’d bought them from.    They paid spot price, less two more years of their newsletter, which I didn’t want.    But they had the cons, so what could I do?

A great investment but not so great when selling.

Then I got gold and silver options with a firm that you could “buy, sell, or trade at any time” or so they said each time I called.

I was going to sell out the silver options when the price hit $20 an ounce.

For a while as the prices rose, I received monthly earned income off of those options.  Then one day my broker wasn’t there anymore but at another firm.

I was assigned a new guy to work with.  he seemed very interested in my investment.   One day he called and said I might have to sell or lose money when the prices went down.  A while later, he called back and said it was a false alarm but that he’d watch it carefully.

If the price went down by Friday, I should sell, so call him on Friday.

Friday I called from my home in the Mountain Time zone.   The firm was in the Eastern Time zone.

I called, again hearing that I could buy, sell, or trade at any time.  My broker was at lunch and he never came back the rest of the day.  I called several times before 4 pm ET.  He wasn’t back yet i was told.  Could I sell like we’d planned?  No, I had to work with him I was told.

So much for buy, sell, or trad at any time.

The following Monday the price fell and I’d lose it all unless I bought the difference.

I foolishly did.

But the prices rose and I could make it all back, my original investment and the makeup investment.

I waited until the price was $22 per oz.

But then could not sell as the firm had been shut down by the Feds.

The owner of the firm had been caught driving home one day with $29 million in gold bullion in his car.

That wasn’t all, for months he’d been going to their bank and in two withdrawals daily, taking out several thousand dollars at a time, which when combined equaled more that $10 grand a day.  The feds had established that when $10 grand or more a day was withdrawn form someone’s account, the federal government was to be informed so as to check on preventing some illegal action.  Be cause he took less that that out with each withdrawal, even though the daily total was more than $10 grand, the bank didn’t think anything of it.

Over time the owner had embezzled  all the funds of the company and all invested funds as they came in.   That’s why the broker who paid me dividends was let go and why I couldn’t sell that Friday, and why the broker working with me was told to go home and not come back that day.  There were no funds to pay out with.  The owner had them all.

Well, he was caught and given 12 years in prison with furloughs for certain reasons, health, family needs etc. And ordered by the courts to pay back $19 million to investors.

There was no money, so the feds sold all the assets of the company even down to the office furniture.

A law firm  came to represent the victimized investors.   They got judgments against all senior officers of the company.

A judgement is of no value unless  a property or something is sold to satisfy the judgement.  But the court can’t sell ones’s house to get this judgement paid, so these were practically worthless to the investors.

Even firm consultants had judgments brought against them amounting to their full consulting fees.  One such consultant was in legal trouble for some shady investment dealings he done and in order to stay out of prison before the trial, his family posted a bail bond of $200,000. I don’t know the result of his trial, but that amount was more than the consulting fee he’d received form the gold and silver firm I was involved with. How could he pay the Judgement when the court has 200 grand of his family’s money?

The bank involved was bought out by a larger banking group so the lawyers went after them and an agreement was made that the bank owed 1.3 million dollars to satisfy their error as the new bank owner  they’d assumed all parts of the smaller bank with it’s purchase, even their debts and mistakes.

That would be a nice amount, however the judge awarded the lawyers for the victims hourly wages and the lawyers for the bank hourly wages. Who ever heard of the losing lawyers getting paid?  That left very littler for the investors.

One man from Atlanta, Ga., who I spoke to on the phone, had invested $140 grand, one man $538 grand, I only lost 21,400 (after what I did receive earlier form them).

After pocketing nearly 3/4 of a million from the deal, the lawyers for the victims made the handsome sum of one cent on the dollar pay out to the victims.  I got $214.  The man who invested $538 grand got 1 cent on the dollar too.  Between the time of the collapse of the company and the settlement, he had died, thus his heirs pay out wouldn’t even have paid for his funeral.

Who got all the money?

The company owner, who never paid a cent back, the Attorneys for the victims, other attorneys and the courts.

You know if people believed the Biblical command “Thou Shalt Not Steal” no investor would have lost money.

 

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