May

13

There are human billboards everywhere in South Florida willing to exchange cash for gold, and I have seen ads on TV in other states and heard multiple national ads by popular radio figures (for several years now) promoting gold. Gold is still not near its historical high in real terms but its starting to seem a bit overdone. Not to say that it isn't good to keep a bit on hand just in case though.

Possible scams to pray on the elderly and greedy continue with gusto in South Florida—gold bullion and coins in two of the cases below and possible Ponzi on the third one.

Note within the article that the name "Barclay" was used for nefarious purposes.

Its always good to start with a respectable sounding business name:

In the case of Global Bullion Exchange, the Sun Sentinel found: Tax returns for the company's first two years - 2007 and 2008 - show most of the money brought in by the company went to brokers' commissions. In 2007, 77 percent of the company's gross receipts went to the brokers. Of the 20 clients listed in company documents as losing more than $225,000, 10 are over 60 years old and three have died since 2007. Those three clients died at the ages of 83, 87 and 92. Campany was suspended for six months by the National Futures Association in 2000 after reaching a settlement agreement on allegations he was involved with deceptive and misleading sales solicitations related to futures and options trading.

Heck, if you can't make it in Long Island, just move to S FLA:

Accused of running a $40 million boiler room scam on Long Island, Joseph Romano posted bond, headed to Delray Beach and continued preying on elderly victims, federal authorities said Friday. Romano and a co-conspirator, Russell Barnes, used a slick Web site, cold calls and high-pressure sales tactics to sell rolls of coins to unsuspecting buyers, according to court documents filed by Assistant U.S. Attorney Lara Treinis Gatz. Now, Gatz is arguing the duo should be jailed until their cases are resolved.

And moving the up the scale, the Ponzi schemer raking in the odd billion or so is having his former cars auctioned off—Bugatti, Lamborghini, Ferrari, etc.:

"The cars, part of Rothstein's high-octane persona, were forfeited to the government under an agreement in which the flamboyant attorney pleaded guilty to running a $1.4 billion Ponzi scheme out of his Fort Lauderdale law office. He's to be sentenced June 9, and faces up to 100 years in prison."

There is a good movie script to be made….comedy, tragedy, greed, envy, schemers and dreamers, its all here…Welcome to South Florida. If you can Madoff here you can Madoff anywhere.

People have very short memories.


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5 Comments so far

  1. ed on May 13, 2010 4:00 pm

    Can you imagine what chutzpah it takes to run a billion dollar Ponzi scheme? What percent of the population can even fathom a theft that large?

    I think this is a big reason people are duped: Many are literally unable to imagine that someone would commit such a brazen and large scale fraud.

  2. douglas roberts dimick on May 14, 2010 2:51 am

    Dark Light of Sunshine State

    This week I decided to accept a settlement offer on the collection action of a 15 year (PBC, Fla) civil litigation that I won a judgment award for illegal conversion (of a NASDAQ SmallCap stock) in 2004.

    The defendant-judgment-debtors were a mother and son. When the mother died in July 2008, her house lost its Homestead protection in January 2009.

    The son, who signed but continually breached a December 2005 settlement agreement for payment, did not file for probate of the estate, as he is a convicted federal felon (lying before a grand jury). When I attempted to probate the house for sale to satisfy the Florida civil judgment against both the mother and son, Florida probate court awarded the house to the judgment debtor son, even though the mother was jointly and severally liable for payment of the judgment award, based on the state’s constitution.

    My family maintained a winter residence at Palm Beach Polo until my parents’ passings. During those 11 years, I met more scam artists in Florida than farmers in Maine — by at least a 5:1 ratio.

    The correlation between the Sunshine State’s scam-artist concentration and its constitutional protection of assets of judgment debtors (criminal or civil) is a legal inequity that continues. One might query how Florida’s denial of equitable recourse may parallel relative systematics compared to Greece today and Thailand in 1997. Do all three have constitutional underpinnings?

    It is easy to see it here in China.

    dr

  3. Craig Bowles on May 14, 2010 6:20 am

    Gold is really running up in euros. Germany’s online site for buying silver coins stopped taking new orders.

  4. Nick Sont on May 14, 2010 8:54 am

    Most people forget about the Ponzi Scheme that governments around the world are engaging these days. It’s in the trillions…

  5. William Hansen on May 15, 2010 1:38 pm

    For 150 years Florida has been the land of booms and busts. This gold buying thing is nation wide, you see it at big jewelry stores and small we buy gold store fronts. It is just as big in any other state.

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