Waxing Philosophically: The Tale of The Financial Predator

I recently met another victim of the financial predators that it has been my relentless cause over the past decade to expose.

In my 27-year career, I have seen it all.  One of the things that never goes away, because it has been present since the beginning of time…..is the deceptors.  I have written on this topic many times, the Madoffs, the Tom Petters, IPM Realty and Oxford Financial, to name a few.  If you recall, it was yours truly on my radio show 6 years ago that warned Minneapolis radio listeners to run for the hills from IPM Realty, a sponsor on the same station. Three years latter, MN investors had lost $150 million dollars.  I also warned the SEC about Oxford Financial, who was running a Ponzi scheme out of the VanDusen mansion.  Less than two years later, over $200 million was gone and the orgies and other sorted activity that went on in the mansion were revealed.

Financial predators take advantage of the trusting, the well informed and the uninformed.  While they say a sucker is born every day, the financial predator lures their prey with a sweet sucker of lies that sound like the truth.  In the end, the financial predator wreaks havoc on many, ruins lives, causes the trusting to become untrusting...........and eventually either are rewarded with pain for their sins or simply end up living in a van, down by the river, eating government cheese and drinking PBR.  Ayn Rand in her famous novel, "Atlas Shrugged," calls these guttersnipes “looters."

It is lonely at the top for the successful individuals who have clawed their way to achieving success, the honest way.  It is lonely “up there” because the truly successful are under constant attack by the vipers that desire only one thing, to confiscate the wealth of the men and women of honest success, by any means. These priceless few, having trusted in the beginning and along the way, have the scars from the many knives placed in their back.

For these reasons, the men and women of this type typically have a very small circle of true friends, trust few and spend the majority of their time with people that knew them when they were young.

While it is may be lonely at the top, those who have achieved honest wealth often do at the same time achieve great happiness by having meaningful and deep relationships with what I have coined “foxhole friends." Unlike the “looter-fox” with the knife, foxhole friends will jump in front of a knife or bullet for one another.  Ironic isn’t it, the fine line between taking a knife in the back from a looter, not seeing him coming in the dark vs. stepping between the guttersnipes to save the worthy.

In the end, the fate of the looter-fox, guttersnipe and their many brethren is the same. They all meet their maker, are required to atone for their sins and are then cast into the burning fire of hell, where their craftiness is the language by which exchange takes place among the vermin that exist there.

INVESTING and LIFE LESSONS

1. If it sounds too good to be true, IT ALWAYS IS.
2. The world is full of liars and cheats, for which there is no vaccination or cure other than incarceration to prevent them from their perpetrator ways.
3. Never ignore your gut instinct.  Remember that in the movie, “Basic Instinct”, Sharon Stone uses sex to seduce her victim, much like the snake in the Garden of Eden.
4. Do not, at all costs, look the other way when you smell a stench, just so that there is fresh air on the other side for a little while.

Don't Take the "Bait"

Attention to those still willing to listen to annuity pitchmen.  
Visit WFG’s website, http://www.wadefinancialgroup.com/ and click on the Consumer Advocacy tab and scroll down to the bottom. View the full episode from ABCs "To Catch an Annuity Predator." View these videos as often as needed to inoculate yourself.