OT: Me on the other end of the camera...

Laurence wrote on 5/28/2010, 10:54 PM
A few years ago I made a really bad investment in American oil and gas wells. Like most of this sort of investment, it turned out to be a scam:

http://cbs11tv.com/investigators/oil.and.gas.2.1722115.html

Yeah I was an idiot. I invested a couple of thousand at first, and after getting checks for five years straight and doing quite well on that money, I decided to invest a whole lot more. Then one day the checks stopped coming in... along with pretty much any trace of the company. The family friend who first recommended the company invested with them for about ten years before he died, never knowing that it was a scam.

They had seven real wells so they could take you on a tour any time you visited. Later I found out that those wells went through a cycle where they were sold to investors, pumped oil for a few years, had the production artificially slowed down over a certain period, then were closed down, then sold to another company. Further investigation showed that the new buyer was a new company run by the old people. The rights to the oil from those wells was then sold to a new set of investors and the cycle continued. The oil in the little bottle in the video actually has the name of one of the seven real wells on it. None of the later projects I invested in existed at all. They just had the real wells to showcase to the investors they sold the fake wells to.

No branch of US Law Enforcement seems at all interested in any of this.

I signed up with a law firm that was going to take the case on a contingency basis, but they couldn't find enough assets to actually make it worth their while so the civil case just kind of fizzled.

Comments

Laurence wrote on 5/28/2010, 11:04 PM
I just also wanted to mention that one of the fellow victims was a guy who was dying of cancer. He invested in these projects so that after he was gone his wife would have an income. He spent his last few months watching his wife move in with his children with absolutely no financial resources left. Then he died.

The Jack Sweesy guy mentioned in the story is portrayed as some sort of mastermind. In reality he was just a guy who was hired out of prison to play the job of the company president. He is in prison now and a number of the victims feel a certain sense of satisfaction I'm sure, but he was just an actor in the scheme, not the brains or the organization behind it.
John_Cline wrote on 5/28/2010, 11:15 PM
Wow, Laurence, I'm really sorry to hear that you were a victim of this slimeball.
Laurence wrote on 5/28/2010, 11:58 PM
On the plus side, I've lost about 25 pounds recently so I looked a lot skinnier than I would have had it been shot last year.
apit34356 wrote on 5/29/2010, 12:26 AM
Laurence, I feel for you! But oil drilling scams go back to the beginning of wildcatting. Well sites all over the west, south-west, especially central time zone are prime areas. I remember as a kid, during the late 50's, my family and some very knowledge individuals were scammed out of major investments on some wildcatting drilling. But gold and "other" rare minerals have similar scams, just smaller markets.
When oil reach over $100 barrel, my uncle, a retired Texaco exec, questioned the criminal influence on the market outside China,etc...... and what damage it was going to do to small private investors... the very ones trying to avoid the stock market problems.....
Laurence wrote on 5/29/2010, 6:04 AM
No kidding! Yeah I know a lot more about the history of investment scams now than I did and you are absolutely right. They go back a long way.

Since this is a video forum, how did I do as talent? I am so much more comfortable on the other end of the camera. As I look at it, I hear a lot of the Canadian accent I thought I'd lost years ago. "I'd like to punch him in the nose" sounds a lot like something one of my aunts or uncles from western Canada might say.
apit34356 wrote on 5/29/2010, 7:40 AM
Laurence, you did great on the video! Stated your point and you didn't act like you were going to get a gun and shoot the jerk! Which is what most people probably would vote for!

Here's a local scam that the Michigan governor got caught in trying to get some press time using taxpayer's dollars. link:"http://www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2010/05/richard_a_short_still_says_ras.html"

I've been burned more once and its crazy how wallstreet can use one's assets without permission for crushing stocks' value and skip the penal box if they are "connected".