One of the partners, Cole, was into more than money fraud. He was into young males in his office when he was a principal mind you. R.E board at first denied him his license. Too bad they did not keep that train of thought.

He tried to run all the way to Camarillo to work in RE when they were being investigated. They’ll never find out right? Imagine when he got a phone call from a reporter at his Camarillio RE office?!?

http://www.bakersfield.com/special_sections/crispcole

They kept it all in the family or employees. Bought a property, then sold it to amother team member for thousands more than what it was worth. Had FIL send out verification of employment. Had their own appraiser. SWEET!

I went into town to look at properties at the time. The market was swamped with just their foreclosures alone.

They are going down!! Eventually. FIL and MIL alone at the age of 60 will owe 5 million. Crisp and Cole probably going to do prison time after FIL, MIL and daughter talk.

One other big case I will look up. They were prosecuted much faster.

Awww, those were the days! If you were a snake that is.

As the saying goes, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Everyone is looking to make a buck without having to actually do anything to earn it.

No, he preyed on people’s greed, all he had to say is “this will pay 15% or more”

Too bad people like this are not being punished. Not sure that he “technically” broke any laws, but much like the deadbeat borrowers, one would guess that he knew he’d never be able to pay off all the loans.

I take offense to that, but you’re right, a sweet-sounding 396! I’ll see if I can get the old truck to impress you.

http://www.bcautos.com/musclecars/69chevelless.html

In this case and many others, the ‘lenders’ are just innocent bystanders who get caught up in the hype of making a better return than at the bank. Their ego tells them to be a big-shot private money lender, and make the big yields, but their naivete causes them to trust, and act without investigating.

If any of these ‘lenders’ would have spent $500 for title insurance, they would have received a preliminary title report detailing the several liens in front of them – they were all of record!

Ever since the patriot act you need to show a valid id when purchasing gold coins from businesses. It would be hard to gather up 2mill in krugerrands without leaving a trace. (although not impossible just difficult)

All this corruption makes me sick. I just want to buy a house without funding some scammers retirement.

Private money (both debt/equity)can be very good, and in full disclosure, we use private funds for all of our loans/purchases.

The main lesson for anyone who is interested in Trust Deeds is to ONLY LOAN IN THE 1ST POSITION…PERIOD…NO EXCEPTIONS…NO JUNIOR LIENS!!!!

Second, have someone knowledgable review title to ensure that you are safely recorded in the 1st position.

Third, keep your collective 1st position at a max of 70% of TODAY’S value with a term of 1 year max…lower LTV if longer than 1 year.

This helps mitigate the possible drop in values between lending and maturity. One could feel that 30% over the next 12 months is a fairly safe bet on good property…or not, its the your call, not the borrowers.

If these investors had followed those steps, they would have turned out much better than they did.

And best sounding engine ever.