Posted on 11/18/2007 6:22:45 AM PST by DogByte6RER
From dreams to debt
Investors say they expected to cash in on the hot real estate market when they entrusted money to a company in Murrieta. Instead, many are losing their homes and facing bankruptcy.
03:08 PM PST on Saturday, November 17, 2007
By LESLIE BERKMAN The Press-Enterprise
Video: Anna Richter talks about losing money in the investment scheme
Residents of Copper Canyon in Murrieta watched in astonishment as a group of investors snapped up homes in their middle-income community last year, paying $50,000 to $100,000 more than the sellers wanted.
Today, the front yards are browning, overgrown with weeds. Many of the houses are empty. Owners have put up for-sale signs to lure buyers before the houses are auctioned on the courthouse steps or seized by lenders. Many are in foreclosure.
Such properties, strewn across southwestern Riverside County, are the most visible fallout from a real estate scheme that recruited hundreds of investors in at least six states who wanted to cash in on the hot housing market. Many of those investors instead find themselves facing foreclosure or bankruptcy. Some have lost their family homes.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Riverside County district attorney's office are investigating Pacific Wealth and the men behind it. Investors said they also have been interviewed by agents of the FBI, the Secret Service and the California Department of Corporations, but those agencies declined to explain their role in any probe. No criminal charges have been filed.
Investors who have lost an estimated $200 million in cash and equity have joined in five lawsuits that allege fraud and unfair business practices.
The trust that was a cornerstone of the scheme is broken.
(Excerpt) Read more at pe.com ...
People get snookered like they always do.
They talk themselves into it. They get emotional. They refuse to hear the truth. They seek enablers who tell them what they want to hear. They see things as they wish they were, not as they are.
It is pathetic and sad and heartbreaking. We are human and this is just a normal human failing. Some of us avoid it. Some of us have help — either people to educate us or people to step in and advise us to help us see more clearly. Some just see better than others.
You can’t dupe or cheat a skeptic. Lambs go willingly to their slaughter.
A fool and his money...........
Where are you? Have you given up?
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