PODCAST EPISODE 291 – Avoiding Investment Scams

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0:12

Hello, welcome to sound finance group podcast. I am joined today in a conversation about avoiding investment scams by a man who has never implemented one Corey Shepard.

0:25

Thank you for that glowing introduction. That’s like you have never started a scam. Like, that’s how good you are.

0:35

That’s how good yeah, that’s how good That’s how good we are as firm we’ve never had to scam anybody. Which just for fun at the start of our episode here. I want to call your attention to these ever. So they already know that

0:47

she can.

0:49

Well, yeah, but I gotta give you credit, Cory has been working with crystal over at a NATO. Oh, Halo. conejos Awards is an ever company. So shout out to Crystal. Thank you so much for getting us equipped with these. I’m I was telling Corey, I’m ready to start a merchant store. All the youtubers got him. We should have a merch store. Yeah, that’s like, what I’m thinking is is a like just a coffee tumbler something like this, that says on the side. I’m not going to live with my kids when I’m old because I have to are you question mark. And then we’ll just we’ll just put our our contact information on the bottom so that when they’re drinking in front of their friends, yes. It will show our contact info. So it’s just very important. We put it oriented the right way to come handle.

1:40

I mean, I think we might workshop the copy just a little bit. I liked the general idea for sure. For sure. I was also thinking like the sound financial group Lamborghini or something like that, you know? Well,

1:52

I mean, at least one. Like, could we buy a scrap one like an old beat up one that doesn’t run and we just get it wrapped. So we don’t even have to make sure the paint is squared away. We just wrap it and then take pictures of it for our website. And we’re like we’re so committed to being responsible with our finances that we didn’t put a real Lamborghini on our homepage. All right, should we speaking of scams people pull on people should we talk a little bit about scams people get caught up in.

2:26

Now, first of all, I would just like to, you know, bring the energy down for a second and say, there’s nothing fun about this. A lot of people have lost huge amounts of money in scams like these. We’re only doing this because we come across we’ve become aware of people losing money in some of these scams, we want to do everything we can to help prevent that in the in the future. So if we laugh at various times during this episode, which will try to be a little more somber, except we want to be entertaining at the same time. We’re not saying that it’s not. It’s not a serious issue. And it’s a big deal. And we just want a lot of people to hear about this, because that’s the way that we win over the scammers

3:11

indeed and like for those of you that have watched Bernie Madoff’s, they know the documentary on Bernie Madoff, it’s on Netflix. You will see, the reason that that scam got so big is he was really really good at making it look like it was real. For decades and decades and decades fake statements everything. Now. Now he had certain attributes that should make you alert, for instance, when your question him, he’d be like, you’re out of the fund, and send people their money back. And so he created because so many of his clients knew each other, he created this fear to even ask in. Because if you asked how he’s producing the returns, you could get kicked out of the fund. So there were red flags, but much like red flags in dating, where somebody’s like, oh, I should have seen that come in six months ago. Often that happens to investors after they’ve gotten into something that isn’t going to work. And after they’ve gotten into something that isn’t going to work, they can’t get back out of it. And the worst thing about this is when people are defrauded, it is embarrassing. For some people, there’s deep feelings of shame because maybe they lost their money and their spouses money. They may have invited other people to get into it. And because of all of that they can carry around this deep shame, which has them not even talk about them being defrauded, and therefore lets the scammers greater, have greater impact on the American public because people don’t talk about it. So with

4:50

that they don’t they don’t have to feel the shame and they could forward this to you know, so we’re trying to help both sides of that equation. Jim Yeah,

5:00

which if if you are somebody who has ever been impacted by a scam, or you think you might be in an investment position right now, that could be unethical, feel free to forward that along to us, we’re happy to take a look at no charge info at SF je way.com, that sound financial group way.com, you can email us emails, the accompanying documentation will reach out to you. And if we need to be a little bit of an aggregator here, to point out some of these to then be able to bring, you know, a regulator in or somebody that can go deeper into the investigation, we’re more than happy to do that. So one of the first things we’re going to look at is just the general investing scam, where somebody says we are going to invest money, we are doing it by some unique proprietary strategy, it almost always involves that and we are going to deliver outrageous returns, it’s almost always involves an outrageous return. Now what do I mean by outrageous return outrageous is anything that you can’t see fundamentally supported economically. So one more than

6:17

anything else you’ve ever seen, as you can see out there in the in the market. Yeah, and

6:24

and there’s kind of two versions of how they lead you on with these one is with slightly higher returns in the market, say 20 25%. Now I say slightly as compared to the 50 400% return, that some of these we’re going to look at actually promised to their investors. 50 400% per annum or 1.4 ish, or whatever it was per day compounding. Now, here’s the problem that we all have when someone lies to us. They’re lying to us because they’re telling us something they know, or at least believe that we want to hear. Okay, so that’s why it’s hard to not believe somebody when they’re feeding you a load of hooey on these investments. is we want to hear it What don’t we all want 50 400% return in a year? Doesn’t it seem like if you got into and got connected to it, or you knew somebody was in it’s like, I could roll the dice with $5,000 I mean, what the heck like and that’s fine with the scammer perfectly fine. In fact, there was one crypto scam that I think is similar to one of them that we’re going to look at today where what they did was use private WhatsApp chats then investors that okay, I was supposed to get my money out in 60 days where’s my money? Literally what they would do is say well, we we just love having an investor we just need you to record a testimonial first and then we’ll get you paid out then they get them to put their testimonial in this private group and then kick them from the group so that nobody else in there knows and they’re saying hey, it’s great and all as well and this has been a great investment and and that is that person trying to hold you over the barrel to keep the fraud going long enough to get a few more people in.

8:18

So like current the new version of the phone number of your specialty broker was disconnected like that like you just can’t get anything from it anymore. Yeah,

8:28

that’s right and I’m going to show you guys what about the worst thing is that you could see when you’re looking at one of these now right before I do this or doing the actual company names here actual companies actually doing business who may or may not be fraudulent guys like we are not a court of law here I’m not trying to condemn anybody also really hoping not to get sued about doing this episode and and because of that like innocent till proven guilty in a court of law excetera so all of those things so let’s just say one big allegedly Corey allegedly what’s our big allegedly at the beginning Yeah, so that I want you to know that we like there are things that don’t look right about some of these were going to point those out. These could possibly not be scams. Now, if I had to be a betting man, I’m not putting money in

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but if they are real it’s like okay, don’t like these are things that scam look so don’t make your site look like a scam if you’re not like so. Hopefully, if it’s a real business, we can help them out a little

9:41

little Yes. Yeah, to just not look like some of these are going to look alright, let’s go to our first one. This is the worst thing you can see if you’ve invested in a company. And this is the website you go to, to see how your investments are doing. Now this this particular company has had this page for at least a month. I think that just nobody can get in. Nobody can see it. Don’t be worry. Don’t worry, your asset, your data is safe and assets fully insured. That so just don’t cry. Yeah, don’t worry, they’re fully insured by the rocket ship that’s flying off the planet. Maybe with all your money, I don’t know. But that is the thing you most don’t want to see. Now let’s see what this company was promising investors. Okay. We are going over here to this YouTube video by Golden City capitals now,

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Olden capital go this is also part of the problem is there are a lot of variations on this name. Some of them are the same company slightly changing their names, some of them are entirely different companies. So it makes it tricky. The attorney downloads real

10:59

Yeah. Now, by the way, now this, this isn’t the the big deciding factor. But let me just point this out. The YouTube channel that this company has, has one video that was posted one year ago, that’s it, that could be a little bit of an indicator, if it’s like, oh, they threw something out on YouTube wants to have an ad that was housed on the Internet for free that they could share probably in other forums. Okay, now, let’s look at your investment, our priority, golden capital. Now, we’re going to play it here, just the beginning a little bit, and then I’m going to take you to where they start talking about the offer they’re make. Alright, so we’re going to show you this video, which is of an investment opportunity. That was one video on their one YouTube channel. And they didn’t post anything else. There’s some bot comments I’m going to show you in a minute. But let’s look at what they were promising.

12:11

Got that soothing us

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a little capital LTD is an investment and fiduciary management firm. We offer Investment Services and Financial consultation on a small scale to individuals. And even on a larger scale to brands and companies

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need pause it for a second hold. What is financial investment services for a brand? Like in this context, brands and companies is like your company is a company and they have lots of brands that they might own. But it just like it’s words, more words that aren’t saying more. Yes, it’s what the theme is? Word sloth, the

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word salad. This is like six minutes or word salad if you guys listen to the whole thing,

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a golden capital, we believe in consistent growth and diversity as the key to financial liberty.

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All the buzzwords right financial liberty. Like I can tell you, I like that so much this idea of financial liberty, it’s like oh, I would use that except I don’t want to sound like scam.

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Our mission is to create long term value for our investors through the careful stewardship of their capital.

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Now, I am not going to make fun of either this person’s age or inexperience as Ronald Reagan would say. But the thing to notice is this is our spokesmodel whoever the spokesmodel is now he didn’t say anything about it. But if you are this you know young up and coming entrepreneur and you’ve developed this program and then say who you are, he doesn’t say who he is. That’s another thing to be cautious of. Is I’m with so and so what some of the scams and some mini documentaries online shout out to coffee Zilla who does a great job with these. But he talks about all the time that sometimes these folks just hire actors to be their CEO or to be their head of HR or whatever. Then he finds them on the you know, acting websites where they get hired.

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We invest across the alternative asset classes in private equity, stock broking real estate, cryptocurrency rankings not investment banking credit and hedge funds as well.

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It oh there’s only hang on hang on wait we got as well as structure

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insurance and capital growth equity from the major capital markets.

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Now I think we just mentioned nearly every single thing you could invest in possibly in a financial

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any said we serve individuals, companies brands already basically said Is he could have shortened that whole opening of 55 seconds could have been Hi, we’re whoever and we invest in anything for anybody?

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Wait, we do everything for everyone. That’s it.

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And then stewardship, stewardship liberty, okay.

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We didn’t say pork belly futures. He did not yes. So it really lost opportunity, a new market that they could get into sir. Okay, so

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we’re gonna get to the strategy. Okay, maybe it’s probably better to lay him say, Okay, here we go, I gotta get back to the beginning of the stretch. Here we go

15:27

well to a wider audience of investors, our strategy is unconstrained by asset class, industry sector, security type or geography. And as such, whether in times of stability or volatility, in good markets or in bad, there are always strategic opportunities for the company with the skills and talent to see what others don’t.

15:52

That was, again, perfect word salad. Like didn’t say anything about that town to people. Here’s the hole that we try to explain anything like that very general, but very big words, it sounds very attractive. And for many investors, you might be like alternative asset. That sounds so cool. Doesn’t matter what type of asset like that should get your attention? Because often, regulations would say they may be limited the type of assets they could get,

16:21

right? There’s also little typos throughout all of this. And this could happen at any company broking, stock broking brokering. Yeah, I don’t know what stock

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broking is maybe the investors don’t get their money back. That’s called stock broking.

16:39

If it ain’t fixed, don’t broke it. Also, like one of the words was capitalized in the middle of a sentence, there wasn’t a or there wasn’t a period or, and any one of those? Yeah, but they tend not to happen in companies that are really serious about real unreal about what they do.

16:58

Yes, that’s a great point. And if they did, and you pointed out to him, they’d be all over it like white on rice, they wouldn’t hesitate to fix it almost immediately. So that’s a little bit about their strategy. So let’s just see what it takes in order to invest in this. Now, keep in mind, there’s some kind of build up. Remember, there’s also a sales process when people get on the phone with them, etc. But we’re going about three minutes, 58 seconds in. Which by the way, let’s go ahead, Miranda and let’s put the link to this video in the description. We’re going to drive his views up. But next to it in the description should say, do not invest with them may be a scam. Right? Just put that right in the description. I’ll take more our legal risks that bar so here is what they’re offering. You could get the starter plan quarry, so I’m just gonna sell it to you. Okay, starter plan, minimum startup fee $100. Now, by the way, this particular entity, if I my memory serves me right. Didn’t call it an initial investment. They called it a starter fee. So watch out for that change of language. Because then when somebody tries them like, No, that was your starter fee with us, that wasn’t your investment. Like once you paid that it was gone. We were just going to try to get your return or whatever they say.

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But so you can pay a higher a higher fee, and then get this daily rate of return of 1.1%. Yes. Now. Would this be a good time to do a little math?

18:42

Not yet. I want to get down to the primary plan. Can I get this date? I can’t get my little bar to go away. So it is great. Let’s just let him say at once because I just can’t believe he says this.

18:58

D trading days to Basic Plan. This plan has a minimum startup fee of $1,000 daily ROI of 1.17% and a service charge of 30% after 90 trading days.

19:12

So, Cory What would that 1.25% be in actual annual ROI if they’re giving us that return? daily compounding?

19:23

1.250 is that the bottom line?

19:26

Yes. 1.25 Because I mean, come on. If we’re gonna get started with this group, we should start with at least five grand right.

19:36

So we’re going to put in I did this originally on my good old HP style financial calculator. And can you see oh, can I share my screen?

19:51

Hang on? You can I just got to do something with it. Hang on. Let me see. I think I can. Can I just make it guest? To hang on I gotta There’s an extra thing I have to do Cory to bring your screen up on my screen, but I’m going to figure it out. And our audience is so compassionate. They are going to not mind waiting, I hope. Guest Oh, here we go. I know how to do it. I’m gonna go here, here. And then get to there you go, Cory, when it will, I think maybe can I put you back? Oh, look at that got you in there.

20:25

I can’t see us at the moment. But that’s okay.

20:28

Oh, no. Faces. I’m not on screen.

20:31

So I did this with my HP style calculator on my phone. But I found a site just to show everybody what this looks like. So 1.25 interest now, interest per year is what they say in here. Because that’s normally how you’re trying to calculate it. But if I put in 365 periods, then that will compound that 1.25 365 times in in a year once per day. Present value. Let’s give it a $5,000 Oh, 5000 5000. Yeah,

21:08

we’re gonna put in $5,000. That’s because we’re doing the primary plan. It’s not platinum plan. I don’t know why they call it the primary plant.

21:14

Well, now he did say 90 days of trading. So mate. Well, let’s start with the year though, because I just want to see what it grows to.

21:21

Because, man, if we get that kind of return, aren’t we going to put right back in?

21:25

We’d have to so check this you start with your 5000 Yep, it’s going well start with in a month. You got 5800. So you know, that doesn’t seem like that big of a change, but things are going in great direction. Or sorry, in 12 days, you have 5800 By the time you get to 365 days, you have $465,000

21:53

I already regret not having put in 15,000.

21:59

So but just to you know, just to listen to that 90 day thing. Yeah. Mine. Well, like $1 Oh, yeah. grows to $93. So nearly a 90 300% return. Yeah. Yeah, it’s 1000. It’s crazy.

22:27

Now. Now let’s, let’s do this. Cory, I’m gonna go back to my screen for just a moment. Okay. And what we’ll see is with each of these plans now, there is this thing called a service fee. Well, what they did is they tell their investors, like, if you make this money after 90 days, you get your money back, we just need a service fee. And the service is reasonable.

22:52

Now here, that’s it, it seems. At first, it seems reasonable to say well, if if you’re making me if you’re making me $500,000 In one year off of a $5,000 investment, I love to share 30% with you. Yeah, love to Ryan’s really doing really, really good. Now, before we get to, I think I know where you are going. Paul, I want to say one thing about economics. And that is supply and demand. And market forces would say that if they really are that good, and they’re that bunch better than everybody else out there, they don’t have to pay you that much. Like if all you got was 25% return per year, if you could turn your 5000 into 20,000 in a year, so many people would be so happy, they would take that offer left and right. I was gonna say if it could be done, if it could be done. Yep. So that’s the reason why this is economically not feasible, is if someone was that good head and shoulders above everyone else and producing that investment return, they would not have to give you so much of it. Well, they would not have to pay you so much for on your investment.

24:08

Let’s think about this. Let’s say the founder of this company only had $50,000. So without us cutting back to your calculator quarry if we had somebody at $50,000 and we get a 93x return on 50 grand what what is that going to be? 93 times 50 grand?

24:32

Oh, it’s $50,000 times 93 times OH times 93. Well, that my other calculators not right. Yeah, just do a 93 is 4.6 million.

24:50

Yeah. So think about that, that if you had this company, and you could produce these returns, why would you tell anybody else about it? Like I What I often say is not to say nobody could do that. The thing is nobody who could do that would tell you. Because they would just be somewhere because now that next year, that whatever, 4 million you just talked about next year is going to be 400 million. So why right? They need you in there messing up their trading algorithm with additional volume. And this fact that they say it grows, and they stay in communication with you keep making you feel good about it. And then when it comes time to take money out in 90 days, you have to first transfer 30% of that. So now, if you had grown $400,000, and probably what happens, people say, well, it’s up, do you want to take the money out? Now let’s just keep it rolling. And it gets bigger and bigger and bigger. And now, let’s say it’s 450,000. Like I can’t I don’t have that much cash to plug, well, what do you have it and then they suck it in and don’t send the money out. Now, I’m not saying this company does that. But what I

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am, this is the other part about that 30% fee, that service charge, this company doesn’t have this. Yeah, they did do this right. shut down their website. But also, if any investment company says, Before we can give you your money, you have to pay us the fee, out of cash from another account. Another red flag, yeah, any reputable company is going to net their fee out of what they already if they were actually growing their money, they would just take it out of there, that’s just so much easier from an operational standpoint, like they can just do it because they’re already managing the money. Yeah. So it’s, that’s another red flag. Also, if the company you’re investing with is the only one telling you what’s there or not, or how it’s growing, big red flag. We have third-party custodians that are totally unrelated to us to tell clients what the rate of return is in their accounts. What’s happening, is someone else is holding the money is super important. For accountability.

27:06

Yes. And now I just pulled this up, because there were more plans, there was also the standard plan, then you have a capitalist plan, a minimum investment of 30,000, a minimum fee of 50 startup fee, remember not investment, a startup fee, very specific in that language. And then if I get over here, I think they also have some memberships, you can be a part of Yeah, there you go. So you could get the gold contract package. So you pay extra, but then you get better cash out rates, you can see the service fee drops. And by giving these lots of options and ways to engage them, what you’re giving the person who’s potentially being defrauded multiple options to have them feel like they’re in control, such that it lays the suspicion of the thing that you’re not pushing, because think about each one of these is obviously amazingly profitable for them, or they wouldn’t do it. And how good does it fit? Why can’t quite do the platinum pack? Hey, you know what, why don’t we just do the special package, and we’ll just get you in for a little bit. And that’s the last thing I would mention is that on this type of thing, if they’re saying they have true alternatives, they’re gonna produce these returns everything else and have a very low investment minimum, it’s probably a fraud, because then going back to our conversation of if they could do this, and even if they wanted to share with people, would you rather have five billionaires who you had to pay interest to? Or, you know, 7000 individual investors? Operationally, it’s just way easier to have very few people invested with you. Yep. So one more that I want to get on everybody’s radar. This is another company A company that sounds real similar. Now, I have no idea if this is legit or non legit. It looks like we could pull up the website in both Spanish and an English. Last week when we were doing our research where it said there was just six days left Cory

29:06

that’s passed on. Yeah, there was a weird countdown clock that didn’t say what it was counting down to.

29:12

Yeah. But unless maybe this is a conference or something. I don’t know. But anyway, we couldn’t figure out what was counting down to.

29:19

But we were looking at the English side, by the way. Yeah,

29:22

we weren’t looking at Spanish. But it is funny. There’s a few of these you’ll see. And these are other things to just pay attention to. You can see translated English translated to English, not translated English, not translated English. So that’s something to be aware of. When you see those little things out

29:44

of place, real customer base of growing happy customers, someone would have pointed out and they would have been on it like, like white on rice, like you said, Yeah, to get that fixed.

29:57

Yep. And when we click Then on this website to say, find out what you could do. Let me show you guys I just clicked on it, but I want to have you guys watch me do it. So I go down here and I say, Wow, this does really sound interesting. I might want to do it in 70 plus countries etc. Discover it, man I’m in let’s do it. Oh, I have to download WhatsApp to correspond with them. Anybody who’s offering you investments and they say that how you’re going to communicate is WhatsApp. I don’t even know if Dust is still around Mark Cuban’s company dust was one year ago, any of these encrypted apps that they would say you should communicate with them on the run, just run to anonymous, too easy to get ghosted, very little accountability, you can’t track where somebody is, like, at least by other older forms of communication, you at least end up gathering some data that you could share with authorities, but all you can share with somebody is a WhatsApp handle. And that can change overnight. So if anybody points you to WhatsApp to find out about an investment run, and last but not least, even if you’re not well versed in economics, inquire as to their economic model, how are you producing these returns, if they are not open and sharing the way that they’re producing the returns, then that’s a good indicator that they may not be producing the returns. Because once you start having somebody say, you’re gonna get 1214 15 Take lending on first deeds of trust. As an example, if you’re lending to somebody at 15, well, you probably have a piece of real estate that securing the note, that’s at least 60%, where the note is only 60% of the real estate value. So you have a fully collateralized piece of real estate. And even those deals can be sticky, they can still have things go wrong with them, but at least you’re secured by a piece of real estate. And we understand that that’s more risk and more work that goes into it. So when somebody is offering you 2025 or 90 300% a year, then that what they’re doing is as long as you’re aware, and you lock in your head, some of the things we talked about today, they will tell on themselves during their pitch, you just need to understand the language of what they’re telling you so that you can see through it.

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