Stock and Bond Fraud, including Boiler Rooms / Pump and Dump Schemes, Mutual Fund & Hedge Fund Fraud, FOREX scams, plus Churning, Private Placements, Venture and Bridge Funding, IPOs, Viaticals Fraud, HYIP and Prime Bank scams, MTNs, Historical Notes, Recovery Schemes, etc. Includes the Jim Norman Project and the Michael Dotson Project and similar HYIP scams.
ANYBODY who has any info on where these guys may have hidden/acquired assets (Facebook stock, real estate, whatever) PLEASE pass this info to the receiver
Well that's the NASI WEBSITE, not receiver established website, which I assume will be set up soon. This DOES imply NASI accepts the fact the SEC RECEIVER will prevail....not a Bankruptcy Trustee.
That domain name is now owned by Trigild, not NASI, so at least it's not Joel & Ed frigging with the victims.
This web site looks suspicious to me. The form is instituted by "constant contact", and it doesn't "smell" like a legitimate government type site, but rather more like a site someone set up on their own.
Reader wrote:This web site looks suspicious to me. The form is instituted by "constant contact", and it doesn't "smell" like a legitimate government type site, but rather more like a site someone set up on their own.
Any feed back on the use of this site?
Thank you.
Trigild owns those websites and employs William Hoffman. The dismissal documents were filed by William Hoffman's attorneys. There has been at least one court document posted on the website before I was able to pull it up on the docket.
They had to set up that site super quick, so it's not surprising that it's... sad. As for the constant contact, I would have went with an onsite wordpress plugin rather than an offsite tool, but the setup over at the other site is faster.
When chosen for jury duty, tell the judge "fortune cookie says guilty" - A fortune cookie
Regarding the lawyers swooping in: no, there's probably little that private counsel can do to obtain any more for a net-loss complainant, over and above a pari pasu division of whatever the SEC will divvy out. And that would clearly include the assorted dodges set up by Wishner to hide profits over the years.
There might be an alternate method of recovery, however.
If someone working as a liaison for the company on a semi-independent status had led suckers into the scam and profited, I think a canny lawyer could bring a case of fraud against them, rather than the NASI/Gillis/et al targets. I think you could make a solid case that any reasonable person would suspect illegality about the enterprise on its face, so intentionally enticing a third party into "investing" would then be fraud, particularly if the in-betweener was a previous investor. That would mean that the in-betweener (facilitator, arranger, whatever) would be receiving not just a percentage of the "new" investment and/or a bonus as inducement to round up new marks, but that money from their own "ATM investments" was not from the ATMs but from downstream investors.
That would not be a popular legal theory to "net winners," but to "net losers," I'm sure it would sound justified and reasonable. The hang-up would be proving an in-betweener's intent to deceive (if this is legally necessary at all).
The counter would be, "My in-betweener client was an investor himself, and was a victim, not a victimizer."
And the counter-counter would be, "We must assume anyone who has invested $50,000, or $200,000, or $1,000,000 is a 'sophisticated investor' and not an idiot. If your client did any due diligence whatsoever, they would have recognized the obvious fraud at work. Since the scheme prima facia is mathematically unworkable, since there is no instance where any identical scheme turned out to be anything but criminal and this information is easily available on line, and since your client happily accepted payments from the scheme for a period of years, we can assume your client knew exactly what was happening."
To which the proper defendant's response is, "But-- but-- but-- but-- "
Except the information was never readily available online. I never came across this thread until after the subpoena happened. I've search Nationwide Automated Systems countless times before, never seeing this come up. A common issue with searching message boards.
Ted, you may have a point, about the private counsel options, but... I don't suspect it would go anywhere either, since they were in one sense or another working for NASI, they are ultimately the company's problem, and since they were selling what amounts to unlicensed unregistered securities, the SEC gets first claim on them as well, and anyway, I seriously doubt that any of them actually made enough off of it to warrant much action other than possible recovery, and that will also be included in the receivership. I would just be terribly surprised if any of the little fish like the sales people actually had any thing to go after. This isn't going to be like Zeek where a lot of the big winners were essentially in on it. The "boys" were all about greed and not sharing with anyone else, at least as far as I have seen so far. If they'd really been working it, they'd have been selling fake shares in the company as well as fake ATM's, and they weren't, or at least not that has been raised yet. I think from all appearances they intended to milk this as long as they could, but they got greedy and/or stupid and the numbers and the math of it inexorably caught up with them.
The fact that you sincerely and wholeheartedly believe that the “Law of Gravity” is unconstitutional and a violation of your sovereign rights, does not absolve you of adherence to it.
Gotcha. However, at least one of the "little fish" had more than 200 regular customers and worked the scam for 12 years. Legally, they had nothing which made them part of the company. A couple of the early pro-NASI posters here bragged about buying 20 or 30 of the things, on the recommendation of a Rich Guy Pal who had twice that many. Mr. Not So Bright Rich Guy was in on the ground floor, the later guy right behind. That's the kind of target I'm talking about. Depending on how far the SEC net reaches, people like that might be considered beyond their legal scope.
And in a case like that, if I were putting the complaint together, it would not matter to me whether my client's money necessarily went directly into Mr. In-Betweener's pocket, or indirectly... or whether his/her assets necessarily were linked to their NASI-related profits. That is, a clawback accounting would be irrelevant. The co-mingling of funds in the accounts of both NASI and Mr. In-Betweener are complex and vague enough that you simply place an approximate value on the fraud loss and hold responsible the individual who hauled you in. And you don't concern yourself with whether or not the defendant themselves lost money on NASI, you simply go after total assets and assume at least part are indeed from the scam, similar to a RICO suit where you simply confiscate everything on the assumption that it's tainted. (This is assuming they have a diversified portfolio and weren't stupid enough to keep pouring their "profits" back into more "ATMs"-- that they have assets at all.)
itzallgone: this thread has been around for five years (so far). It was certainly here before September... long enough that a number of potential investors read it and ran like hell from The Boyz. And since there was precious little via Google about National Automated Systems at all excerpt this thread and their own self-serving ads, I should think it'd be easy to find this information. Plus all the links and news stories about identical busted ATM scams are right there on Google where I found them back when I started the thread. Really, a simple search on "ATM leaseback" would reveal all of this stuff.
I wasn't aware of the shill, but I'm not surprised either, the one thing does seem to go with the other. It really doesn't matter what they call themselves, or how they try and hide their relationship with the company, if they were selling machines, however they define it, the SEC will still lump them right in with the rest of the company people and they'll be in just as much trouble. Now whether they have anything left to get, that's a whole other matter. Gamblers tend to gamble. Which isn't to say I wouldn't make sure the receiver didn't know about these "friends".
The fact that you sincerely and wholeheartedly believe that the “Law of Gravity” is unconstitutional and a violation of your sovereign rights, does not absolve you of adherence to it.
notorial dissent wrote:I wasn't aware of the shill, but I'm not surprised either, the one thing does seem to go with the other. It really doesn't matter what they call themselves, or how they try and hide their relationship with the company, if they were selling machines, however they define it, the SEC will still lump them right in with the rest of the company people and they'll be in just as much trouble. Now whether they have anything left to get, that's a whole other matter. Gamblers tend to gamble. Which isn't to say I wouldn't make sure the receiver didn't know about these "friends".
My take on this is that the preponderance of the 30,000 contracts were simply by word of mouth...friends and family if you will. I personally know at least 7 people all of whom brought each other in at one time or another. Of course Gillis himself continued to recruit new investors at the *country club* as well. I don't think you really had a substantial network of *shills* or *middle men* working this. The vast amount of assets available ( to be clawed back) lies the profits made by investors and that is a substantial amount stretching over the last 15 years. I don't think the statute of limitations (say 4 years in Ca) applies to when the profits were realized. They will want to know the TOTAL profit of each net winner. It applies to the distributions taken in that 4 year period. So, they can take back profits to the extent of what was distributed in that 4 year period..no more. Therefore, there will be net winners who retain a portion of the profits. Keep in mind though, after factoring in the LOSS OF PRINCIPAL and the amount clawed back, their profit will probably equate to a 3% return over all those years. Time will tell.
Last edited by grimreaper on Sat Nov 01, 2014 6:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.
I disagree with the 3%; if you factor in the 19 years, as I was told; and you depreciate the equipment over the first five years, that's an effective return.
Reader wrote:I disagree with the 3%; if you factor in the 19 years, as I was told; and you depreciate the equipment over the first five years, that's an effective return.
I was talking about COMPOUNDED INTEREST..if you let it sit and accumulate instead of investing.
Also, they also took AFTER TAX MONEY and then paid income tax on the distributions. That will offset any depreciation taken. Example, someone bought 10 machines for $100K 15 years ago. Given 20% return the total distributions were 20K per year for 15 years>>>$300K. Gross profit >>>$200K or 100% on their money. However, they lost the principal! So in this case, not taking claw back into account, they would have a total of $200K at the end. That would be like letting a 100K investment compound at about 5% for 15 years. You would have a total of $200K. Now, add in a clawback of 4year period..that's another 80K taken off the 200K gross profit, you have now $120 at the end after losing the principal. So you turned $100K into $120 over that period. If you left that $100K to compound to $120 K in 15years, that's less than 2%compounded. There will be no real *winners* if the claw backs come in.
Reader wrote:I disagree with the 3%; if you factor in the 19 years, as I was told; and you depreciate the equipment over the first five years, that's an effective return.
I was talking about COMPOUNDED INTEREST..if you let it sit and accumulate instead of investing.
Also, they took AFTER TAX MONEY and then paid income tax on the distributions. That will offset any depreciation taken vs putting it in a Roth IRA or tax exempt municipal bond. Example, someone bought 10 machines for $100K 15 years ago. Given 20% return the total distributions were 20K per year for 15 years>>>$300K. Gross profit >>>$200K or 100% on their money. However, they lost the principal! So in this case, not taking claw back into account, they would have a total of $200K at the end. That would be like letting a 100K investment compound at about 5% for 15 years. You would have a total of $200K. Now, add in a clawback of 4year period..that's another 80K taken off the 200K gross profit, you have now $120 at the end after losing the principal. So you turned $100K into $120 over that period. If you left that $100K to compound to $120 K in 15years, that's less than 2%compounded. There will be no real *winners* if the claw backs come in.
Grimreaper, I have to agree, my impression was that most of the "investers" came in word of mouth, which is part of the reason it held together so long, there was no real outside information to look at. It was a quiet little private club and the wanted to keep it that way to avoid official attention, and I would say they managed quite well. I still wouldn't be surprised if there weren't at least one person who was pushing extra hard, but it wasn't organized or really intentional I think.
I do think there will be some interesting things come to light once they've finished with the books.
The fact that you sincerely and wholeheartedly believe that the “Law of Gravity” is unconstitutional and a violation of your sovereign rights, does not absolve you of adherence to it.
notorial dissent wrote:I wasn't aware of the shill, but I'm not surprised either, the one thing does seem to go with the other.
My take on this is that the preponderance of the 30,000 contracts were simply by word of mouth...friends and family if you will. I personally know at least 7 people all of whom brought each other in at one time or another. Of course Gillis himself continued to recruit new investors at the *country club* as well. I don't think you really had a substantial network of *shills* or *middle men* working this.
My point being, not that someone works for the company directly or indirectly, but that they have made the introduction to a third party into the scheme. Going after such a "friend" would mean turning on a former friend or a current family member, but y'know... if I lost my entire future because my idiot brother-in-law talked me into some sort of scam...
Ed & Joel filed their responses to the portion of the TRO which order them to disclose their finances. They both plead the fifth. Hold on while I contain my surprise.
The preliminary injunction also came through. There's an entry on the docket which indicates that there will no longer be a hearing.
When chosen for jury duty, tell the judge "fortune cookie says guilty" - A fortune cookie
webhick wrote:Ed & Joel filed their responses to the portion of the TRO which order them to disclose their finances. They both plead the fifth. Hold on while I contain my surprise.
The preliminary injunction also came through. There's an entry on the docket which indicates that there will no longer be a hearing.
Thanks. No surprises here...we now have Preliminary Injunction with receiver and SEC in the driver's seat now. I don't understand taking the 5th? They have been ordered to provide all info on personal finances...not to *testify* in their own behalf.
