ATM LEASEBACK SCHEMES-- any insight?

[JamesVincent]

Well, in my humble opinion, this scam didn't fail miserably in terms of it not shutting down in the first year of the running. Of course, for the victims it was a miserable failure.

Touche

[JamesVincent]

What I found interesting from the receiver's online survey for investors was the question "Who recruited you for this investment." Not who told you about it? or how did you find out about it? Which by word of mouth standards, implicates a lot of people; Family, friends and co-workers.

If you think of it as a pyramid scam, which, in essence, it is, then that will make sense. By finding out who brought who in then it becomes easier to track people who were major players and to start to build the pyramid. Remember, depending on how the receiver chooses to work it, people who were major recruiters may come under more scrutiny. It has happened before in other Ponzis. But, again, until we see were the receiver is going with this it's all just speculation.

[Judge Roy Bean]

What I found interesting from the receiver's online survey for investors was the question "Who recruited you for this investment." Not who told you about it? or how did you find out about it? Which by word of mouth standards, implicates a lot of people; Family, friends and co-workers.

Recruiting/selling is an active as opposed to passive involvement in the scheme and there is usually some form of remuneration for bringing a paying customer to the table.

Just telling someone about an "investment" you've made doesn't necessarily make you an active promoter, but if you obtained anything as a result of your referrals, it is pretty obvious that you wouldn't be considered a passive participant.

[JamesVincent]

Let me clarify something as it can be easily understood. Whether or not the business was successful at some point does not mean the model was successful. And if the model is a failure then the business itself is destined to be a failure. I can (and have) start a business that did decently well, nothing to write home about, and made a little money along the way. The business I started required up front costs and had ongoing debts but the model showed that it would make money in the long run. Any businessman/ woman/ cookie monster would tell you that for a business to be successful it must make more then it puts out, otherwise it's a hobby or a charity. Any way you want to cut it NAS, at some point, was going to cost more then it brought in. Ponzis like this are more like MLMs or pyramid scams then they are a business, the first few years are going to be great but, eventually, you will run out of suckers investors and the house of cards doesn't just fall, it breaks the table under it.

Essentially, if I'm reading and remembering correctly, what NAS did was promise a 100% ROI in 5 years, possibly more, and then another 100% ROI in the next 5 years. If you had invested $12k in ten years you would have $24k, maybe more since some people said they were getting 30% instead of 20%. That is an unsustainable model unless there is something else to feed it. If they had actually had an appreciable number of ATMs, maybe as low as 1/3 - 1/4 the number of investors, they could well have sustained it for a long, long time, even without a wealth of new investors, but they didn't. That second 5 years had to be paid out entirely from new investors, with a little help from the actual ATMs they had had. So not only did the business fail, the model itself was a failure from day one. Which is apropos since Federal law states that a Ponzi is considered insolvent from the date it was started.

When I talk about a business being a failure I am not talking about just the business but the model as well. It is one thing to take a model that should work and screw it up, it happens. It's a whole 'nother thing to take a proven failed model and push it until it collapses, especially using someone else's money to start with.

[Gregg]

Ted, this scam is only a new and mysterious thing to you, go to www.moneymakergroup.com and you'll find thousands of them, listed in pretty much chronological order, over the last ten years and most of them are even worse smelling than any ATM/payphone/Xerrox machine leaseback scam. People fall for them all the time. Google the name Brad Kamanski, the man is a one man internet cash gifting crime wave, he's hasn't made an honest dime in years that I can find, and he walks the streets a free man. You say the model doesn't make sense because they always fail....well, for the investors that's right but the fact of the matter is this, it's not a very risky thing to do for the scammer, I'd almost bet you that more than half of them walk away free men and never even face prosecution. The only ones you can find without digging into the internet fraud cesspool pretty deep are the ones who got caught, prosecuted and punished, but I could give you a list of a dozen people I personally know who have participated in scams involving hundreds of millions of dollars, in plain view, and walking the streets (although in the past two years a few have been brought to book and even more are looking over their shoulder now)

Faith Sloan
Charis Johnson
Ken Russo
Frank Cradduck
Todd DIsner
Kristi Johnson
Aarron and Shaara Andrews


Just off the top of my head, google these names, between them they represent the wholesale, almost industrial scamming of over a billion dollars, and have been doing it in the wide open for a decade, and only now are some of them facing CIVIL actions, not a one of them that I am aware has faced so much as a traffic ticket on a criminal docket.

You're reading wayyyyy too much into this, sparky, Kennedy was shot by Oswald, terrorist extremists from the middle east were behind the attacks of September 11, and two old con men ran the NASI ponzi scheme more or less of their own volition. Help from people known or unknown might be a guy who helped deliver the machines, the guy who introduced them to marks at a golf course or promoters within the pool of suckers not yet identified, but it's very unlikely its SPECTRE or the russian mob.

(but I will concede that various slavic organized crime enterprises are behind a lot of the stuff you find at money maker group)

[Gregg]

James is right in that @ 20% return, minus some skim and overhead you can run almost 5 years on the sucker's money. If you pocket 20% for yourself make it rounded off the 4 years of no new victims needed. What he doesn't mention, and is almost universal in these schemes, is that a good chunk of the payouts never get paid out but are "re-invested", in HYIPs its almost a Prime Directive that you use "an 80-20 plan" where you re-invest 80% of your due payments. While its true that the people advising this have an ulterior motive (their payouts depend on new money coming in and old money staying in) and know enough to not do it themselves, a lot of people in fact do "let it ride" in what they perceive as being a good thing.

This stretches out the sustainability of the scheme while also making a huge snowball of future liability. This is the mathematical truth that dictates that in a scam that ran this long and got this big, the amount owed was huge and usually the vast majority of the money that went in came in at the end of the scam (I know I read somewhere that 95% of the NASI money came in during the last 2 years of the scam but can't find it now)

If that is correct, the amount as recently as 3 years ago were just a few million dollars, the payments needed to go out were much more manageable (even more so with the 200+ machines they did have and that cashflow) and yeah, I can see them making a pretty good living from this. Hell, say they had most of the machines for the last 5 years, if they used only new suckers money to make the monthly payout nut, they could have lived reasonably well on that legitimate or at least semi legitimate cashflow.

[Tednewsom]

You say the model doesn't make sense because they always fail....well, for the investors that's right but the fact of the matter is this, it's not a very risky thing to do for the scammer, I'd almost bet you that more than half of them walk away free men and never even face prosecution.

I'm appalled. And smarter than I was ten minutes ago. I love homework like this.

You're reading wayyyyy too much into this, sparky,

Point acknowledged. I'm genetically suspicious, but I do sometimes shave with Ockham's razor. (No, George Reeves wasn't murdered, and no, the North Koreans didn't hack Sony.).

Help from people known or unknown might be a guy who helped deliver the machines, the guy who introduced them to marks at a golf course or promoters within the pool of suckers not yet identified, but it's very unlikely its SPECTRE or the russian mob.

Fine, but might it be any one of the established grifters you list, or their confederates, setting the thing up along the correct lines, shaving off his piece, and bugging out when things start to get rough? They would be included in my general "known and unknown" theory.

(but I will concede that various slavic organized crime enterprises are behind a lot of the stuff you find at money maker group)

Unh-huh. But ... ummm... no such nasty guys with "-ski" and "- cu" at the end of their names would ever bother with an ATM leaseback scheme, despite the profitability? Hmmm. * sigh * OK, if you say so...

[Tednewsom]

Wow. I looked through several pages of moneymaker.com.

I must say, our world is full of gullible cretins.

[wserra]

our world is full of gullible cretins.

And the people who will steal from them.

[Gregg]

Wow. I looked through several pages of moneymaker.com.

I must say, our world is full of gullible cretins.

If you spent day reading the entire thread of every 10th one, you'd notice also a lot of names, over the course of years, keep popping up in a lot of them as major promoters, and yet, none of them, or very few of them, are even afraid of getting noticed by law enforcement. The couple who are some radar or another are at most looking a civil actions involving clawbacks in less than 1% of the scams. Find a few that went to clawbacks and then look at how much was eventually recovered from the net winners, and you find that learned quite early how to both hide assets and negotiate deals that make the average clawback recovery available to be distributed to victims is less than half, maybe less than a quarter of what the court ordered them to pay back.
You may get a judgement for a million dollars, but if they person you get it from has no assets you can find, you aren't getting that Ferrarri just yet.

[grimreaper]

You may get a judgement for a million dollars, but if they person you get it from has no assets you can find, you aren't getting that Ferrarri just yet.

Hiding assets isn't as easy as you think. These guys didn't just fall off the *turnip truck*. You would have to literally stick the $$$ in a matress and not spend it to avoid detection. True, recovery won't be anywhere near 100% of net winners, but they will draw blood.

[grimreaper]

If that is correct, the amount as recently as 3 years ago were just a few million dollars, the payments needed to go out were much more manageable (even more so with the 200+ machines they did have and that cashflow) and yeah, I can see them making a pretty good living from this. Hell, say they had most of the machines for the last 5 years, if they used only new suckers money to make the monthly payout nut, they could have lived reasonably well on that legitimate or at least semi legitimate cashflow.

60-70 MILLION in payouts per year required to satisfy 30000 *ATMS*. That's a lot of MOOLA.

[Gregg]

You may get a judgement for a million dollars, but if they person you get it from has no assets you can find, you aren't getting that Ferrarri just yet.

Hiding assets isn't as easy as you think. These guys didn't just fall off the *turnip truck*. You would have to literally stick the $$$ in a matress and not spend it to avoid detection. True, recovery won't be anywhere near 100% of net winners, but they will draw blood.

Let me tell you about hiding assets. Something I do happen to know A FUCKLOAD about because I've been in the middle of it for the last year with some pretty snazzy lawyers who are helping me plan my estate. I've been lucky in life, made a few smart choices, been smiled upon, what have you, I'm one of those 1%s, pardon me if I don't apologize. I also have no children, don't have any contact with sisters and have some creative ideas about how to give my money away both before and after I assume room temperature. You want to really know about hiding/protecting assets, the owner of this site one of the best in the country, it just so happens, you ought to call him if you have the need. But I digress.

I have two houses not in my name, 6 cars daily drivers are leased, others in a trust, over 100,000 shares of stock in Ford Motor Company in untoub=chable retirement accounts, have made over 7 figures 4 of the last 5 years a good portion of which I give to charity and have a 100 oz bar of gold in my sock drawer its been in a sock drawer for 20 years, was bought/exchanged for over another 20 years, there's no record of any of it (okay, after the house got broken into I did get a safety deposit box).. and you couldn't get enough out of me to buy a decent car. I haven't even been trying to hide so much as just doing some estate planning. You have no idea how easy it is. Did you read the stuff I referenced? Not some wild eyed ideas on what a court can order but the actual, final dispositions and settlements of real cases, where receivers had judgements and/or claims for hundreds of thousands of dollars against net winners who ended up settling for amounts less than 10% of their winnings, less than 5%?

You can buy gold ingots up to 10 oz without anyone asking you a thing, and doing it with cash isn't a problem, I know half a dozen places that can forget a cash transaction form in a minute if they know you, or for that matter, if you can handle the risk of crossing a border with a suitcase they have them in Canada, Mexico etc... and 100 oz is an odd size, you pretty much have to order one, you pay for it when you do that, they'll deliver it when it comes in.
For that matter, a simple safety deposit box in someone else's name is a good way to stash some emergency bail money, the big ones will hold close to $780,000 in fifties, don't ask me how I know that

I'll quit, but don't kid yourself, if you're a criminal to begin with, or even if you're not and you pay some good help, hiding assets is incredibly easy....you're darn right recovery won't be 100%, it won't even be 10%

[Gregg]

If that is correct, the amount as recently as 3 years ago were just a few million dollars, the payments needed to go out were much more manageable (even more so with the 200+ machines they did have and that cashflow) and yeah, I can see them making a pretty good living from this. Hell, say they had most of the machines for the last 5 years, if they used only new suckers money to make the monthly payout nut, they could have lived reasonably well on that legitimate or at least semi legitimate cashflow.

60-70 MILLION in payouts per year required to satisfy 30000 *ATMS*. That's a lot of MOOLA.

But if the 95% in the last two years is correct, 3 years ago it was only 300 ATMs that needed satisfied, much more manageable. Anytime any new investment came in, it was self sustaining (meaning the deposit provided enough to make the required payments) for 4-5 years. There is a small but growing exponentially legacy obligation. Back engineer the exponential growth curve and 3 years ago it wasn't nearly as big a nut, and when it did grow to 60-70 million a year is when it collapsed.

[Tednewsom]

But if the 95% in the last two years is correct, 3 years ago it was only 300 ATMs that needed satisfied, much more managable. Anytime any new investment came in, it was self sustaining (meaning the deposit provided enough to make the required payments) for 4-5 years. Back engineer the exponential growth curve and 3 years ago it wasn't nearly as big a nut.

No, no, Gregg. The "300" figure refers to the actual number of real, existing machines, not the number of "machines" on paper as of two years ago. The math on the reported "95% over the last two years" is entirely wonky. There were hundreds, perhaps thousand of outstanding contracts when I posted originally, five years ago. The liaison I've mentioned, just by herself, had over 200 regular, repeat customers, most with multiple machines: two, eight, ten, twenty. Heaven knows how many "clients" The Boys had for themselves.

Interesting and gratifying that you're so successful in squirrelling away assets. You're absolutely correct, of course: there are plenty of ways to do it. Lots of guys here dismiss the idea that old Ed and Joel could have hidden anything, since they clearly spent every dime of their scam paying back the Faithful. Which of course negates the idea of the scam in the first place, and dismisses the primary motivation: greed.

[grimreaper]

I'm going assume the people I know...friends and family...are representative of the majority of typical investors. That would be EIGHT different investors with total holdings of 140 contracts. Some of them had been in for well over 10 years. These people do NOT fall in the category described by *GREGG*, who go to the lengths described to hide assets. Yes, I'm sure there will be those who will be successful in doing so, but they will be miniscule in number. I think the vast majority on the 2400 investors were just like those I know and they don't have "gold bricks in socks". You can only hide so much cash and the investigators will know with CERTAINTY, through the banks that wrote out the checks monthly to investors, just how much each investor received.
If they can't trace where the money went, then that will indicate the profits are being hidden and that's a felony. Now if the investor spent all the money and has nothing to show for it...pissed it away so to speak...then that will be non recoverable. Having said this, they will still be required to account for *where* this money went.

[Tednewsom]

I think we are speaking from opposite ends. I'm sure you're right, that most investors would not have squirrelled anything away, because they figured it was all on the up and up. Gregg, I believe, is referring to more clever and shifty people like Gillis and Wishner (although he uses his own genuine cleverness as an example). There is no end to the dodges and games one can do with assets if you know the roadmaps and the secret hiding places.

Just one example: Gillis's daughter owns a high-end Italian restaurant on Ventura Boulevard, along with her husband. I think Joel Gillis is actually on paper as one of the principals. It's been there two or three years now. Tell me that wasn't kickstarted with NAS funds.(And that, by extension, is an asset which can be foreclosed.)

There's some current-news stuff about Madoff, BTW. He socked away hundreds of millions, and they're still finding stuff: Luxembourg, NYC, Switzerland, etc., etc. Apparently the investors stand a chance at recovering 30% of their investments.

No, no, no, I'm not trying to say everybody's going to get all their money back from the NASI thieves. Of course not. But the two grifters were not total idiots... and as Gregg points out, it's not ALL that hard to hide money.

And having worked for an investigator for several years and seen asset-hunters in action, it's not ALL that hard to figure out where it went.

[Judge Roy Bean]

...
Just one example: Gillis's daughter owns a high-end Italian restaurant on Ventura Boulevard, along with her husband. I think Joel Gillis is actually on paper as one of the principals. It's been there two or three years now. Tell me that wasn't kickstarted with NAS funds.(And that, by extension, is an asset which can be foreclosed.)...

Pure speculation - and I would suggest people use caution in posting such things.

[Tednewsom]

Entirely innocent. Didn't get any money from Dad. The old man didn't help his daughter & son-in-law start a restaurant.

The only money Joel Gillis ever spent was his weekly allowance from NAS.

To quote one of the earlier pro NAS participants on this thread: He's the most honest guy I know.

Sorry to cast asparagus at him.

[webhick]

Not to mention that most restaurants - even the fancy ones - take years to turn a profit, so that restaurant isn't likely worth anything yet.