ATM LEASEBACK SCHEMES-- any insight?

[notorial dissent]

In a case like this, there are two things that come in to play, the integrity of the receiver and the competence of the judge. Judges who routinely handle this sort of cases are generally sticklers for the rules being followed, i.e. least expenditure for most result and preservation of what estate there is, and they won't sign off on fishing expeditions unless there is a good certainty of something coming of it. They are generally pretty chary with expenditures from the estate and will often not accept a lot of the charges the receiver submits unless there is a valid reason for them. So, a competent receiver knows this and doesn't overspend. The current receiver has a good reputation, as far as I have been able to determine, and I don't think he'll go off on a fishing expedition unless there is good probability of return on the expense, nor do I think the court would let him. If there is next to nothing in an estate, the courts will generally NOT let the trustee bill until it is all spent, as they are there to conserve the estate, not spend it in to oblivion. Always assuming there is something there to begin with.

The next report to the court will most probably determine what, if any, further actions he will take. It is possible, although not likely-IMO, that he will have determined that he has gone as far as possible and it is time to distribute the estate.

By the time of the next report, he should have determined how much money went in to the outside companies and if any of it can be recovered, I would also expect a laundry list of the people he will be going after for recovery and for how much

To be quite honest, I was quite disappointed in the last report as I expected more meat, but then this thing is/was a bigger mess that it appeared at first blush, and I expect they are still excavating to find all the bits and pieces.

[webhick]

I blew last evening on number crunching. Good times, kids!

It came down to about $0.18 on the dollar for recovery and less than a third of a penny for the receiver/legal fees.

I factored in the estimated losses from the January press release as well as random tidbits thrown out here and there. I also took into account actual monies seized, not what the receiver froze in the first report.

And I made a chart! A CHART!

[Judge Roy Bean]

You are venturing too far, grasshopper.

Psychology Journal Bans Almost All of Statistics

http://occamstypewriter.org/boboh/2015/ ... tatistics/

And rightfully so.

[The Observer]

Psychology Journal Bans Almost All of Statistics

But webhick wasn't number-crunching a psychological issue. She was working off figures in terms of dollars and cents. Your comparison is an apples-and-orange comparison.

Let me know when the accountancy boards get around to banning statistics.

[Tednewsom]

It's a pretty chart. I like it. It has two colors, and some lines. And numbers!

And the estimation of what net losers might (Maybe. Possibly.) get back is probably as good an estimation as anyone is ever going to do.

I say: more charts!!!

[grimreaper]

Expecting report any day now.
Should be much more revealing than previous.

[webhick]

Bah! The receiver is not updating the site timely. I checked pacer and the third report was filed at the end of May. It's short and disappointing. Second round of fee applications filed in early June. Uploaded to the blog's library. I'll analyze them tomorrow.

[webhick]

So I'm looking at the expenses and I can't stop laughing.

The receiver is asking for reimbursement for hot cups, cold cups, coffee creamer, Tylenol and Kleenex. And the docket indicates that they got it.

Jitters, pain and tears, folks! The true cost of a receivership!

[Judge Roy Bean]

Does the phrase "reasonable and customary" come to mind?

If you hire temporary staff you have expenses over and above your norms. I'm pretty sure this is not this receiver's first rodeo and they know what they can expect to recover.

[grimreaper]

The list of daily billings and descriptions of what they cover is MIND BOGGLING.

[webhick]

Does the phrase "reasonable and customary" come to mind?

If you hire temporary staff you have expenses over and above your norms. I'm pretty sure this is not this receiver's first rodeo and they know what they can expect to recover.

Oh, I'm not faulting them for it. Just laughing my ass off that they needed extra Kleenex and Tylenol to deal with this mess.

[grimreaper]

Does the phrase "reasonable and customary" come to mind?

If you hire temporary staff you have expenses over and above your norms. I'm pretty sure this is not this receiver's first rodeo and they know what they can expect to recover.

Oh, I'm not faulting them for it. Just laughing my ass off that they needed extra Kleenex and Tylenol to deal with this mess.

What?? No toilet paper?

[Tednewsom]

No need. Receivers are well-known to be anal-retentive.

[Lost Income]

The crooks are still affording to live outside the jail and the current report shows insignificant money available for return to investors. Does anyone have knowledge of current clawbacks success for this so far?

[webhick]

The crooks are still affording to live outside the jail and the current report shows insignificant money available for return to investors. Does anyone have knowledge of current clawbacks success for this so far?

The only bit about clawbacks in the report:

The Court has recently authorized the Receiver to pursue clawback claims and approved the Receiver's proposed procedures for prosecuting such claims. The Receiver is moving forward with settlement demand letters and will file complaints against profiting investors who choose not to accept the authorized settlement offer.

But there's this gem, emphasis mine, earlier in the report:

The Receiver's investigation has also revealed that the Oasis Entities made various loans, investments, and transfers to third parties. The Receiver is investigating, accounting for, and pursuing recovery of, these amounts and has already recovered $50,000 from one borrower (Keller's sister).

There's no mention of that recovery in the finances, so it will probably show up in the next report. I'm quoting the below ahead of commentary:

Keller has also been unable to produce any books or records for the Oasis Entities.
Wishner's counsel stated Wishner was unable to compile Oasis records himself and offered to have the Receiver visit Wishner's offices and gather Oasis documents himself. The Receiver coordinated a visit to Wishner's office in early April 2015 to review Oasis records and documents. A few days before the Receiver's staff and counsel were scheduled to visit Wishner's office, Wishner's counsel informed the Receiver's counsel that the Oasis records and documents were already compiled by Wishner's staff and Wishner shipped them to the Receiver. The Receiver's staff and counsel continued with the visit to Wishner's office and additional boxes of Oasis and NASI records and documents were obtained.

Keller has been dragging his feet from since day one, which was suspicious at best and I'm hoping that he wasn't stalling to shift money around from all the little unknown companies that were never frozen. And Wishner wasn't fooling anyone by being unable to compile the documents and suddenly being able to compile them just days before the Receiver were to walk into his office. Hats off to the Receiver for being Pauly Paranoid and showing up anyway. If he didn't, those additional NASI and Oasis documents would have likely been hidden back away or maybe destroyed. I can't tell if Wishner is so incompetent that the paperwork was just buried someplace or if he intentionally hid it away because it's incriminating. I'm leaning towards the latter, since Wishner engaged in a transparent ploy to keep the Receiver away from his office.

[notorial dissent]

I have to admit to being very disappointed that the Receiver did not include any really useful financial information in the latest report, and that he didn’t confirmed one of my worst fears, that things were an even bigger cluster bunny than I expected it to be. The one major task that the Receiver had to complete was the 1099 phase of the cleanup, and that he has had to ask for an extension does not bode well for where they are in the reconstruction.

I’m not surprised in the least that the boys DIDN’T turn over all the records and documentation, that there was something or something left to seize does. They really were sloppier, and apparently more dishonest, than I thought they were, and that is not a good thing to quote Miss Martha. And I had a really low opinion to start with.

I hadn’t anticipated that Oasis was really just another front for NASI, I just figured it as a rathole similar to Fuel Doctor, and the report that there now appear to be at least six Relief Defendants does not fill me with joy. I think, well know really, that Keller et al are going to drag their feet egregiously, and it would appear that maybe the Receiver should be considering seizing them as well as part of the estate and not bothering with Keller’s game playing since I don’t think there is going to be any really meaningful cooperation there. I’m not familiar with how something like this would play out since it is way outside of my experience in these matters, but it would seem that with the new information come to light that they would have a good case for asset seizure there as well, not that it looks like there may be much to seize from initial reports. It is the others that really concern me, since there is no realistic reason at this point to assume they are going to be less of a headache or more cooperative than Oasis has been. The real negative here is that of the amount of time and money it will take to get those disasters sorted out now could rise exponentially.

On another note I would suspect that the clawbacks have not really gotten much further than the thinking about it stage if the books are as bad it appears, they may still be sorting that part of it out since they will have to have hard and defendable figures before they go to court. There won’t be anything much meaningful happening on this front until the Receiver presents his requests to the court as they will have to be approved before any actual legal action is taken, and this will raise the legal fee and expense part of the equation considerably from what it currently is as court and lawyer time is expensive, even when you are doing it in wholesale lots as this will be.

[The Observer]

The Receiver's investigation has also revealed that the Oasis Entities made various loans, investments, and transfers to third parties. The Receiver is investigating, accounting for, and pursuing recovery of, these amounts and has already recovered $50,000 from one borrower (Keller's sister).

This was something I addressed months earlier as a possible source of where money may have been siphoned off by Ed and Joel and transferred to others. It is an obvious source and at least proves that the receivership knows what it is doing. What is of more interest is if our boys did something more rash by setting up other entities that had no apparent connection to NASI and funneled money to them with fake invoices for services or products provided to NASI. Again, if the money cannot be traced beyond these shell companies, it will be a dead end.

I keep thinking about the restaurant that the daughter owns or owned and whether or not any funds went through Oasis to that venture. It's another place worth looking, although going after the restaurant would be an expensive proposition and pursuing the daughter for clawbacks may result in nothing if she is judgment proof.

[worried]

There was a very large Italian restaurant and bar in our town (actually a neighboring town) that was SO out of place (it's a very, very rural setting) and hardly EVER had any customers. But the place stayed in business for about 10 years or more if I remember right. We went there occasionally, it was clean, the food was good, we were generally the only customers there at the time. I developed the opinion that it was a front for laundering money. But that's just because I saw it in a movie once...

[Judge Roy Bean]

There was a very large Italian restaurant and bar in our town (actually a neighboring town) that was SO out of place (it's a very, very rural setting) and hardly EVER had any customers. But the place stayed in business for about 10 years or more if I remember right. We went there occasionally, it was clean, the food was good, we were generally the only customers there at the time. I developed the opinion that it was a front for laundering money. But that's just because I saw it in a movie once...

Ah ... the business that doesn't actually have to stay in business to stay in business.

My personal experience in the restaurant and bar business leads me to believe that if there weren't any customers they couldn't have been in the business that long without some alternate source of funds and/or a ridiculous level of ownership ego that would sustain the operation just to satisfy some other need. I know one operation that was started to keep a spouse happy and another that simply existed to poke a stick in the eye of a less-well-heeled competitor; it eventually failed but the drag on their target opponent was devastating.

All's fair in restaurant wars and creativity extends beyond the kitchen to the accountancy.

[Tednewsom]

Something like that COULD be an intentional tax write-off to take the edge off too much dough coming in from another source. Or as Worried worried, it could be a money Laundromat. In the case of the ATM Bowery Boys, though, I don't see these guys as stiffs who'd throw money away. And we don't know whether or not the restaurant is profitable, or even if there's a direct financial connection, although that seems plausible.

Anybody know the name of the place? I think it's in Woodland Hills, and that's right nearby. I have a taste for Italian food and some clandestine conversation.