To most people, "Making a Million" or more is an impossible
target, so most never try. How about then, a scenario where one happily married the couple, after 30 years in successful Corporate positions, with a string of
children and grandchildren decided to 'give it a go', built up a portfolio of
nearly SIX MILLION DOLLARS - then lose the lot due to becoming ensnared in one
of the biggest property 'rackets' in the United Kingdom.
How would that have affected you - your whole life; your relationships,
your family, or most importantly - your inner spirit?
To most people, the catastrophic size of this failure would have driven
them to bankruptcy, divorce, or even contemplating suicide- especially when the
reasons were nothing to do with the then-current credit crunch, but because of
the crooked behavior of one or more individuals.
This is a true-life story of what happened to a couple who worked hard
and successful in their 'Day Jobs' for over 30 years, and still took the time
out to go for their financial life-changing goals - achieved them - lost the
lot - but with an unbelievably strong inner strength, fought their way back,
and are on the UP again.
Not only that, but these pair have since worked unselfishly for over a
Decade, providing help, assistance, and on many occasions, a shoulder to cry on
for well over a hundred other families, couples, and individual investors
similarly affected. On top of that, as whistleblowers on the whole sorry the episode, they were rewarded in 2007 with a High Court Writ for Defamation and
Libel being served on both of them for $500,000 each plus damages - at 4.00AM,
when a Post Office First Class stamp would have sufficed.
Wow!
The full story of our fight is too detailed to go into here, and the story is still not done totally yet, but if you ever find yourself in any way near as dire a situation, you may want to reserve an advanced copy of our book,
due out next year - entitled 'How To Get out of Debt while Still Living in it'.
As a similar victim, you will automatically get offered a copy at a 50%
discount, and resale rights.
Anyway, for two years, back in 2005, with me approaching 60, we had been
slowly building up our investment property portfolio, including a dream
retirement penthouse on a new Marina development near to our present home, and
a superb large apartment in Bahama Bay in Florida. But then, we were seduced by
very clever and expensive advertising, to buy a number of properties that on
the face of it should have doubled our fortunes. One of our friends actually
bought around $12 Million worth of these properties, and he was only earning
around $40,000 or so a year! These properties, most with more than 4 rentable
bedrooms were all sold by the same developer, with Royal Institute of
Chartered Surveyors (RICS) valuations, supposedly fully renovated, and fully
tenanted with students, prior to completion, with a Landlord appointed by the
developer.
Little did we realize, back then, the significance of that previous
sentence. As all these properties needed Local Authority status of Multiple
Tenancy, and had a landlord, appointed by the vendor, managing the tenanting of
those properties. Unless the property had full Local Authority House of
Multiple Occupancy (HMO) status, due to the 2004 Housing Act, it would not only
have been illegal for a landlord to the tenant such a property, but it would also
have been illegal for the landlord to sell it to another Landlord. So - any
mortgage issued to finance that property, would not be able to legally secure
their debt against that property.
All of the law firms we approached for support here (mentioning no
names), should have immediately seen, what BDO Stoy Hayward defined, after
being instructed to investigate our situation by one major law firm, that "The
Investors had all become victims of a particularly vicious and clever
fraud."
In hindsight, even full-page adverts in a very prestigious UK Sunday
paper, promoting the above situation, was no guarantee that what is on offer
was legal, but with RICS valuers involved, solid UK law firms handling the
sales, where was the risk?
Well, the risk was that somehow the valuations were in many cases valued
on an inappropriate commercial basis, using anticipated rental incomes and with
a local authority status of multiple tenancies, so that valuation could have
hardly been the REAL Mortgage Security Value. And, on top of that, the vendor
was offering a 15% Gifted Deposit (which we found out later, proven by an SRA
investigation in 2010) was dishonestly concealed from the lenders, by the
vendor's selected buyer's conveyancer - not once, but in at least 452
occasions.
So - why did that dishonest act not invalidate the mortgage offers? And
why did nobody pay attention to the SRA's investigation?
Surely there are laws to stop this sort of thing from happening (we thought).
But it would seem that only if you have money do you have full protection in
law. Thus, began a fruitless search of many large UK law firms, trying to find
one that was willing to help us on a 'no win, no fee' basis. We found several
major firms who agreed with us that "a very clever and deliberate fraud
" seemed to be in place. But would they help? No. But what they did tell
us was that there would be a better chance if we could identify many similar
wronged investors. It seemed then that we were doomed to accept our fate unless we managed to jump over some quite massive hurdles. Even though we could
see right was on our side, the law was not going to help us.
Interestingly, as long ago as early 2006 we met with the major UK Banks
and told them what was going on. Just like the US Sub-Prime mortgage mess, did
they listen? Did they curtail lending to this particular developer or tighten
up their lending regulations... Nope! They just chose to lend, lend, lend -
after all, that was what made the profits...
We even spoke to our Member of Parliament in 2006. His comment was that
the Banks needed less regulation - not more!!!
About the same time as this was happening, we attended a weekend seminar
in London on NLP given by our friend Topher Morrison. One of the points on his
course was to offer 'total forgiveness' to those who had wronged us, and
"not be afraid to tell people of our failures".
Well, little did Topher know what powerful outcomes were going to come
out of his weekend session! As a direct consequence, I wrote a powerful article
and published it on the Internet (not mentioning the developer, or any other
conspirators by name) on what had happened to us titled 'How to Avoid an
Investment Property Scam', and if you type that title into Google, you will see
hundreds of websites displaying this article, so popular it was. I also wrote
a letter to the head of the developer company, explaining that I forgave him
for what he had done to us. It was amazing how quickly we got a phone call from
the man, not that it got us anywhere at the time.
The outcome of this action was very soon apparent. So many people read
my article, recognized a similar situation, and signed up with me. People
from all sorts of property developments, not just the one I was involved in and asked for help.
That was the good bit. The bad bit was that the developer recognized not
his name, but his actions, in the article, which is why I and Jane had this
High Court Writ slammed on them (at 3.30 AM one morning) alleging Defamation
and Libel. And do you know, not many lawyers can fight this sort of battle, and
those that can demand tens of thousands to take it on.
This was a worse blow than even bankruptcy because if we were to lose,
we could have been pursued for up to 6 years! And losing a defamation case
could happen on a legal technicality! So, without legal backing, we commenced
the fight as 'Litigants in Person'. But by now, we at least had over a hundred
other investors supporting us, and we had a number of civil bodies involved, including
The Department of Trade and Industry. And the West Yorkshire Police Economic
Crimes Unit, in conjunction with the SFO, had begun a criminal investigation
into the whole affair. (But for some inexplicable reason, in 2010 the DPP
ordered the police/SFO investigation closed, with immediate effect due
allegedly to "Lack of evidence)".
We also got the press and local and national television involved (good
old BBC Inside Out, and Panorama. Even Bloomberg's got involved). We could tell
that our determination and actions were becoming successful, as the next stage
was a whole series of illegal bugging, recording of our conversations, and even
death threats against us!
Without the power of our NLP, constantly watching 'The Secret' and
visualizing the way forward, we could have very easily crumbled, but slowly,
and surely, things eventually started to go our way and some of our obstacles
started to seem a lot smaller.
Eleven valuers were arrested, as part of the ongoing criminal
investigation, but as the legal battle lines are still being drawn, no more can
be said for now. Apart from, of course, the fact that the developer was
arrested on suspicion of fraud and money laundering recently, and all of his 30
or so companies are now in Administration, so the Defamation case is no more!
But how had we fared out of this?
Without the amount of involvement, we had both had, in understanding
that most things that went on in our lives could be considerably shaped by the
way in which we applied our minds to everyday events, we would probably have
lost our sanity a long time ago. This 'Inner Belief' drew us closer as a
couple. Our exposure to techniques like NLP, and in particular the effect of
regularly listening to The Secret on our lives was massive.
Accepting the fact that everything we did or got involved in was our decision, nobody else's meant that we got rid of the 'Blame' culture, and
started to look for ways out of our situation. In doing so, we like to think
that we have also greatly helped all of the other investors who have looked to
us for help, guidance, by always lending an ear when called.
However, one very noticeable effect that stress and an inability to
'control' our lives had on us was that over the three years that this has been
going on, the amount of alcohol consumption, and all the wrong 'comfort' foods
was having a disastrous effect on our weight. Then one day, a colleague, who
was also into The Secret like us, suggested that we were letting the effects of
one man affects our lives by this binge eating and drinking.
To Jane, this was like a raw challenge. For years, since a major car
smash last century, she had had problems keeping her weight down. Imagine what
the earlier and earlier first daily Gin and Tonic, were having on her. Now, she
applied her mind to this problem, and after a determined period of over 20
weeks, she has brought her weight down by over 70 pounds. The obstacles that
Jane had to overcome, to actually reach an even smaller size than she ever
dreamt about were tremendous, but once again, her grasp of NLP and using her
mind to control her determination, each obstacle was just another stepping
stone on her route to a new body.
The problem with all of this is, of course, her wardrobe will need a
total replacement, which needs a lot of money!!
Once again, now that the Defamation case has gone away - which was a
major obstacle even in our minds- which totally inhibited our desire, let alone
our ability, to rebuild our fortune again, our determination is back in there
with a vengeance, like most people, having gone through what we had done, would
have quite easily succumbed to bankruptcy, and just living (or surviving) off
some menial day job. (Don't forget, most couples our age would be looking to a
nice comfortable retirement as a reward for so many years in a corporate
lifestyle - as we were.)
Slowly, but surely, we are rebuilding our shattered financial lives.
Since 2012, with no capital behind us, we have become very ambitious
network marketers, and in that time, thanks to a very hungry team, and 5 hungry
leaders (Jane and I included), have built up an impressive collection of a
massively undervalued Crypto coin, which was only launched in late 2020. However,
the power and open-source structure of the coin's underlying Blockchain, and
the low cost of these coins currently, has resulted in all our team, scooping u
as many of these currently undervalued coins as we can.
We intend to be back as millionaires within a few years. The lessons we
have learned have been severe, but the main point you should realize is that
only you have the power to determine what you do with your life. Other people
may try to influence you, and indeed place obstacles in your path, but at the
end of the day, use your mind, and you will overcome.
We still start out our day with motivational videos and end with
gratitude.
We also follow proven systems, because the only professional way to
achieve the success we crave for, is for us, and our Team, to follow these
proven route maps to success, and not to try and "Reinvent the
wheel".
Obstacles are just stepping stones to success, and as long as you view
them as such, you will achieve whatever your Life Goals may be...
According to the 2004 Housing Act, if an investment property had more than 4 rentable bedrooms, and a Local Authority status of multiple tenancies, unless that property also had MANDATORY Local Authority certification of HMO (House in Multiple \ occupancies), not only would it have been illegal for the landlord to install any tenants it would also have been illegal to sell that property to another landlord in that illegal state. As such, any mortgage issued could not be secured against that property. So how, after over a decade, when the lender was fully aware of this situation as were the SRA and the SFO, that this tort of deceit with Causative Effect still goes unpunished, not once, but in hundreds of situations? And why, in 2010, did the DPP order a 3-year SFO Fraud investigation, where 12 valuers had been arrested, to be glued down, allegedly due to "Lack of Evidence?"
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