Crooked dealer headed for jail

fulltimedaniel wrote:
My sympathy for the victims ends where their gullibility, stupidity and credulousness begins.

If even ONE of them had done the simple straight forward due diligence this kind of transaction deserves probably none of this would have happened.

I am sorry but I think the so-called "victims" are mostly victims of self inflicted harm.

The sentence is just as crazy. 7 years in jail. No way to pay back the money. And the court does have the ability to force him to pay. But the real way to get him to pay is bring a CIVIL case against him and take his house and car, 401k, insurance holdings etc. It can be done with the right lawyer.

I would not agree. One line from the story jumped out at me. "they had established a relationship with him and trusted him". Which is why he was able to keep it up for so long.

FTD you were in business a long time, as I have been. A lot of the stuff we know, we forgot even where and how we learned it. We just sort of know it inherently.

I would guess many of these folks have little if any business experience.
Red Flags that they ignored, we would be all over in a heartbeat. But remember that is because we have been there done that.

You and me, we get a BS excuse ( which we know from experience) we are all over it. Relationship or not Other folks not so much.

And even you, and I or any person, with lengthy experience, we are not invulnerable. If the shark is big enough, and clever enough, both of us still can be eaten.