Episode 157
$17.5 Million for Potentially Misleading Statements about ESG Investing
We’re diving deep into the world of trust (or lack thereof) in the financial services industry! This episode is all about how trust in your financial advisor should be more than just a warm fuzzy feeling; it needs to be backed by proactive planning and accountability.
We'll break down two compelling cases: one involving a major investment firm hit with a $17.5 million civil penalty for allegedly making misleading statements about its ESG-focused investments, and another where an advisor orchestrated a Ponzi scheme to deceive clients.
📢 We Want Your Input! Take our quick two-question survey here and tell us what’s most important to YOU when choosing a financial advisor.
Takeaways:
- Trust in financial advisors is crucial, but it must be verified through their actions and performance standards.
- Beware of investment firms that claim high returns with little risk; if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
- A Ponzi scheme can happen to anyone; always do your homework before entrusting your money to an advisor.
- Investing should align with your values, but ensure your advisor is genuinely representing those values.
- Don't follow the flashy marketing; focus on the fundamentals of investing for long-term success.
We'd love your input. Take our quick survey at https://forms.office.com/r/837zquxdET
Ponzi scheme source https://www.justice.gov/usao-ednc/pr/raleigh-investment-advisor-s-40-year-sentence-ponzi-scheme-and-obstruction-affirmed
article referenced about Invesco at https://www.mofo.com/resources/insights/241220-top-5-sec-enforcement-developments-for-november-2024
Volkswagen article at https://www.bbc.com/news/business-34324772.amp
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About Your Co-Hosts:
Travis Maus has been in financial services for over fifteen years. He is a Senior Wealth Manager and Chief Executive Officer at S.E.E.D. Planning Group. Travis also hosts the Unleashing Leadership Podcast, where he dissects some of his favorite books on leadership and how you can apply it to your business or life.
Steve Campbell has over a decade of industry experience and is a Senior Marketing Director at S.E.E.D. Planning Group. Steve also hosts the One Big Thing Podcast, an interview-style show meant to inspire and encourage 30 and 40-year-olds going through difficult seasons of navigating marriage, raising kids, and growing personally.
Transcript
Foreign.
Speaker B:Welcome to Ditch the Suits podcast, where we share insights nobody in the financial services industry wants you to know about.
Speaker C:We're here to help you get the.
Speaker B:Most from your money in life.
Speaker B:So buckle up and welcome to Ditch the Suits.
Speaker A:All right, well, we just got done with an episode all about trust.
Speaker A:So last week, we were talking about trust, and we were talking about establishing trust and advisor your financial company.
Speaker A:And that trust needs to be more than skin deep.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:We've got to kind of like, dig in there and figure out, you know, there's got to be performance standards, and there's got to be things that the financial advisor has said, look, this.
Speaker A:You can account on this.
Speaker A:This is what I'm going to do for you.
Speaker A:And you then have to manage that and say, did you do what you said you were gonna do?
Speaker A:Did you carry through the things that you said you were gonna do?
Speaker A:And that's really how you build trust.
Speaker A:So we're either being kind of lazy and a little bit superficial by just, like, I made a decision, I trust and I'm gonna blindly follow or listen.
Speaker A:I'm gonna make sure that I check periodically to make sure that you're paying attention.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:It's like.
Speaker A:So anyway, I was gonna do a bad analogy.
Speaker A:You want to hear the bad analogy?
Speaker C:Yeah, I guess people can just tune out if they don't want to hear it, but stay with us.
Speaker C:Go ahead.
Speaker A:So you get.
Speaker A:I'm picking on babysitters again.
Speaker A:You get a babysitter and you trust the babysitter's watching your kids, and then you get home one night and the babysitter's making out with some dude on your couch.
Speaker A:You don't know.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:All right, well, not a good situation.
Speaker A:No.
Speaker A:You just walked in on something, and now you got to deal with it.
Speaker A:Same thing happens with investing.
Speaker C:That's a pretty good analogy, I guess.
Speaker C:Not bad.
Speaker C:You brought it home.
Speaker C:Okay.
Speaker A:Not bad.
Speaker A:Not horrible.
Speaker A:All right.
Speaker A:All right.
Speaker A:I get a little bit off on those sometimes.
Speaker C:I know.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker C:Rope you back in.
Speaker A:So anyway, we have some articles that we're going to go through today that talk about investor trust and the industry and all the things that the industry is kind of doing to try to undermine trust.
Speaker A:Because I think it's important.
Speaker A:It's important that we talk about these things.
Speaker A:But also we've done one of these.
Speaker A:We're going to talk about.
Speaker A:We've actually done some other episodes on and.
Speaker A:And talked about some of these issues already.
Speaker A:And this just happens to be a allegation against an investment firm for, let's say, misleading about their investment strategy.
Speaker A:So we've talked about ESG investing, environmental, social governance, which is part of socially responsible investing.
Speaker A:And we talked about the issues with it, really from a.
Speaker A:Moving the goalpost, right?
Speaker A:It's always kind of like, what was ESG yesterday is different today, and it shouldn't be moving around so much.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:It should be, like, more consistent.
Speaker A:So can we trust that this is a story about that it's also a story or an episode?
Speaker A:We're going to talk about.
Speaker A:Should you trust what major financial firms are telling you in order to try to get to do sell stuff?
Speaker A:When you hear Vanguard Fidelity, Charles Schwab, T.
Speaker A:Rowe Price, any of these things you see on super bowl halftime shows, cryptos, those type of things, they're trying to get you to buy their product, their investment program, right?
Speaker A:So they're always going to come out and whatever the focus groups or whatever the marketing says, this is what people are into.
Speaker A:They're going to try to craft a message that maybe isn't necessarily a lie, but it's not necessarily the clean truth, or it's a little bit misleading at best.
Speaker A:And sometimes they do cross that kind of line and they turn in.
Speaker A:They kind of embellish to the point where they are lying, where it'd be too much of a stretch to really say that they're telling the truth.
Speaker A:Do investment firms really have your best interest at heart?
Speaker A:Are they just trying to sell your product?
Speaker A:What happens when things are too good to be true?
Speaker A:We're going to talk about an investment firm, but then we're also going to talk about an investment advisor who's running a Ponzi scheme.
Speaker A:Juicy.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:Interesting story on that one.
Speaker A:Are there financials out there that really do have some kind of special insight on investments that guarantee high returns, little, no risk.
Speaker A:I love this one.
Speaker A:Listen to Sirius XM radio, watch YouTube or anything.
Speaker A:Every other commercial is an investment guru trying to tell you that you can buy this investment, have no risk and make 10% annual returns.
Speaker A:And why wouldn't you do it?
Speaker A:Seriously?
Speaker A:You think that there's some special dude out there that you're listening to it if, if it was that good because there's supply and demand on this stuff, he would just have all his money in it and he wouldn't be on YouTube trying to sell it to you, you know what I mean?
Speaker A:Or on Sirius XM trying to sell it to you.
Speaker A:That's where Ponzi schemes start a lot of times.
Speaker A:So we're gonna talk A little bit about that and then yeah, just we're gonna.
Speaker A:Everything we talk about today is a real life case and it's where the kind of the industry runs amok on people.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:So four years in, this is the closest we're going to get to a murder mystery podcast where we're going to read you headlines and talk about through stories which they do on these popular podcasts and what they really mean to bring context to you.
Speaker C:And so if you're brand new, welcome to Ditch with Suits.
Speaker A:Who's these popular podcasts?
Speaker C:Yeah, Murder mystery podcast.
Speaker A:Oh, Murder mystery podcast.
Speaker C: k about cases and they say in: Speaker A:We have to use like different voices.
Speaker C:Okay, we'll do that.
Speaker C:I'll try to use my Batman voice, but this is Ditch the Suits.
Speaker C:I'm Steve Campbell, your senior marketing director at Seed Planning Group.
Speaker C:Travis, the guy who's been talking, he is our CEO.
Speaker C:Seed is a fee only financial planning firm.
Speaker C:So this show is all about things like bringing financial topics that can help empower you with your life.
Speaker C:But some of the most popular episodes we've ever had is just talking about what's circulating out in the media, what's happening in the news.
Speaker C:So again, you can get the most money in life by understanding what do these things mean and how does it affect you if you're working a 9 to 5 or you own a business, when you hear stuff like this and when you're talking about trust, it's really important.
Speaker C:So we're going to bring from our standpoint what we've seen over the years working with individuals to try to help them that are calling us.
Speaker C:Travis, should I be concerned about this?
Speaker C:Is this something I need to pay attention to to reframe what's really important?
Speaker C:And at the end of the day, we've been talking about trust.
Speaker C:So with Ditch the Suits, we're going to talk about esg, some of these topics.
Speaker C:So Travis, where do you want to start for today with some of these articles?
Speaker C:Mofo.com let's take a quick break to.
Speaker B:Hear a word from your sponsor.
Speaker B:This episode is brought to you by Seed Planning Group.
Speaker B:If you're looking for a life giving experience working with a financial planner, then Seed is here for you.
Speaker B:Seed is a fee only financial planning firm with a fiduciary obligation to put your best interests first.
Speaker B:If your goal is financial freedom and independence without sales products or really glorified salespeople, then check out Seed Planning Group today you can visit www.seedpg.com that's www.seedpg.com.
Speaker B:and the best part, you can schedule a free consultation to find out if their fee only planners and their process are right for you.
Speaker A:It's a real place.
Speaker A:It's a real article.
Speaker A:Mofo.com ran an article on Invesco Advisors Pay 17.5 Million Civil Penalty to resolve claims of allegedly misleading statements involving ESG investment funds.
Speaker A:So the first thing is this is a settlement.
Speaker A:So we're not saying that they did anything wrong or didn't do anything wrong, but they got accused of doing something wrong and then they paid money to make it go away, basically to stop it.
Speaker A:So you can infer whatever you want out of it.
Speaker A:But as we talk about this, it's somebody probably did something wrong.
Speaker A: ,: Speaker A:We'll call them Invesco, going forward with making allegedly misleading statements about the percentage of assets under management.
Speaker A:So in our industry, that's called aum.
Speaker A:That included environmental, social and governance, which is ESG factors in investment decisions.
Speaker A:And according to the order between April 20 through July 22, Invesco included materially misleading statements that ESG factors were integrated into 70.
Speaker A:Between 70 and 94% of their AUM.
Speaker A:So what they are saying is that let's just pretend they were managing $100 billion in AUM assets under management.
Speaker A:What they are saying is between 70 and 94%, which is a really wide range.
Speaker A:So I'm not even sure how you get away with that.
Speaker A:Between 70 and 94% had some type of ESG factor being used in the funds.
Speaker A:That's extraordinary.
Speaker A:That is.
Speaker A:That is a lot for kind of just Invesco is a giant mutual fund company.
Speaker A:So they have lots of mutual fund companies.
Speaker A:Mutual funds think like Vanguard or Fidelity or T.
Speaker A:Rowe Price or American Funds.
Speaker A:That's.
Speaker A:That's Invesco for you.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:And I think that's fascinating, right, because we've talked about ESG and why people have typically invested in ESG because they want to potentially align their money with their values and make sure that they're very noble of the investments.
Speaker C:It is very noble.
Speaker C:But as we've kind of talked about our industry, it's been soured in so many ways because companies kind of misleading.
Speaker C:And then you pay all of this money.
Speaker C:I mean, if you say that something's ESG when it's really not as an investor, like, how do you also make sense of something when you can't pinpoint it?
Speaker C:And it goes back to the idea of Trust.
Speaker C:If you tell me, Travis, that this is esg, I.
Speaker C:I'm trying to believe you.
Speaker C:But then when they actually audited and looked at it, they discovered they must have, that they were off and what they were.
Speaker A:The SEC has made a big push over the last couple of years to look at people who are saying they were doing ESG investing and saying, but what does that mean, right?
Speaker A:So if you do ESG investing, what is the thesis and what are you buying?
Speaker A:What are you not buying?
Speaker A:And is that actually what's showing up in the portfolio?
Speaker A:Or are you just telling people that?
Speaker A:And because they don't know how to decompose a mutual fund or something, they can't, you know, they can.
Speaker A:They don't know exactly if you're following these mandates or not.
Speaker A:And what they found is that a lot of firms out there are saying that they're ESG or socially responsible, but you can't tell the difference between that and any other investment.
Speaker A:And part of the reason is it is investment.
Speaker A:It's a thing called style drift.
Speaker A:And it's something that you look at when you look at a money manager is you told me this is your investment thesis, but because the performance was bad, you started to doing this other stuff over here to try to make up the difference.
Speaker A:So you said you were going to be esg, but you couldn't.
Speaker A:In the last year, a lot of the tech stocks aren't esg, so the ESG portfolio wasn't performing.
Speaker A:So you started buying me the tech stocks, which actually wouldn't match the definition of ESG you had sold me on in the first place.
Speaker A:So now I have a portfolio.
Speaker A:I'm paying you for a portfolio, and I'm trusting you for this portfolio that I believe matches up with the values that you had advertised.
Speaker A:But I'm getting something very, very different.
Speaker A:So that's where the issue is.
Speaker A:The order found that the percentages Invesco shared included Invesco's passive exchange traded funds or their ETFs.
Speaker A:So ETFs are like mutual funds that sell in the middle of the day.
Speaker A:Mutual funds always sell at night.
Speaker A:ETFs you can buy and sell just like a stock, but it looks like a mutual fund.
Speaker A:And when they say passive, they're talking like indexes.
Speaker A:So it's AN S&P 500 ETF.
Speaker A:So it's like an S&P 500 index mutual fund, only it sells in the middle of the day or whenever you want to sell it.
Speaker A:They were misleading because the ETFs did not consider ESG factors in the investment decisions.
Speaker A:By their passive nature, they could not take those factors into consideration.
Speaker A:An example, the order noted that Invesco's percentages include Invesco QQQ.
Speaker A:I don't know what that is.
Speaker A:A passive ETF that tracks the NASDAQ 100.
Speaker A:So the NASDAQ 100 is an index.
Speaker A:It's a subset of stocks already.
Speaker A:So they have a fund that tracks that.
Speaker A:So it's buying the exact same stuff that's in it.
Speaker A:And they're saying that it's esg.
Speaker A:Well, if it was esg, you would have to exclude some of the funds from that.
Speaker A:So you could say we try to track that, but we've subtracted, you know, 10 of the holdings or something because they don't meet our guidelines or something like that.
Speaker A:But they didn't do it.
Speaker A:They just said, this is our NASDAQ 100 fund and it's ESG.
Speaker C:Yeah, because when you, when you.
Speaker A:Or that's what's alleged.
Speaker C:Companies are supposed to be able to meet a number of different standards to prove that they are environmentally, socially governance fitting.
Speaker C:And within these.
Speaker C:And these could be things, child labor laws.
Speaker C:This could be the way that they produce certain goods.
Speaker C:They have to be able to check and show that they're able to do this.
Speaker C:So if you basically are now moonlighting and say, hey, we're labeling this as esg, even though it's following an index where the companies aren't aligning, I think again, when it goes back to trust, I think when you're talking about investing, sometimes it's hard for people.
Speaker C:Like, what are we talking about?
Speaker C:This would be the equivalent of you buying a certain type of groceries, believing that something is organic or grass fed for a period of time.
Speaker C:And then, you know, months into it, you're learning.
Speaker C:Well, the farmers actually kind of lied and they've been using this source of.
Speaker A:Meat or it's not grass finished, it's grass.
Speaker C:It's not exactly what we're.
Speaker A:Till the last month of its life and then we pump it full of hormones and.
Speaker C:Or I'm thinking about, I think it was years ago, Volkswagen got into hot water because they said that their certain car emission system was leading in terms of safety and pollution.
Speaker C:And then it came out where Volkswagen basically just said, we actually kind of lied.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Oh, I remember people that.
Speaker C:People that bought the cars were, were demanding lawsuits because they bought the car with the intention that they were being told you're helping the environment.
Speaker C:To only come to find out Volkswagen Said our bad, we've actually been using different emission statements.
Speaker C:So when it comes to investing, we're just trying to frame it that there was a company that was holding itself out as being environmentally centric with esg, while at the end of the day, especially in large amounts of money, not quite meeting what someone was buying into under the premise of this is aligning my values with my money.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And so the SEC also know that, and this is a little ticky tack, the SEC noted that Invesco had no comprehensive.
Speaker A:So the comprehensive is a little bit from a regulatory body, a little bit of an unfair term set of written policies and procedures concerning how Invesco measured ESG integration.
Speaker A:So Invesco may have had a definition of what they consider esg, and maybe it just doesn't match up with what everybody else considers esg.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:However, the SEC did not think that it was a comprehensive set of written policies and procedures.
Speaker A:So that's a little bit hard when you read any of these things.
Speaker A:You gotta kinda like read between the lines.
Speaker A:So really, Invesco could have had some standards, some firm standards, but they weren't comprehensive enough, or maybe they weren't, you know, formalized enough.
Speaker A:But certainly it does look like they maybe dropped the ball here.
Speaker A:So, you know, the second part of it, they definitely have to develop that stuff.
Speaker A:But more importantly, I mean, I would assume that they definitely have what they consider esg because they're saying they're esg.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:So if somebody goes to their website and says, what's esg?
Speaker A:They're going to explain what ESG is in lieu of anything else.
Speaker A:That's the definition.
Speaker A:So kind of looks like it was easy picking, but a lot of firms got in trouble for that.
Speaker A:Now, if you're what we're talking about, worried about trust and can you trust your advisor?
Speaker A:Well, here's an entire company that is kind of corrupted in the sense that ESG is a hot button topic.
Speaker A:So we'll just say everything's esg.
Speaker A:We have more ESG than everybody else.
Speaker A:So you'll come and buy our funds.
Speaker A:Because when you look at the fund, you have no way to tell if it's actually esg.
Speaker A:Unless you have some analytic tools.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:And you go back to that idea of trust if you're an advisor that manages managers in the story that you were told by a wholesaler is, we at this company primarily use ESG centric mutual funds.
Speaker C:And here's why that's important.
Speaker C:And the advisor turns around and tells Mr.
Speaker C:And Mrs.
Speaker C:Jones, hey, you know how you said ESG is really important?
Speaker C:I found a company that's gonna match what you're trying to do to only find out years later.
Speaker C:And then 70 to 94% they were off.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:It does create mistrust in the sense that if you say you're gonna do something in anything in life and you don't do it, what are the ramifications?
Speaker C:And trust is gonna be broken.
Speaker C:And so ESG is one of those areas where companies can tout their flag and say, we're leading in this area, and you would want it to be accurate, but when it's not, it really does raise a red flag.
Speaker C:That that was the one thing you said you were going to really do well in, and you didn't.
Speaker A:And that's part of the reason why we addressed our program.
Speaker A:We looked at the way that the ratings companies were looking at companies, individual companies, and we were saying, there's no consistency.
Speaker A:It's a black box.
Speaker A:We can't figure out what they're talking about and why companies are positive and environmental one month and negative the next month.
Speaker A:And it looked way political.
Speaker A:And so we said, look, esg, if you go back to that episode, I think what people are really saying is, I have values that I want to invest by.
Speaker A:Help me invest by my values.
Speaker A:You don't need a company to package your values for you.
Speaker A:You need a company to listen to you and say, what's important to you?
Speaker A:How do we help you achieve what's important to you?
Speaker A:And if you want something special, what's it going to cost a lot of people?
Speaker A:I want something special.
Speaker A:This is what it's gonna cost.
Speaker A:Okay?
Speaker A:I don't want it that bad.
Speaker A:Or, yes, I'd be willing to pay for that.
Speaker A:But that's an honest conversation versus, you know, just trust me, just trust me.
Speaker A:I don't trust anybody like that, Right.
Speaker A:I just don't.
Speaker A:I wanna know what's behind it, right?
Speaker A:Like, show me what's behind it.
Speaker A:You don't go into a jewelry store and say, I'd like that ring.
Speaker A:And, you know, look at it and there's no price on it.
Speaker A:And then you go, okay.
Speaker A:And they're sizing you up and you go, what's the price?
Speaker A:They're like, for you it's $4,000.
Speaker A: nd they go, oh, for you, it's: Speaker A:That would infuriate you.
Speaker A:Yet that's kind of what happens with some of the stuff in the financial world.
Speaker A: he Investment Advisors act of: Speaker A:But without admitting or denying the SEC's finding, Invesco agreed to a cease and desist and to pay $17.5 million civil penalty.
Speaker A:So basically, Invesco said, we won't advertise that anymore.
Speaker A:We're not gonna do that.
Speaker A:We'll kind of clean up our act.
Speaker A:So optically it looks better.
Speaker A:And we're not misleading people, or we're not accidentally misleading people if that's not what they meant to do.
Speaker A:So I think that that's important because it's not like this was a court case that got proven.
Speaker A:You know, it kind of looks like they did something wrong, but it, you know, with all those things, you always have to make a decision, do we just want to settle or.
Speaker A:And, you know, you could say, would they settle for $17.5 million?
Speaker A:When you're talking about firms that manage billions of dollars, you know, that's, that's actually a drop in a bucket.
Speaker A:And the hardest thing is, though, that doesn't fix the investors who got violated.
Speaker A:That's the worst part.
Speaker A:If an investor actually got violated, that money's not fixing their situation.
Speaker C:Yeah, because we've talked about, too, with esg.
Speaker C:I think if you have a planner that's advocating in your behalf and they say, this is important to me, it's also aligning back to, well, what do you need to live?
Speaker C:And how does this money factor into it?
Speaker C:And so if you had somebody that's brave enough to raise their hand and say, I want to do this, to only have a company not uphold their side of the bargain, I think is a challenge.
Speaker C:But let's get into the.
Speaker C:To the juicy one here.
Speaker C:Why don't you talk to us maybe about this next one.
Speaker A:Justice.gov Eastern District in North Carolina.
Speaker A:This is my.
Speaker C:This is your voice.
Speaker A:This is my voice.
Speaker C:Okay.
Speaker A:Eastern District of North Carolina Rally Investment.
Speaker C:Awesome.
Speaker A:40 changed.
Speaker A:40.
Speaker A:Okay, stop it.
Speaker A:40.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:Eastern District of North Carolina, Raleigh Investment Advisors.
Speaker A:40 year sentence or Ponzi scheme and obstruction affirmed on appeal.
Speaker A:United States Department of Justice.
Speaker A:So I happen to know about this one.
Speaker A:I'll read the story first and then I'll tell you what he was actually doing, okay?
Speaker A:Because it's disgusting.
Speaker A:And this is back to the beginning.
Speaker A:Remember when we said if it's too good to be true, somebody promises you they have a special kind of investment, they're going to take care.
Speaker A:Guaranteed return.
Speaker A:Super safe.
Speaker A:No worries.
Speaker A:Make a lot of money as soon as you hear that like, you know, if you want you can slap them, but at best you should turn around and walk out the door, right?
Speaker A:Or at the least, here's the basically synopsis of the story.
Speaker A:Raleigh investment advisor's 40 year sentence for Ponzi scheme and obstruction affirmed on appeal that was September.
Speaker A: ,: Speaker A:Stephen Condon Peters, a former investment advisor and owner of Vision Quest Wealth Management, lost his appeal today in a some legal word opinion issued by the United States Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit.
Speaker A:The judge against Peters, which included the judgment against Peters, which included a 40 year prison sentence, 15 million and change in restitution and forfeiture of assets, was fully affirmed.
Speaker A: ally he got convicted back in: Speaker A:Now the problem is that most of that $15 million is not recoverable.
Speaker A:They seized a bunch of us.
Speaker A:He had a horse farm, he had a house in South America, Costa Rica that he had built with some of this money.
Speaker A:He had some artwork and stuff, but most of the money they never got back.
Speaker A: t him in a week long trial in: Speaker A:The evidence showed that Peters, in his role as a registered investment advisor, defrauded his numerous clients by steering them into investments in which Peters had a direct financial interest.
Speaker A:He then compounded his crimes by attempting to defraud the SEC with false documents and statements.
Speaker A:At sentencing, the judge commented on Peters crimes were breathtaking but were proven with a tsunami of evidence in issuing his 40 year sentence.
Speaker A:The court also noted that Peters quadrupled down on the crime by among other things, perjuring himself at trial.
Speaker A:What he was doing was he had a whole bunch of different companies, kind of like shell companies, like LLCs and Stuff, including his firm.
Speaker A:And he was going to retirement age investors and he was getting them to give him loans and promising like really high interest rates, like I'm going to give you 8% interest, you give me a loan and I'm going to use that to, to go out and expand the business and that's how you're gonna make your money.
Speaker A:But what he was doing is Steve, he was taking a loan from you and then he was taking a loan from your mom and then when you wanted money back, he'd already spent the money he took from you.
Speaker A:So he gave you his mom's money or your mom's money.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:It was just a Ponzi scheme.
Speaker A:He was basically doing and how he was selling it is he was telling people, well, it's backed by my company.
Speaker A:My company is really secure.
Speaker A:So you go to this financial advisor.
Speaker A:You trust him.
Speaker A:He looks the part.
Speaker A:He had some good pedigree within the industry, had worked for some big mutual fund companies or investment managers, whatever.
Speaker A:I think he was an ex.
Speaker A:He was a retired military of some degree, or he had spent some time in the military.
Speaker A:So he had all the parts.
Speaker A:He looked good, he looked trustworthy.
Speaker A:And he was like, you could trust me.
Speaker A:I'm gonna.
Speaker A:You know, you can get this.
Speaker A:You're gonna make 8% on this.
Speaker A:You're giving the money to me.
Speaker A:You can trust me.
Speaker A:You're gonna be backed by my company.
Speaker A:Well, when you look at the company, there's nothing in the company.
Speaker A:So what he was doing is taking a loan.
Speaker A:He was paying it out from the company to himself and spending the money on whatever.
Speaker A:And eventually, I don't know how it got turned in, but eventually it made its way to the sec.
Speaker A:Probably what happened is people went to him and said, hey, I need my money back.
Speaker A:And he wouldn't give it back, or he was locking it up.
Speaker A:But could you imagine, you have $500,000 and somebody comes in and sells you a couple hundred thousand dollars worth of these loans, and it goes belly up, and you never get that money back.
Speaker A:And that was your retirement money.
Speaker A:And I Googled Ponzi scheme, I googled financial fraud to kind of like, look at some of the cases and stuff.
Speaker A: And you can literally Google: Speaker A:They're all shapes and sizes, but a lot of times, oh, they told me that I was getting 7% on my CD or I could buy this fund and I would get a guaranteed 10%, you know, and there was no risk to it.
Speaker A:Or, you know, I give them a loan and they were going to invest in these properties for me.
Speaker A:You don't need any of that stuff, first and foremost.
Speaker A:Secondly, do you really think.
Speaker A:And people do think this, but there's guys out there that are registered, that have the same licenses as everybody else, but they somehow have some kind of magic investment that nobody else has.
Speaker A:And they happen to be an independent firm with no big brother kind of looking over them, and you're writing a check to them.
Speaker A:Bernie Madoff, like, you go to work with him and you write a check to Bernie Madoff.
Speaker A:Then you get like a handwritten statement, right?
Speaker A:And this is like the airplanes in September 11, we don't think to put a door in the cockpit until the plane crashes.
Speaker A:It's Bernie Madoff.
Speaker A:It's like, maybe you shouldn't write a check to Bernie Madoff, you know, or maybe when you get statements that shows exactly 16% return for like five years in a row, you should be going, no, no, this isn't good.
Speaker A:But it happens.
Speaker A:And that's why you don't have trust in the industry.
Speaker A:But how do you protect yourself?
Speaker A:You're not hiring.
Speaker A:When you take your money and invest your money with somebody, you can't be lazy.
Speaker A:You got to do due diligence.
Speaker A:But think about it from a standpoint of who are you writing the check to and how do you know that that money's going to be there for you?
Speaker A:There's so many firms to work with.
Speaker A:If a firm says, you write your check to us, you know, I.
Speaker A:To me, that's a concerning issue.
Speaker A:Now, there could be situations where they're a trustee or something and there's some due diligence you can do on that.
Speaker A:But you know, when it comes with some kind of underlying like guarantee or you can trust me, or these interest rates are higher than any place else you can get them, man, that's.
Speaker C:Well, it's upsetting, right, because individuals are going out and they're trying to find a trusted professional.
Speaker C:And when you have a situation like this, not only is it painful for the individuals that experience the loss because an individual took advantage of them, but then how it sours the entire experience of an industry where people no longer want to hire somebody because they've read horror stories like this.
Speaker C:Now they're few and far between.
Speaker C:But that's the whole idea of trust.
Speaker C:And people are trying to get rich quick or get a heads up on somebody without paying attention.
Speaker C:I think you've done a really nice job over the last few years of really helping people understand the small decisions that you make make and make a huge outcome over your lifetime.
Speaker C:And I think that's kind of the genesis of why we called this ditch the suits, because you're going to get into it here in just a second.
Speaker C:But we were raised in an industry that said you got to look the part, you got to dress the part, and that's what sells people on trust.
Speaker C:When at the end of the day, we figured out that if you just do a lot of good by a lot of people and tell the truth and help them, then you're going to help people solve their problem.
Speaker A:And people need to stop looking for sexy Right.
Speaker A:Like, sexy seems to sell in the investment world.
Speaker A:Alternatives, you got to have alternatives.
Speaker A:You got to have hedge funds, you got to have this, that, and the other thing.
Speaker A:The truth about investing.
Speaker A:You're trying to buy a cut of a company for a good price so that the future earnings, you get a good share of those.
Speaker A:It's all you're trying to do.
Speaker A:You're trying to get a cut of the future earnings of a company and you want to get a good price on it.
Speaker A:You don't need really sexy things that you don't understand that are guaranteed by who knows what.
Speaker A:If it's too good to be true, don't trust it.
Speaker A:It's the marketing machine.
Speaker A:Watch out for the marketing machine.
Speaker A:If an advisor offers you something special and the returns are really special and they're somehow involved in creating the investment, you know, that's one of those slap them in the face or walk away moments.
Speaker A:You know, it's just they're thinking that you're dumb.
Speaker A:Honestly, that's what they're doing.
Speaker A:And almost all these Ponzi schemes, when you read about them, they're all cooked up at somebody's got.
Speaker A:And they're convincing people.
Speaker A:You would think, how would good people fall for it?
Speaker A:People fall for it all the time because they trust.
Speaker A:I trust him.
Speaker A:So and so introduced me to that person and I just trusted them.
Speaker A:I didn't know better.
Speaker A:Somebody like us, we're going to look at that situation and go, that's just blatantly illegal.
Speaker A:Because we know, we know you can't do that.
Speaker A:But the typical person's like, I didn't know they couldn't do it.
Speaker A:You know, they said they could.
Speaker A:They're registered.
Speaker C:Well, and you've done a really nice job these last two episodes.
Speaker C:Again, there was an.
Speaker C:If you just jumped into this one today, right?
Speaker C:We talked about the unfortunate misdoings of professionals and companies that can take advantage of individuals.
Speaker C:But it was really around this idea of what we talked about in our last episode.
Speaker C:Which is what's more important, trust or performance?
Speaker C:If you missed that episode, go back and listen to it.
Speaker C:I think it was a pretty interesting look at our industry and what people that voted in the survey, what they thought was important.
Speaker C:But we also told you that in the show notes, we'll include it for this one, too.
Speaker C:We have our own little mini survey for ditch the suits as Travis and I would love to hear from you again.
Speaker C:You don't have to put your name next to it.
Speaker C:But what is important to you when you hear Stories like this, when you do go out to find a financial adviser, what are the qualities or what are you looking for in an individual?
Speaker C:And then also, what would cause you to ever leave somebody?
Speaker C:You know, it's your money and it's your life.
Speaker C:And we started this show to help empower you with the financial planning, education, and the things you can do to avoid situations like this where you're waiting on the next big thing to help you survive.
Speaker C:If you just do some really small things one after the other, and you're proactive and you run the money business that Travis always talks about and you do the right things year in and year out, you're going to get ahead in life.
Speaker C:So if you have questions or you have situations where you're like, guys, I don't know if I'm being taken advantage of.
Speaker C:Get in touch with Travis and I, you know, reach out to us.
Speaker C:Head over to ditchesuits.com, fill out the contact form.
Speaker C:It doesn't mean you necessarily have to hire seed or work with us, but if you just got questions, get in touch with us.
Speaker C:We're real people, just like you.
Speaker C:This is a fun one.
Speaker C: And again, part of: Speaker C:So you never miss an episode of Ditch the Suits.
Speaker C:And as always, thanks for being our guest.
Speaker B:Thanks for checking out Ditch the Suits.
Speaker C:Be sure to write a review or drop a comment about this episode.
Speaker B:And if you want more like this.
Speaker C:Head over to ditchesuits.com youm can send us a message and get in touch.
Speaker C:Let us know how we can help and be sure to share any topics you'd be interested in having us cover on the show.
Speaker C:We're here to help you get the most from your money in life.
Speaker C:Thanks for being our guest and checking out Ditch the Suits.
