3.29.2016

Today I received a phone call from a gentleman that had been unfortunately subject to a real estate scam in 2006.

As he was sharing with me the complexity of his case I said, “Mike, I have participated in more than 6000 real estate transactions in the course of my lifetime. I’ve never heard of a more fraudulent and intentionally deceptive real estate related case in my life…you have a movie here”.

In the last several years Mike has figured out that the people involved in stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars and deceiving him, was an attorney, a title company, and the banker that work at the bank!

The issue is fraught with lies and Mike has been able to intelligently separate himself to actually look at the facts clear minded and unemotional.

This is a gift that Mike has cultivated….the gift of clear, calm, precise thinking. Real estate transactions are very charged, heated with a great deal of emotion and pressure. Any time money is on the line, people do very compromising things that put themselves and their partners in jeopardy unnecessarily.

I shared with Mike that in 2006, some people that I knew, that were actually renting office space from me, and that I considered personal friends, came to me and asked me if I wanted to be an investor in their business. I asked them to describe what they were looking to do, as I knew it was in the real estate field.

After listening to them describe what they were looking to do, I suggested that they reconsider what they were looking to do, because it was illegal.

Unfortunately they didn’t listen and were subsequently put in jail for fraud, as one of them had stolen more than $6 million.

There is no easy way out once you cross over that threshold.

In the last 35 years of being involved and participating in thousands of real estate transactions, I can say that the only way to go is a high road. On the high road, you may not necessarily become a millionaire overnight, although you will get there.