A recent email reply to a local real estate investment group that is very important to anyone thinking about investing in real estate

Posted by Blueeyes at 11/11/2007 2:35 AM
Categories: Email, Interesting, Real Estate, Investing, news, Scams
The following email was in response to an alleged instance of a mentor/guru taking advantage badly of a newbie real estate investor inside the local real estate investment group.  This email is very important as it covers real estate investment scams and schemes and has a lot of helpful information and links that are very important to anyone currently in or considering to get into real estate investing:

I strongly agree with ****** here as that is just wrong when mentors, gurus and such take advantage of newbies.  Unfortunately this occurs all the time.  It also occurs when companies like Foreclosuresdaily,  Larry Goins and others make promises of instant wealth, how to buy property without ever looking at it, how to buy REO properties for 40-80% off and so on...  They literally lie and take advantage of new real estate investors and fail every point of what the FTC defines as a real estate investment scam.  Just go to one of their free investment seminars where they will promise not to sell you anything and then hard close at the end trying to get people to buy their way overpriced CD, DVD and bootcamp training systems.  If you have or know someone who has been taken advantage of by these real estate scam artists then forward them this email and the links below.  They also show what is a scam and whom to report them to (state attorney general, FTC, BBB, etc...) and how to get your money back:

It's a sad thing that people like those in the companies listed above make their money off of false claims, false advertising, investment schemes and scams, unethical business practices, etc...
The good thing is that the FTC and state agencies are cracking down on these scumbags hard:

The following is an excerpt from the real estate journal  -

But budding investors should realize there's a high cost of getting into, and getting out of, real-estate transactions. "If you're buying a piece of real estate in the East Hamptons, or wherever, there are legal fees, surveys, title costs, mortgage fees, a mortgage-recording tax, and that adds up to thousands and thousands of dollars," says Ms. Saatchi. "That affects the cash you need upfront. When people say you can buy with no money down, well, you can't. It's expensive."  And some seminar promoters run afoul of the law. In March, a real-estate seminar promoter was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to charges of mail fraud and wire fraud stemming from his real-estate seminars, according to a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Pittsburgh. Michael Enelow allegedly defrauded more than 1,000 seminar attendees from 1995 to 2000. He had placed advertisements offering to "share in the profit" of any real-estate transactions that attendees brought to him. Attendees paid $1,500 each to "join" him in his real-estate business. The Federal Bureau of Investigation alleged that the seminar promoter lived off of the proceeds of the seminars and that his real-estate deals were paltry. Mr. Enelow was also ordered by the court to pay $1.7 million in restitution to those who had attended his real-estate seminars. He must also forfeit some real-estate holdings, according to the U.S. Attorney's spokesman.

The FTC has been active in policing real-estate seminar operators in the past. In 1998, the FTC investigated real-estate seminar operators in a probe called "Operation Showtime." Eleven states brought 18 legal cases against seminar operators selling a variety of business and investment schemes.
If you have been taken in by one of these pitches, you don't have to feel victimized. You can fight back.
Now there are some good real estate gurus and advisors out there amongst all the scams.  Here is a great website that I found that actually ranks all the gurus and slime balls and makes it easy to see who you should avoid.  It is done by an individual with 40 years of experience in Real estate investing and is a definite must read for everyone:

The above websites have very important links all of which are free and disclose an emormous amount of helpful information on real estate investment schemes.  Bottomline - use these websites and you will have a much greater chance of making it in real estate and avoiding the scams.  Also, take *****'s advice and do your due diligence and never, ever assume or agree to buy anything without having fully researched it.  Never buy real estate without looking at it, having it inspected (unless you are a licensed inspector), and doing your due diligence regardless of what Larry Goins and Foreclosuresdaily.com or anyone else say.


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