Pump and Dump
August 12, 2018
In the 1970s, Sam’s old man became the youngest bank president in a certain state-named bank’s history. A banking prodigy of sorts, he was bank president by age 28, a feat that would be virtually unheard of these days. In the 1980s, he traded in his title as bank president to pursue more lucrative ventures. After trying a few other endeavors, the old man eventually landed at a company loosely in the business of acquiring and selling loans. One day the old man returned from a business trip to find a team of men wearing navy blue windbreakers with “FBI” on the back carrying out boxes of documents from the company’s offices. These boxes contained evidence that was later used to indict nearly every other person at the old man’s office on federal charges of bank fraud, bank bribery, bank larceny, and twenty four other criminal charges. Somehow this former bank president and his friend Darrell were the only two people out of the entire company who were not indicted.
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After watching their jobs end in an FBI raid and criminal indictments, the old man and Darrell decided to go work for themselves. Each opened his own mortgage brokerage firm, yet they always shared office space and worked very closely together. Then, after a few years they bought a small title company, to run alongside their respective mortgage businesses. Doing this they could make money off of title fees on deals that closed at their title company, in addition to the fees they would bring in for mortgages they each brokered.
Shortly after Sam graduated from college, the old man persuaded Sam to come work for him at the title company. The idea was that Sam would start out as an escrow assistant while he studied for and earned his real estate broker’s license. Eventually, once licensed, Sam would be able to work on real estate deals as a broker. Before not too long, Sam noticed troubling activities at the title company. As a starting point, he noticed that the only escrow officer they had was doing nothing with files after closings. This meant title insurance policies were not being obtained, loan instruments were not being recorded, and none of the other actions you pay a title company to take were being taken. But that was just the tip of the iceberg. From contracts with dubiously missing earnest money to predatory lending practices to blatant straw buyer schemes, Sam soon saw that the escrow officer handling day-to-day activities was, at best, a veritable train wreck, and quite likely was an outright criminal. When Sam told the old man, the old man’s reaction was to dismiss and ignore.
Not long after, they hired an experienced escrow officer to help with the files. It took her all of one day to catch onto the serious problems afoot, and within a week, she told the old man he needed to fire the other officer, or she was leaving. She ended up leaving anyway, realizing that if she did not, she would end up getting blamed for what was very clearly illegal activity that carries prison sentences with it. Sam left with her and went to work for another title company.
Years later, Sam would learn that the original escrow officer went to prison for various charges, including mortgage fraud.
Sam’s departure from the old man’s title company resulted in another period of silence between the two. The old man did not take kindly to anything he thought would make him “look bad”; and, most certainly having your son leave your company to go work at another one in the same exact business fell into that category. However, eventually, they reconciled and the old man again persuaded Sam to work with him. In the intervening years, Sam had become a broker and a father. So, when he heard the old man talk about how much business he had coming through the doors for Sam to work on, the opportunity seemed like it would be a good one for his family. Since it would also give him the opportunity to reconcile with his father, Sam agreed. Once again, however, reality did not match the old man’s promises. Despite all the big talk about how much business was coming through the door, Sam found himself with very little to do. It didn’t make sense. But before Sam could figure out what was really going on, he and the old man had another falling out, resulting in Sam being suddenly and unexpectedly unemployed with a nearly three year old son.
This particular falling out followed a similar pattern to others--Sam noticed something that caused him concern and when the old man realized Sam knew what he knew, the old man blew up at Sam. The relevant specifics were as follows: The old man had invited his two sons and their families to join he and his wife at his vacation home in Colorado. At some point early in the trip, Sam went to use the old man’s laptop to check his emails—a relative non-event in most households. But on this occasion, the old man had forgotten to close the page for last website he had been visiting, which again, would not have been a big deal, except that Mr. Supposedly Happily Married was apparently shopping for adult escort services at a company that offered both male and female escorts. Having seen this same website open on the old man’s computer at work, and knowing that the old man had spent a few days by himself at the condo before everyone else arrived, Sam was disgusted. Without saying a word, Sam simply left the screen open as he had found it. When the old man returned to his computer and found the escort services page open, he knew Sam had seen it.
So, at the very next opportunity he had, the old man lost it. And that next opportunity presented itself in short order, helped by none other than Sam’s brother Randy and his wife Katie.
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At the time Randy and Katie were newlyweds without children of their own. Taking after his father in self-centeredness and pushing the envelope in brattiness, Randy appropriately found in Katie a wife who had a similarly distasteful and often-times offensive disposition. Quick to judge and let everyone know her opinion, which usually involved putting someone else down, Katie was not a person that people gravitated towards. Randy and Sam’s mother, for example, would often complain to Sam about how hard it was to be around Katie because she was so bossy and just unpleasant. The old man even had a hard time with her. Though he would pretend to tolerate her, it was no coincidence that when she was around he spent most of the time mentally somewhere else; typically with his face in his phone, knocking back drinks, or both.
Before getting into the specifics of how Randy and Katie instigated the Colorado blow-up, it should also be understood that Sam was not at their wedding; not because he did not want to be, but because Randy refused to invite him. Why? Because this was one way Randy chose to use to let Sam know that he disapproved of Sam for having conflict with the old man. Rather than own his self-righteous position and stand by the decision to not invite his only brother to his wedding, however, Randy lied and told everyone that Sam just didn’t show up. What Randy did not tell people was that he not only refused to send an invitation to Sam, but that he didn’t even have the courage to tell Sam that he was not invited and instead had their mother Catherine carry the message that Sam was not welcome to attend his wedding. Even after all of that, however, sometime after the wedding Sam still extended an olive branch to his older brother to try and salvage some sort of brotherly relationship. Similar to his efforts with the old man, Sam found himself in a one-sided apology session with Randy, where Randy accepted Sam’s apologies, essentially agreed that Sam had been wrong on everything, and then agreed to resume the unhealthy lopsided relationship they had always had with each other, where everything would be okay as long as Sam put up with whatever outlandish nonsense and abuse Randy would throw at him.
By the time the Colorado trip came around, the brothers were back on the mend, which meant they talked maybe a couple times a year and might have seen each other once a year at a holiday function. By now, Katie and Randy had been married for a couple or so years. Katie’s frictional personality was, by this time, well-known to cause tension, discomfort, and, at times conflict, throughout the family and in other relationships. Most family members simply pretended to get along with her and then talked about her behind her back. Sam was never one for faking his way through dealing with intolerable people, though. Not one to confront unpleasant people either, Sam instead typically simply avoided them. On the Colorado trip, however, there was no avoiding Katie, and besides, Sam was trying to make the trip an enjoyable one for Brady, so he was focused mostly on making sure Brady was cared for and having a good time. To that end, at some point early in the trip, Sam found himself with a very hungry Brady and no other available food source, so he bought Brady McDonald’s—something that, particularly on a vacation, would not be unusual for a parent to do when faced with a similar situation. For whatever reason, Katie made it her mission to lecture Sam about how horrible it was that he was feeding his son McDonald’s and that he really should know better as a father, and so on. Rather than say any number of things that could come to mind in the moment, such as “what business is it of yours and what would you know any way about caring for a child having never had children of your own?” Sam instead simply ignored her, not just in her rant, but altogether. The following morning, pretending to be a friend and acting as though he was concerned that there was something bothering Sam, Randy asked Sam what was going on. Sam, thinking Randy was approaching the situation as a calm and mature adult, confided in Randy that he did not appreciate Katie’s “snarky comments” the day before about Sam’s parenting skills. Apparently, that was not what Randy wanted to hear. Huffing and puffing, Randy blew up at Sam and ran upstairs, apparently to tattle to the old man.
Next thing he knew, what started as completely unnecessary overbearing snobby comments by a woman with no kids of her own harshly judging her brother-in-law for feeding his son McDonald’s, suddenly and dramatically turned into a full-scale nuclear war, with the old man, Randy, and Katie on one side, and Sam on the other. Before Sam knew what was happening, the old man was kicking Sam out, along with his not yet 3 year old son and wife, and firing him from his job in one fell swoop. All because Randy and Katie threw a tantrum to the old man, and the old man knew Sam had discovered his secret interest in male escorts.
In an instant, Sam once again lost all connection with his father, his brother, and now, his sole source of income. And, of course, the old man knew this when he blew up. The old man also knew Sam would have to delay divorcing Brady’s mother, which Sam had recently confided in the old man he planned to do. As for Randy and Katie, Randy barely spoke to Sam and did not actually see Sam again until years later when Sam was in the hospital after the crash, and Katie never communicated with Sam ever again. During the years leading to the crash, Katie made absolutely no effort to have any sort of relationship with Brady, even though she and Randy eventually had children of their own, which presumably would have given her a more compassionate perspective as a parent. Katie continued to ignore Sam even after the crash—she couldn’t even be bothered enough to send him a text message telling him “sorry you almost died, hope you get to feeling better soon.” Not a word, not a single acknowledgment of any kind of care for Sam as a human being, even years after watching the explosion she instigated in Colorado and knowing the effect that had on Sam’s life back then.
For a little while after the Colorado debacle, the future seemed grim. But after a few months Sam got another job and the following year he opened his own commercial real estate brokerage. As Sam’s business grew, so did his confidence, and the more time he spent away from the old man, the stronger he became. Soon enough he would finally be able to divorce Brady’s mother and be assured of maintaining a healthy loving home for his son. Life was good.
Then one day a client asked him about selling residential loans. Sam happened to have read an article in the local paper about a new company with an eerily familiar sounding name being run by none other than the old man and his long-time friend Darrell. Not interested in reconnecting with the old man, but wanting to find potential buyers for his client, Sam contacted Darrell. Eventually, Darrell persuaded Sam to talk to the old man and again Sam fell into old familiar feelings of obligation toward the idea of having a relationship with his father. Much like times before, the old man talked big about how well business was going for him. And much like times before, Sam began to see things that just did not make sense. Having been burned by the old man a few too many times, this time when Sam realized things were not adding up, he started quietly looking into exactly what the old man was up to and guarded himself much better than before.
Sam proceeded, though cautiously, and tried to develop a good relationship with the old man. Now that Sam had his own business he did not have to rely on the old man in any financial way—this leveling of the scales helped somewhat. Sam was also now a single dad with sole custody of his son. He had thrown his heart and soul into being the best father he could be, which itself was a source of strength he had not had before. Even with Sam’s best efforts, however, the old man was still the same person, and it did not take long to see that.
Though Sam never regarded the old man as one to lead by good example in personal matters, Sam was shocked to learn in very abrupt fashion that the old man was divorcing his second wife. They had been married for approximately 11 years and by outward appearances everything had been fine the last time Sam had seen them together (with the exception of the old man’s use of the adult escort services, of course, but no one else probably knew about that other than Sam). Suddenly the old man had nothing but horrible things to say about the woman Brady had known as a grandmother his whole life. Then, within months the old man moved a new woman in with him to share the condo he used to share with his former wife, was introducing her to everyone as his fiancé, and telling Brady to call her “grandma”. Aside from being strange, the behavior also felt forced. Sam later learned that, contrary to what the old man would lead people to believe, the second wife actually left him, not the other way around. And, apparently the old man didn’t take it very well, as she ended up having to get a restraining order against him. But the old man wouldn’t tell anyone any of those details. Instead, the old man wove his story that she was awful and he therefore left her. The truth was that she was a wonderful woman and a great mother to her own son, and she had to find an incredible amount of strength to untangle herself from his toxic web.
So, the old man’s personal life left some to be desired, but Sam figured that his father had always been maladjusted when it came to women, and, after all, he is an adult, so he thought it would be best to try and just mind his own business on that front. The real problems that led to the next blow up centered on the old man’s business practices. Before getting into the blow up itself, however, we will go over some key background facts.
Sam had just closed a deal with a long-time client to whom he had brought numerous deals that for one reason or another did not pan out over the years. This client was originally a mortgage and refinancing client of the old man’s who we will call Farbucks. Over the years at various times the old man would tell Sam that Farbucks was looking to buy a high dollar property and he would encourage Sam to find the property for him. Sam would work tirelessly at finding properties matching Farbucks’s criteria and most times Sam would succeed. When Sam would bring the deal, however, the old man would inform Sam that it was not a good time because he was working with Farbucks to refinance another property. Every time this happened, Sam ended up working for free, and the old man would make a fee from the refinancing. A few years later, 12-18 months before that loan would reach its maturity, the same cycle would start all over again. This, however, was one of the rare times that Farbucks actually went through with a deal, so the fact that Sam had finally closed a Farbucks deal was not only gratifying, but it also felt long overdue in the face of years’ worth of work for which Sam never got paid. Sam was finally making a fee from a Farbucks deal and man had he earned it.
Meanwhile, over the course of the preceding year or so, on the heels of being left by his second wife, the old man had been busy working for his “new” company, where he held the title of “president” and his buddy Darrell was “CEO.” Recall that Sam first heard of this “new” company in the local paper and called on Darrell based on what the article said their company was doing. Recall also that the “new” company had an eerily familiar sounding name. As it turns out, the name seemed familiar because it was the name of the company the old man and Darrell worked for that got raided by the FBI years before. This version of the company however, had a different approach. Instead of bank bribery and bank fraud, Company Version 2.0 was a vehicle for micro-cap fraud. Let me explain.
Publicly traded as penny stocks on the OTC market, the old man’s “new” company described itself to the investing public as an “Asset Resolution company specializing in the purchase and management of individual and bulk loan portfolios consisting primarily of Sub-Performing, and Non-Performing Residential and Commercial loans.” In other words, the company claimed to specialize in purchasing distressed loans secured by real estate.
On its website, adorned with a classic view of the city skyline across the top and a vertically moving banner announcing recent company news along the right side, the company claimed to have traded “billions of dollars of financial assets as principal and agent,” with “Senior Management” (i.e., the old man and Darrell) having facilitated loan sales “in excess of One Billion Dollars.” One might have wondered how a company that was less than about a year old could have traded “billions of dollars” already. This is where having the same name as the former company came into play—it was the former company, the one subject to the FBI investigation whose principals were criminally indicted, that traded billions of dollars of financial assets. But never mind that minor detail. If that had been the only misrepresentation surrounding the old man’s company, this post would hardly be worth writing.
For ease of reference we will call the company Cambridge Funding, a fictional name, as we describe what Sam uncovered about his old man’s illegal activities. Put simply, Cambridge Funding’s value hinged on its claims that it bought underperforming loans at steep discounts and then turned around and sold them at higher prices. That was how shareholders were supposed to make money. And, in fact, that is what the old man convinced Sam he was doing—the old man even went the extra mile and encouraged Sam to go find loans for the company to buy, telling Sam that Cambridge Funding and its equity partners had the ability to acquire loan portfolios in the range of tens of millions to hundreds of millions of dollars. In similar fashion to what would happen with Farbucks, nearly every time Sam found loan portfolios, the old man would have some excuse as to why no deal was to be made.
All the while, the old man and Darrell were running an extensive “pump and dump” scheme. As part of the scheme, the old man and Darrell sold their individually owned mortgage brokerages to Cambridge Funding in exchange for over 20 million shares each plus other remuneration. This gave them control over large blocks of Cambridge Funding’s free trading shares. Next, they organized and implemented promotional campaigns on behalf of the company, replete with press releases, business journal articles, newsletters, and email blasts, to artificially “pump” up the price and trading volume of company shares. The campaigns were designed to lead investors to buy Cambridge Funding shares based on false representations that the company was acquiring significant loan portfolios. In reality, the company was doing no such thing. After pumping the stocks, the old man and Darrell “dumped” them by selling large volumes of Cambridge Funding’s stock to innocent investors. Cambridge Funding’s stock price would then drop, resulting in losses to the investing public.
Put another way, the old man and Darrell were running a stock market manipulation scheme that artificially inflated the stock price of a publicly traded company through manipulative trading and other fraudulent means. As you might guess, the Securities and Exchange Commission does not look kindly on these kinds of activities.
But Sam didn’t know any of this when he first read about Cambridge Funding in the local paper and reached out to Darrell. Sam believed it when the old man told him that Cambridge Funding and its equity partners were looking to buy hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of loan portfolios. Based on these representations and the agreement that Sam would make a 1% commission on any portfolio the company purchased, Sam searched nationwide for suitable loan portfolios to meet the company’s criteria. All told, Sam brought over $1.5 billion worth of loan portfolios to the company from well-recognized legitimate banks, insurance companies, credit unions, and private lenders. Nearly every time, the old man would give some reason or another for why the company did not want to buy whatever Sam had brought them.
The one exception was a portfolio Sam brought to the old man that was valued at approximately $700k. But that purchase ended up feeling like a perfunctory move by the old man so no one could say that the company never bought anything. As Sam would later learn, despite the old man’s claims that the company and its equity partners had hundreds of millions of dollars to spend on these loan portfolios, the company nearly defaulted on the one portfolio it purchased. In fact, Cambridge Funding ended up taking out a loan from a community bank to fund the one portfolio it purchased, which sent up a huge red flag to Sam, since Cambridge Funding was telling the public they had equity partners who could immediately fund hundreds of millions of dollars of portfolios.
This caused Sam to start taking a closer look at what was really going on there. When Sam put the pieces together and realized what the old man was up to, he knew he needed to stay as far away from the old man’s company as possible. From that point forward, he stopped taking any potential loan sale deals to the old man. The only thing left was the one deal he had left with Farbucks, which he quietly waited on to close before he would confront the old man on what he had discovered.
Finally, the Farbucks deal closed and Sam earned that fee he had been working so hard for over the course of several years. In all honesty, if Sam could have had it his way, he would have simply faded out from any dealings with the old man at that point so he would never have to talk to him again. He had had enough and knew the old man was not someone he wanted to be around or that he wanted his young son to be around. And, although he knew he would have to confront him, he also knew confronting the old man would probably mean another blow up, and these blow ups were never easy. After all, the last blow up ended with the old man kicking him out and firing him. So, though he was mentally preparing himself for what would undoubtedly be a very difficult conversation, he was not rushing to have it either.
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Immediately following the Farbucks closing, the old man started calling every day and sometimes twice a day. Sam knew he could avoid it only for so long, but was not ready to deal with the old man quite yet, so he put off answering and put off returning the old man’s calls. About two or three weeks passed and Sam knew he could not avoid it any longer. One night when the old man was calling yet again, Sam decided to go ahead and just answer. As soon as he answered and the old man said, “Well, you sure have been hard to get a hold of,” Sam knew things were not going to go well. Then, as though the old man was reading from a script taken from a low-budget mafia movie, he continues with “We need to settle up, Sam.” Surprised, but at the same time not really, since, after all, this was the same old man that had grabbed at Sam’s earnings before, Sam said “what do you mean?” And this was when the old man said that he was entitled to half of Sam’s fee from the Farbucks deal, even though they had agreed to no such thing, and the old man had done absolutely no work associated with Sam bringing the property to Farbucks. Not to mention, the old man was earning a fee on the financing side because Sam had brought this property to Farbucks, which led to Farbucks getting a loan to purchase it. So the old man was making a grab at half of Sam’s fee on top of the fee he was already making. Sam told the old man no. Thinking that would surely trigger a screaming fit and be the end of it, Sam braced himself. But then somehow, the conversation turned into the old man talking about how he had a check for $25,000 made out to Sam as a fee for a purchase Cambridge Funding made of one of the loan portfolios Sam had brought to them. But Sam had no idea what the old man was talking about. There had only ever been one sale that Sam had facilitated to Cambridge Funding, it had a $7,000 fee associated with it, and had happened months before, shortly before Sam decided he would not bring any more portfolios to the company because he suspected they were into illegal activities. Then, without skipping a beat the old man told Sam that he would give Sam the $25,000 check from Cambridge Funding if Sam would take half of the fee he was entitled to from the Farbucks deal and give the other half to the old man.
Sam quickly realized the old man must have used Sam’s name on a deal he maneuvered through Cambridge Funding, was now trying to use Sam to launder money from it (which would explain the so-called $25,000 fee ), and, on top of it was trying to take half of Sam’s fee from the Farbucks deal. Unbelievable. So Sam told the old man to keep the $25K from a deal he had nothing to do with and had no knowledge of; and Sam would keep his full fee from the Farbucks deal. Sam then told the old man that he knew what Cambridge Funding was about, that he wanted nothing to do with any of it, which is why he had purposefully kept his distance from their shady dealings, and that the old man could under no circumstances use Sam’s name on anything related to Cambridge Funding in the future. Where the conversation took its final turn was when Sam said he would give the old man half of the fee Sam had rightfully earned if the old man would simply say words to the effect of “I admit that, as a general rule, I exploit my son.” That sent the old man into orbit, and after screaming like a lunatic, telling Sam that any money Sam had ever made was because of him, and ending with “do you think I’ll forget this?” before hanging up, there was nothing else to be said. Sam had been working hard at ridding himself of toxic people and he had come to realize, father or not, the old man was toxic and needed to be out of his and his son’s life.
Sam and Brady carried on with their lives and for three years had nothing to do with the old man. Sam was doing well in business, had picked up competitive cycling, and was a proud father dedicated in every way to his young son. But eventually, Sam’s mother Catherine wore Sam down with good old fashioned guilt, telling Sam that Brady needed to have a grandfather and that the old man was really not doing well. Sam caved and reached out to the old man on the old man’s birthday. As though tuning into a new episode of the same soap opera, when Sam and the old man reconnected this time, the old man was desperately dating again after having just been “Dear Johned” by the last fiancé, the one he picked up right after he was left by his second wife. The old man was visibly wearing the signs of extreme and prolonged stress. Apparently, the old man was shaken up not only by the personal romantic rejections, but also because he was facing potential bankruptcy because he couldn’t pay the loan he had taken from a community bank to pay off the only loan portfolio the company ever purchased from one of Sam’s clients, and generally felt like his life was in shambles. Partly out of pity and partly out of wanting to believe the old man had turned a new leaf, Sam listened to his father and tried, once again, to have a good relationship with him. But, the old man hadn’t changed.
Same song, different verse, Sam learned the old man was still up to his old tricks. To begin with, the old man and Darrell not only continued with the Cambridge Funding pump and dump scheme, but they also expanded into several other companies they used as vehicles for fraud. For example, the old man started a company that allegedly specialized in healthcare services, of which the old man was, again, president, even though the old man had not one bit of experience in the healthcare industry. That company also was a complete sham. He used it in the same fashion as Cambridge Funding and used all the same tricks as before to manipulate stock prices and defraud innocent investors. The old man had also reconnected with Cirrus, his former boss from the original company that got raided by the FBI years before. The old man had always talked horribly about Cirrus, telling Sam that Cirrus was the mastermind behind the criminal enterprise at the original Cambridge Funding. Yet, at the inception of the second Cambridge Funding, the old man, Darrell, and Cirrus reconnected and joined forces on the pump and dump schemes. In fact, and this happened after Sam and the old man reconnected this time, the old man eventually avoided bankruptcy by borrowing money from Cirrus to pay off the loan to the community bank. As Sam would later learn, the old man also apparently never paid Cirrus back; Cirrus ended up suing him in civil court over it. At some point Cirrus allegedly died; however, as recently as two years ago, the old man insisted that he thought that Cirrus had faked his own death and was hiding out in a country with no extradition treaty with the U.S.
But Sam kept his distance from the Cambridge Funding mess and not long after he and the old man reconnected this time around, Sam transitioned from his commercial real estate brokerage to owning and operating an unrelated franchise business. As luck would have it, within about a year of reconnecting the old man called Sam up with a real estate opportunity. Apparently Farbucks was ready to sell the same property that Sam had closed on a few years earlier with Farbucks as the buyer—the same deal Sam and the old man blew up on last time.
Now Farbucks wanted to sell the same property for more than double the price he paid for it. Up for the challenge and wanting to make the money that would come with that kind of a deal, Sam set out to find and in fact did find Farbucks a buyer. However, over the course of the next two and a half years, despite bringing offer after offer, the deal would never close, usually because Farbucks was being difficult. On one occasion, Sam brought a buyer who made an offer just below the asking price; Farbucks would not counter. On another occasion, Sam brought a buyer with an offer for the asking price; Farbucks raised the price. Sam then brought another buyer with an offer for the higher asking price, and, again for whatever reason, Farbucks wouldn’t close. Eventually, Sam resigned himself to accepting that the deal just wasn’t going to happen, and tried to put it out of his mind. After all, his business was getting busier and busier, and as nice as it would be to bring in the extra money, it really was a headache dealing with Farbucks.
Then one day the old man called Sam up and told him that finally Farbucks was ready to sell, this time for $13 million. Mind you, this was a property he had purchased for $4.8 million less than 6 years earlier, so it was going to be no small feat to find a buyer to match this asking price. So, once again, Sam went elephant hunting and, again, he brought Farbucks an offer for his asking price. And, again, after all of Sam’s hard work, Farbucks changed his mind and decided he wasn’t going to sell after all. This time Sam was furious, but mostly furious at the old man because this time Sam had insisted on having a listing agreement, which would have ensured that his work would not go completely unpaid if this type of thing were to happen. The old man refused to even entertain the notion, which meant that Sam, once again, was left in the lurch after working on this same deal for three years with nothing to show for it. When Sam heard that Farbucks had changed his mind on selling, yet again, he confronted the old man and urged him to go to Farbucks and ask for a fee for the work that was done in finding a willing buyer at Farbucks’s asking price. The old man refused. And so it went, and for what Sam thought was the final time, Sam closed the old man out of his life. Sam later learned that shortly after turning down the $13 million offer, Farbucks refinanced the property at the old man’s encouragement, which made the old man yet another fee.
Then Sam got hit by a car. And, in a moment of unfortunate weakness, Sam’s mother brought the old man back into Sam’s life. In earlier posts we talked about the so-called attempts at “helping” Sam after his release from the hospital after the crash. Something else was going on, however, that Sam only learned about a year later, when he heard out of the blue from another broker who used to ask him questions periodically about the Farbucks property Sam was trying to sell before the crash. The broker was emailing to find out what happened to the offer he submitted the year before on the Farbucks property. But Sam had never heard of an offer being submitted. As it turns out, Sam was either in the hospital or just out of the hospital when the broker tried to reach him to submit his client’s offer, and when he couldn’t reach Sam he emailed the old man with the offer. The old man never responded. Now, a year later, the broker was circling back with Sam to follow up and because the old man never told Sam about it, Sam was finding out about this offer for the first time a year after it had been made. Naturally, Sam wanted to know what was going on. When he asked the old man about it, the old man’s reaction was cold and shifty – looking at him, you could tell he knew he had been caught.
But by this time Sam was in the throes of trying to find help for his Traumatic Brain Injury and dealing with an increasingly acting out teenage son. Yet another confirmation that his old man was greedy and lacked good judgment fell somewhat lower in priority in comparison to what else was going on in his life. At the time, all of this background was not at the forefront of Sam’s mind—he was in a fight for his life, with his brain being both his ally and enemy. The last thing he was worried about was the old man. If only we had known then what we know now, we would have known exactly how critical of a mistake it was to assume that the old wolf in sheep’s clothing was anything close to safe. Just how dangerous he became will be revealed in more detail in the next post.
Please stay tuned.