Haven’t had any new posts in a few days because I’ve been busy behind the scenes updating the dockets on all the court cases I already had listed, including the cases against Net Winners. The Tarnol case has proved interesting because although it technically closed in September of last year, it has seen activity as late as October of this year. I also found a bunch more net winner cases, and will be adding them over the next few days. Unfortunately, there has been no notable activity on the SEC case. Like you, I’m anxiously waiting for that claims process to get rolling.
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Joel’s Cease and Desist
Unable to locate a document as old as the Cease and Desist on Missouri’s Securities site, I emailed them. Lo and behold, I got a response! A paralegal was kind enough to forward a copy of the Cease and Desist order, issued in 1988. In August 1988, the Commissioner found out that in 1983, Prudential Petroleum offered and sold a filing service to provide investors oil and gas leases through the federal lottery in the State of Missouri. The State considers this to be “soliciting investments for a filing service.” Prudential Petroleum was not registered and did receive an exemption to do this. In September 1988, the Commissioner sent a letter to Joel asking for his exemption or why he thought he didn’t need to register to sell securities in their state. They also wanted Missouri investor information. His wife, Carol, signed for the letter, which makes sense since that was their residence. Joel’s lawyer responded in October 1988 stating that the company was an “advisory company which assisted individuals in entering the oil and gas lottery run by the United States Government.” I’d love for someone to explain to me how that’s different from “soliciting investments for a filing
Continue readingJoel, Investment Advisor Extraordinaire
I’ve managed to dig up some information on Joel’s old investment advisor license using some good old fashioned internet sleuthing. I’m not finished, but it’s so long ago there’s no guarantee that there’s more to find. Once upon a time, Joel was an investment advisor in the State of California. I pulled his FINRA report from…FINRA.org for free. The horror! He worked for a brokerage firm called CECO Financial Services (now defunct) from 05/06/1985 to 08/20/1986. None of that is interesting. What is interesting is that this report has a little black mark on it. On 11/22/88 someone reported a regulatory event – a Cease & Desist Order in Missouri: Then it looks like Joel Responded. All the quoted spelling and grammatical errors are his, by the way. Prudential Petroleum was registered in the State of California on 9/23/1982 and their last state filing was on 2/22/1985. So, it appears that Prudential Petroleum got in trouble for soliciting potential clients by mail in Missouri without a license, but Joel doesn’t think he did anything wrong. Now, I looked up if the whole filing service thing could be scammy since it certainly seems like an excellent opportunity to fleece someone
Continue readingA Look Back: Joel’s Sentencing Brief, Part 4
This post is the last in a multi-part series on Joel’s sentencing brief which was filed on the criminal case docket back in September 2015. I’ll tag the posts with “Joel’s Sentencing Brief” so if you miss a part, you’ll be able to find it easily. As usual, all page numbers listed are the PDF’s page number, not the page number listed at the bottom of the printed page. It’s easier for you to jump to the appropriate page this way. Part 4 – Saint Joel aka Saint Dickwad Attached to the sentencing brief was a long list of letters from people who love and support Joel. Being perfectly honest here, I read them but will not be commenting on every little thing in them. They’re highly repetitive and I… feel bad for most of them. Joel was vouched for by lawyers, long-time friends, business owners and family members. There are a number of positive adjectives used to describe Joel, including loving, caring, dedicated, trustworthy and honorable. They really have nothing but good things to say about him. They tell stories of how Joel supported them through tough times, like the illness or passing of a loved one. Actually, there’s
Continue readingTimeline of Events Available.
I recently realized that there’s so much new information coming to light that I can no longer keep my written notes organized with any semblance of sanity – it’s a mess. Court documents also tend to be organized by subject matter or charge, so they bounce around on the dates, making it hard to get an accurate timeline in my head while reading a document. So I hunted down a WordPress plugin that lets me do timelines. The only drawback is that the dates have to be listed exactly. This means that when the Receiver says that in the third week of August 2014, I can’t say August, Week 3, I have to list something like August 17th. Whenever this happens, I will point out that the date is not exact and what it should roughly read. I have to wrap up work for my very last bookkeeping client ever (hurrah!) but as soon as I finish, I’ll get back working on this timeline. It’s very incomplete at present and I have to fill in some references. A big part of the work is that I’m going through each document from the word “go” while cross-referencing my notes and updating
Continue readingNew York Class Action – The Declarations
There were four declarations attached to the New York Class action couldn’t be covered in the last post. I planned to cover all four of them here, but the two from the investors don’t really add anything we didn’t already know, so I think I’ll leave them off for now. I’ve also left out information stated in yesterday’s post since these are all a part of that filing but some repeated information was included for context. Ed Wishner In a shocking turn of events, Ed is actually helping the victims. Or screwing over a former co-conspirator. I doubt either is being done out of the goodness of his heart. As you know he’s been at Terminal Island, but what you may not have heard is that he’s been living in the infirmary because he requires “frequent medical attention.” He’s doing this declaration because he “may not survive in prison long enough to testify in person.” My heart bleeds. Ed says that they kept investor files in file cabinets at NASI. These files generally included the purchase and lease agreements, proof of payments from the investor, copies of correspondence to and from the investor, copies of some monthly Investor Summary reports and
Continue readingNew York Class Action
I’m putting a hold on the final installment of the saga of Joel’s Sentencing Brief until this is covered in full. Yet another class action was filed on September 29, 2017, and intended for victims located outside California. According to to the initial complaint, there are 500-600 victims located outside California who, together, lost about $45 million. Victims in California lost about $90 million. Off the bat, we have a discrepancy. The Receiver has been pretty consistently estimating $124-125 million. This case places it higher but this case is only counting from 2009-2014 – five years. Back when NASI shut down, people on Quatloos thought the Receiver could only go back five years but he ended up being able to go back seven. Perhaps because of the multiple jurisdictions of the victims (they are spread across thirty-six states), they can only go back five years in this case, which would account for the $10 million difference between this case and the Receiver. The suit alleges what I now consider boilerplate allegations against Fitzwilliam and CNB and adds Fuel Doctor into the mix. How he knew, how he helped, etc. What’s interesting in this one are the details revealed. I’ll try to
Continue readingA Look Back: Joel’s Sentencing Brief, Part 3
This post is a multi-part series on Joel’s sentencing brief which was filed on the criminal case docket back in September 2015. I’ll tag the posts with “Joel’s Sentencing Brief” so if you miss a part, you’ll be able to find it easily. As usual, all page numbers listed are the PDF’s page number, not the page number listed at the bottom of the printed page. It’s easier for you to jump to the appropriate page this way. Part 3 – Security Through Obscurity HA! NASI set the bar really low for Ponzi schemes if their own lawyer called the whole operation “primitive.” I realize that the lawyer was really saying that they weren’t trying to hide anything, that they didn’t use shell companies or anything, but they kind of did. They invested money into Fuel Doctor, another scam. They loaned a fuck-ton of cash to Oasis and then the loan just kind of disappeared. They also funded Oasis, bought trailers and then moved those assets around. I don’t know the details on that. The Receiver is still working on it. As some of you have read before, I’m a bookkeeper. Been doing it for fifteen years, even during my
Continue readingA Look Back: Joel’s Sentencing Brief, Part 2
This post is a multi-part series on Joel’s sentencing brief which was filed on the criminal case docket back in September 2015. I’ll tag the posts with “Joel’s Sentencing Brief” so if you miss a part, you’ll be able to find it easily. As usual, all page numbers listed are the PDF’s page number, not the page number listed at the bottom of the printed page. It’s easier for you to jump to the appropriate page this way. Part 2 – Joel Invents New Math I’m skipping forward here since they’re just bleating about corporate veils and stuff. And then Joel invents a new form of math! It sounds to me like Joel is saying that if you used re-invested with prior winnings, then that re-investment shouldn’t come off the amount you’re due. Bullshit. These re-investments he’s talking about are essentially the victim giving him back some of the winnings – so why should they still owe that portion of the winnings? How the hell does he even think the math works on that? In the off chance that you think that Joel is making some kind of sense. I want you to sit down with 30 pennies. We’re going
Continue readingA Look Back: Joel’s Sentencing Brief, Part 1
I started writing this post when I discovered Joel’s sentencing brief on the criminal case docket back in September 2015. It’s been quite a project since the brief is 249 pages, more than half of which are exhibits. So, I’ve decided to chop this up into several parts. I’ll tag the posts with “Joel’s Sentencing Brief” so if you miss a part, you’ll be able to find it easily. As usual, all page numbers listed are the PDF’s page number, not the page number listed at the bottom of the printed page. It’s easier for you to jump to the appropriate page this way. Part 1 – Too Old to Die in Jail 75 is the new 60. Coincidentally, 60 is about when he started screwing people over. And he continued screwing them while he was 74. I highly doubt that he was in perfect health at 74 and then suddenly doing poorly at 75. He was scamming the living shit out of people right up until he was stopped from doing it anymore. I’d hazard to say that he would have kept it at it right up until the moment he keeled over and bit the big one. While
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