You can't trust your best friend when it comes to money.
Mr. Bruce birkett, a certified financial planner with h. Beck / capital financial based in bethesday, maryland was both my best friend of 17 years and my financial advisor with complete access to all my personal information.
Several years ago i moved from california to new york for business reasons.
Prior to moving, my financial advisor insisted that it would be beneficial to create a "trust" in the event that i had an accident and my estate needed to be settled.
Since i knew mr. Birkett well for many years and had made some
joint investments i agreed to have my own assets placed into a trust along with the joint investments i had with mr. Birkett.
Mr. Birkett and i were both named trustee's.
A day or so before my departure, mr. Birkett came to me and said that there was an error on the signature page of the trust and that he needed me to resign the signature page. He came by my office, drove me to the notary then we had lunch and i returned to my packing and thought nothing more of this.
At this time i owned a disireable home in laguna beach. I was debating to sell or rent the property while in new york. Since i had great tripidaton about being a landlord from a distance, i favored selling the property even though at that time prices were just starting to rapidly increase.
My adivsor, mr. Birkett, who was very fond of the house said he would rent it from me by making the mortgage payments... That way i would benefit from the increase in equity and he would have a great place to live and the benefit of the interest deduction.
I left for new york prepared to work hard as hell thinking that all was well back home.
About a year later i received a call at my work from an attorney in orange county, raymond hackbarth. Bruce birkett was on the call with him.
The attorney said that i needed to file bankruptcy to protect my home in laguna beach from foreclosure.
I was stunned by this revelation. Birkett admitted that he had failed to make the mortgage payments and did not tell me because he thought he would catch up.
The backpayments were about $20k at that time, which was alot of extra cash for me to come up with in addition to my expenses living in nyc.
Birkett suggested that he orchestrate a refinance of the house while under the protection of the court and catch up with the payments that way and pull some additional equity out of the property as a buffer.
The attorney insisted that i come immediately to california to process the paperwork for the bankruptcy.
I said to the attorney that since the house had significant equity and i had an excellent job that it should not be a problem to refinance the house and asked that he negotiate with the lender to see if he could forestall the foreclosure to allow some time for the refinancing.
Then birkett wailed that he and the attorney had already filed the bankruptcy without my knowledge and needed me to come to the meeting of creditors, which was the following week!
I said no and told them to cancel the bankruptcy, get a refinacning package together on the house and then list it for sale with either of two realtors i trusted in the area.
What happened is the following:
Birkett took the first signature page from the "trust" the page that i thought was in error and had been destroyed and attached that page to a new trust making him the sole beneficiary of my estate.
Birkett then told the lender that i was incapacitated and that he had my financial power of attorney and continued to file the bankruptcy.
Birkett then opened escrow to refinance the house and lead the escrow company to believe that i was deceased. He was attempting to pay off the original financing i used to purchase the property on my own and replace it with a new loan in his name.
The attorney proceeded to assist birkett by rather than cancel the bankruptcy, asking for an extension to the meeting of creditors. I still do not know why the attorney did this.
I had been relying on birkett to forward my mail to me, rather than change my mail address.
I placed a forward on my mail at the post office and thus recieved, by accident, a letter from the lender birkett was using to "refinance" the house.
I called this lender, got the name of the escrow company.
I contacted the escrow company and the title company and finally convinced them to cancel the escrow.
At that point i was able to leave nyc and came back to ca. I personally went to the second meeting of creditors and requested that the bankruptcy be vacated without prejudice and why.
He attorney, hackbarth, received a slap on the wrist.
Birkett and i had a confrontation. I wanted him out of the house so that i could have it marketed. Birkett responded that i had caused him considerable trouble and embarassment by thwarting his efforts. He said that i abandonded the house and that i should sell it to him with the furnishings and he refused to move out of the property. It was very twisted.
At this point birkett hired a second attorney, jerome edelman. Mr. Edelman called me and threatened me that if i did not cooperate with him and mr. Birkett in selling birkett the house that they would take the property away from me and leave me with the responsibility of the unpaid mortgage.
This was crazy and i began looking for an attorney of my own... Until this point i could not believe that someone i had known and trusted for years could behave in such an truely evil manner.
I retain an attorney and returned to nyc very distracted. Birkett and his attorney, edelman, proceeded to file two more bankruptcies under my name to forestall foreclosure, while they hatched a plan to get financing on this house.
At this point, the joint investments with birkett disappeared and i found subsequently had been moved to another "trust".
My attorney as it turned out was rather naive.
He felt that he had to give the benefit of the doubt that his opponent, mr. Edelman was a reasonable person to deal with. As it turned out, edelman was equally evil as birkett.
They were using this situation to test a theory that edelman had postulated about how one could seperate a property from the mortgage... And they were using the situation for just that illustration.
My attorney did not believe this and felt that i must have done some great wrong to birkett to get him to behave in this manner.
Finally, i threw in the towel, i had exhuasted my resources with attorneys, the U.S. Attorney was not interested in such a pathetic low dollar case. I decided to fight birkett on the bankruptcies and finally got the last bankruptcy vacated with prejudice and alo stopped the second erroneous sale of the property to birkett.
Without the protecton of the bankruptcy court, birkett had no more time to get financing.
He then made a deal with some real estate investors and they made a deal with birkett with the lender.
At this point the lender was still communicating directly with birkett and refused to communicate with me or my attorney. Birkett had actually been making personal visits to the lenders office.
The birkett investors purchased the house for the balance of the loan and immediately gained several hundred thousand dollars in equity.
Birkett remained in the house with an agreement that he would purchase it fromt he investors. However, birkett pulled the same stunt again, he failed to purchase the house and failed to pay rent to the investors. They evicted him... But in the course of the eviction they also evicted me... They had been led to believe that i was working with birkett.
Because i was also evicted, i made a claim to come in and remove my personal property from the house... Which i was luckily able to arrange.
Then birkett and edleman sued the investors. The investors then sued me for indemnification... Against birkett.
In the meantime, birkett had other problems with the irs gaining judgements against him for unpaid taxes. His bank account was seized. He was desperate.
He has subsequently moved out of the usa to south africa.
His attorney, edelman, continues to represent birkett and there will be a trial this march between birkett and the investors, which i have been dragged into.
Not sure how it will unravel, since birkett has fled the country, but i can tell you this, be very careful who you trust.
The company mr. Birkett worked for, h. Beck knew me well as a client and refused to back me up with birkett. Jerome edelman knows that he is acting wrongingly filing bankruptcies using my name and social security number, not to mention being on the wrong side of the fence... Ray hackbarth the first attorney birkett retained knew better also... And the U.S. Attorney's office said that while they acknowledge that this wrongs were committed... That the state had not experienced a loss and so they could not devote the manpower to this matter.
That all for now.
Nicholas
New York, New York
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