I had a couple days and some frequent flyer miles to burn before Delta goes out of business so took them up on their invitation to present. The 10 business plans were sent before. The setting of choice is the Crowne Plaza. They declined a meeting at their offices.
All the earmarks of the other scam posts were there..."we invest in individuals not ideas" which I thought was choice. Their cell phones rang constantly but they were sloppy. One disappears and calls the other... Unfortunately I got got Al's cell phone number and saw it up on Anthony's cell phone.
One thing I am amazed at is that they have the gall to sit there and pretend to be interested when all their goal is to get their hands on upfront expenses.
I too was assured on a number of times that there were 1. No upfront fees. None... Nada 2. We are the principals. We are VC.
So the obligatory "fill in the 5 page risk sheet" type of thing... So halfway through the "risk factors" on one line I wrote as follows:
"company management never takes risks. We never front money to anyone. Anyone who asks for it i just tell them to kiss off"
On the next line i wrote:
"if you guys are willing to put in 2.5 million with NO financials I've got a option on a bridge in brooklyn"
So the crack "london risk assessment office" obviously didn't read carefully.
Next day we meet for lunch. I'm shown "diamonds".. Real plastic ones. 5 carates carried in an envelope in Anthony's pocket. Pictures of some dumb angolan diamond mine... Pictures of dirt for god's sake... Lots of pictures of Anthony sitting with some guys in China, walking down a street... My god... I was bored to tears and decided that the entire time was just a waste... But
wait wait there is more.
I did get them to buy lunch so i wasn't out much... So today i get emails...$20,000 wired so they can fly up and do a site visit and of course to cover the bahamas bank account, company opening, blind trust... Da da da.
I opened that email at 3p today. At 330p i had sent the entire file, including notes from the Atlanta meeting to the FBI.By 4p i had filed complaints with just about everyone i could on the internet and at 5p i responded to anglo american with copies of a number of entries on this blog.
I think there are a number of criminal violations involved with identity theft... Piggybacking identities in this case... So perhaps, just perhaps their entertaining con game will disappear with a little help from the law enforcement community.
But it is impossible to believe that anyone can be as sloppy as these guys are... Its just unreal that anyone would send them money and even more unreal that they can try and pull off this crap over two days without obvious conscience. Sociopathic anyone?
I'll keep the blog informed as my criminal complaints progress.
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