Great news from the Buy Now! and Get In On The Ground Floor! department, dear readers, with lots of Opportunities!
First, we are sure you remember us covering something called the Global Escape Hatch, right? We thought they were amateurish bullshitters who would get you in trouble with their "advice". But since then, things have gotten so much better!
From December 4th - 7th, you can attend their conference in Saint Martin, where a wacky cast of characters will tell you where to lose invest the money you've left after paying the $1,300 conference fee and airfare and the gallons of rum you'll need to get those voices and faces to disappear from your head.
Well, fine, you say. Why so negative?
Because, dear reader, exactly as we knew would happen, shady characters have made their way into this Escape Hatch cult. Look at their site. Scroll down to the names. There he is: Brian Koslow.
Mr. Koslow is bad news. Back in 2007, he was involved in a scam called Plaza Costa del Este, you know, one of those developments for which they, he, raised money and then it was never built, developers disappeared. The project was one in a series of shady deals promoted by Homes, a real estate outfit that went under amid accusations of money laundering for David Murcia and a multitude of swindles. Here:
Mario Sopena and Alexandre Ventura Nogueira own two real estate firms. The firms are located in Miami and are named Homes Realty USA and New World Realty Latin America.
The agent who sold people units in a property named The Plaza Costa Del Este is Brian Koslow. Many people wrote contracts on many of the units to be sold and placed an escrow deposit on each unit.
Mario Sopena and Alexandre Ventura Nogueira never built the building and stole everyones earnest money deposits.
More fun information to put you, Escape Hatchers, at ease can be found here. And Colombian magazine Semana ran a story back in 2009 which explained the ongoing activities of Mr. Koslow's partners in crime-land:
The specialty of this businessman in Panama is real estate, a sector in which he has generated a lot of controversy. There is even a webpage of people who claim to be victims of Ventura and there are numerous lawsuits against him by old partners. Also, in Spain, where he was a luxury car dealer, he faced a trial for “supposed breaches of the law regarding measures to prevent money laundering.”
While hardcore hustling is going on in Saint Martin, you can stay right at home for a somewhat tamer version of the same Buy Now! routine through something called the Panama Wave Conference. It's an online streaming kind of teleseminar kind of thing that starts this weekend. In their own words:
Panama Wave is pioneering a new approach to "Panama conferences". We know how difficult it is for potential relocators to make up their minds whether or not Panama is the best place to live or invest in comparison to other Latin American nations. It is very hard to make that decision based on multiple websites, many of which provide inaccurate, contradictory, or out-of-date information.
We urge you to sign up, just for fun. Most of the speakers will slant their information to make you believe that Panama is the greatest country in the world and that money grows on trees here, and they will try to reel you in as clients for their businesses. Some on the list pretend to be entrepreneurs while their businesses are really hobbies that only survive because of other income. It should be tremendous fun watching them all compete for your money! A holiday game for the entire family!