Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Poll Changed

I changed the poll. If you already voted on the old one, please re-vote. Remember, you can put more than one answer. You can even change your vote later.

22 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello,

At this point, I think the best thing we have going for us is that Jeff wants to make it right with us. That is not a given. I'm in two other investments gone bad where the principles either don't really care, never could make money, or had planned from the beginning to defraud. Jeff appear to have some integrity. I believe Jeff understands he has a lot to lose if he doesn't take care of us. If he doesn't take the moral high road with us, he risks losing his "moral authority" with his newspaper - which is important to him. I believe he knows this. Given his desire to pay us completely including interest, if we put undo pressure on him, or make ultimations, I think we risk creating an adversarial situation and reducing his own "good will" to make things right. He appears to have an ego that would response better to working cooperatively than adversarily. I agree Jeff should never have put us in the situation we are in. However, I'm not sure how effectifve any efforts to enforce repayment given the off-shore nature of the investment. My vote is to give him until Jan 5 -- as long as he continues to provide the promised monthly updates. I think the tone of any communications with Jeff is important -- while we can show concern, I think we should also show appreciation for his desire to repay, and a request (not demand) to answer our questions.

My thoughts...

Anonymous said...

I sure hope it isn't true that some people have reported Jeff to the authorities. That is a very premature thing to do. There may come a time for that but it is not now! If you want to see a dime of your money, do not involve the authorities!!!

Anonymous said...

I am in complete agreement with the first post. I believe we will get alot further if our tone is one which will foster cooperation and not put Jeffs back against the wall.....at least at this point.

Unknown said...

I agree with the First post as well ... I honestly have faith and believe that Jeff can pull this off.

Anonymous said...

I agree with the first post ... I believe Jeff can pull this off.. It is in his futures best interest...

Anonymous said...

I don't see what good demanding a payment will do. Any other thoughts on this?

Anonymous said...

If Jeff still has the revenue to continue trading, I think it would be honorable for him to submit a month of payment to the investors. At least that way we have some indication of cooperatiion and intention. It doesn't seem like giving him an ultimatum at this point would be a smart thing to do, though. Did anyone ever find information about FCSL in Aukland? Earlier it seems that folks were not able to track down evidence of its existence.

Anonymous said...

Those of you that claim to have involved the authorities, can you please give more information about it in a post?

Anonymous said...

Blog Administrator:
Can you give an explanation as to why you are deleting some of the posts? What did they say?

Anonymous said...

Why did Jeff Leave FCSL too early? This hopefully will be his last miscalculation; paper and politics over people and principles. The more I look at this the more it seems plausible he will (or is at least compelled to) return our money with at least some interest since June. Simply put he has everything to gain and only a few months to lose. For the time being Ron Paul is out of any meaningful political influence in the political arena this time around. That means he has four years in which to forge an effective campaign on his behalf. I would venture that of all the media outlets available, the most untapped from a conservatives standpoint is newspaper. Also, even if it’s not and the most untapped is radio or television, newspaper has probably the lowest entry costs. However, in order for any of these vessels to hold water, the publisher has to himself have at least a little bit of integrity. It also takes cash flow to launch an ambitious endeavor as this, but even more to sustain it until it supports itself. Jeff knows he doesn’t want to field a question from an interviewer or be looking over his shoulder or around the next corner ahead without being able to answer “they were all paid in full.” A lot of Executives found their golden parachute in this country's current financial crises, but at least they have several tiers of beurocratic flack between themselves and the fraud. Jeff doesn’t have that luxury. This makes it doubly difficult to promote any banks investment side. We’ve all considered the distinct possibility of losing a small fortune in this, but Jeff like us probably wants the same things we do. Things like respect, dignity, affluence and influence. These attributes would be a distant memory if Jeff pulled a ghost on January 5th.
I personally doubt Jeff would submit to an audit and the only way to force him into a similarly humiliating circumstance would doubtlessly push any payment date far beyond Jan. 5th.
I also don’t think he is a con artist as if he was he would be long gone by now, not writing conciliatory letters. Conflicted? Definitely. An Audit is a good problem to have if the alternative is not having the money to have an audit about.
Also my personal interpretation (and I hope I’m right) of the interest restructuring excerpt is that as we know, they would be “lowered Nov. 1 to a rate to be announce 2 months prior”. Well, although “prior” has come and gone, we knew he planned to lower them Nov. 1st. And although the text as read plainly has a retroactive implication, I believe he is simply underscoring the earlier rate schedule, not robbing us of an earlier printed rate. I believe to do this would be contrary to the tone of the letter.
Furthermore if he comes to the table with at least the principle (although he did indicate “in full”) by Jan. 5th and promised another perhaps three month deadline for the interest, I would be willing to withhold any retaliatory actions.
Which brings me to the point of pressure; it only works if we PLAN on using it, should he default again. We must use this precious time to continue to collectively formulate this influential strategy to its fullest. Keep up the research! Signed, Diligent.

Anonymous said...

I agree to with the first post. We were in an investment gone bad and took legal action. We won. After court fees, lawyers fee, fines and other expenses, we ended up with a return of about .03 on the dollar. I sure didn't feel like a winner after that and I sure don't want to do that again. Let's see if we can't get this nice with everyone playing nice.

Anonymous said...

I also agree with the first post, and strongly believe we should receive informative updates every 4 weeks from Jeff's first post/update on this site.

First Capital Savings and Loan Client said...

I deleted two comments that suggesteed Mack was behind the blog and suggested we go after him legally, because he asked me to.

Anonymous said...

From all my research... which has been very extensive... I have no doubt that this was never a scam. Yes, Jeff's actions of late are inexcusible but I completely believe there is money (and a lot of it) left. But he does need time to replenish the fund. Some people think it is as easy as being behind a couple months.. but that is not true. A majority of investors were compounding and have not taken money out in the form of monthly payments. They have all their money tied up.

I know that Jeff has responded to at least one investor since the update. That person needs to give an update. We need to work together rather than focusing on just recovering our piece of the pie. We are all in this together!

I really believe that we will get our money back in full if we don't do anything stupid.

Anonymous said...

my post was deleted, i did not suggest we go after Mack, isaid do we pressure Mack. i also said that if either mack or ben think they will not be in the thick of a legal battle and investigation they are horribly wrong

Anonymous said...

This entity is registered as a company in New Zealand by the New Zealand Companies Office. (The term "Savings & Loan" has no significance in New Zealand - FCSL is just an ordinary company). It is not licensed or supervised as a financial institution by any New Zealand authority - we have no jurisdiction over it. Its owner and director are domiciled in Panama. It does not appear to have any physical presence in New Zealand, or do any business in New Zealand. The address in Auckland appears to be that of a legal compliance agency that acts for many companies. Basic information about the company can be obtained from the on-line company register at:

http://www.companies.govt.nz/cms

Ken Matthews
Adviser
Reserve Bank of New Zealand

Anonymous said...

I am familiar with this kind of corporate services company because I used to use one myself for a corporation I used to own.

Anonymous said...

If what Jim says is true and FCSL is not a bank, then how could they issue credit cards? Did anyone receive a credit card and use it?
-diligent

Anonymous said...

Did a little research. Denarius Asset Management, issues Xtreme Mastercards (with mastercard logo) to any offshore fund. So, this doesn't make them any more a legitimate bank than Jims research yielded. That puts us squarely back to our only source of pressure that can be put on Jeff, His influence with his political interests.

Anonymous said...

I have an extreme mastercard and have talked with them direct. It is one of the reasons i still think this venture was above board. I know of other people that have this same card, it is one of the ways to get off shore money in the US. The person i spoke to also had questions for me. I beleieve that they made sure that this was not a scam, in fact i asked that question and it was answered this way-"We have checked out FCSL and the operation we would not have let them use our card if we had seen anything wrong."
My hope is that the fund that Jeff is talking about that he can not touch is all of our initial investments, the liquid fund that is gone or depleated was liquid and Jeff could get to it at any time, to use for himself or pay investors the monthly bonus.
The other reason i still have some confidence is that Jeff is in the US, if he did scam us that would be the last place in the world he would sant to be. Lets all keep our fingers crossed.

Anonymous said...

How do you know that Jeff is in the U.S.? If you have a mastercard are you allowed to transfer money to the card anymore?

Have you contacted anyone at Etreme Mastercard about all this? If so, what did they say?

Anonymous said...

Another blogger said he was in Oregon, jeff said he was in California and at the paul convention, so he was in the USA
As for the extreme mastercard, I have an account but have not funded it yet. I have not called them to see what they may know. I will and report back.