I'm desperate and need a $6,000 crypto loan.

Schokokeks said:

What's Warren Buffets only major financial blunder, according to him? BUYING A HOME. He wishes he'd just rented.

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Not that it changes much for the OP, but that's a complete mischaracterization of Buffett's many statements over the years. In fact, he has repeatedly and consistently said that he considers the purchase of his primary residence in Omaha to be the third best investment he's ever made, after the purchases of his two wedding rings (his first wife passed away a couple of decades ago and he has since remarried).

Buffett has spent years saying that he believes the 30-year fixed mortgage is the "best instrument in the world" but cautions that home ownership can be a bad investment if the conditions aren't right (job stability, likelihood to remain in the same locale, financial reserves to cover repairs, etc.). He has acknowledged he would have made more money if he had rented a house rather than paying cash for his home in Omaha and instead used that capital to buy stocks. Most people don't see the stock investment returns he does so that trade-off isn't the same for us normal folks. Buffett clearly didn't think home ownership was a genuinely bad investment choice, though, because he took out a mortgage to buy a second home almost 20 years after buying the first one. Despite having plenty of money on hand, he got a loan so he could preserve his cash for other, more lucrative investment vehicles. Still bought the house.

elzilcho said:

Buffett has spent years saying that he believes the 30-year fixed mortgage is the "best instrument in the world" but cautions that home ownership can be a bad investment if the conditions aren't right (job stability, likelihood to remain in the same locale, financial reserves to cover repairs, etc.). He has acknowledged he would have made more money if he had rented a house rather than paying cash for his home in Omaha and instead used that capital to buy stocks. Most people don't see the stock investment returns he does so that trade-off isn't the same for us normal folks. Buffett clearly didn't think home ownership was a genuinely bad investment choice, though, because he took out a mortgage to buy a second home almost 20 years after buying the first one. Despite having plenty of money on hand, he got a loan so he could preserve his cash for other, more lucrative investment vehicles. Still bought the house.

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Buffett's statement makes more sense now that I know the context. My brother is obsessed with paying off his mortgage should I be able to give him his share of the house. I keep telling him that's silly. He's paying something like 3.5% interest. So long as he can find investments with better returns than this he's better off just continuing to make his monthly payments. He has some of the VGT mutual fund I mentioned earlier. With average returns of 24% over the last decade he would be better off putting more money into that instead of paying down his mortgage. I get it that it's nice to own a home free and clear but sometimes that's the wrong decision.

At this point his mortgage is worthless as a tax deduction so there's not even that. Last year the interest he paid dropped enough so that he was better off claiming the standard deduction instead of itemizing.

Being debt-free is the safest investment one can make. Paying off your mortgage is a zero-risk investment. No one knows what the future holds. Perhaps you're involved in an accident or suffer a prolonged illness, and are no longer able to generate an income. Having your home debt-free is very comforting.

God's word instructs His people to be debt-free.

elzilcho said:

Not that it changes much for the OP, but that's a complete mischaracterization of Buffett's many statements over the years. In fact, he has repeatedly and consistently said that he considers the purchase of his primary residence in Omaha to be the third best investment he's ever made, after the purchases of his two wedding rings (his first wife passed away a couple of decades ago and he has since remarried).

Buffett has spent years saying that he believes the 30-year fixed mortgage is the "best instrument in the world" but cautions that home ownership can be a bad investment if the conditions aren't right (job stability, likelihood to remain in the same locale, financial reserves to cover repairs, etc.). He has acknowledged he would have made more money if he had rented a house rather than paying cash for his home in Omaha and instead used that capital to buy stocks. Most people don't see the stock investment returns he does so that trade-off isn't the same for us normal folks. Buffett clearly didn't think home ownership was a genuinely bad investment choice, though, because he took out a mortgage to buy a second home almost 20 years after buying the first one. Despite having plenty of money on hand, he got a loan so he could preserve his cash for other, more lucrative investment vehicles. Still bought the house.

Click to expand...

I'd agree with the characterization. He clearly, and overtly mentions it's a poor investment, ESPECIALLY in the last few years (he commented on that in 2021, and here's a comment from his final meeting). Conditions change, and housing markets have not been great in years.



Really, his wife wanted a house, and he was happy to have a family, and a home was part and parcel to building and raising his family. He's been consistent on the fact it's good for that, but has also repeatedly mention it's not a good INVESTMENT.



#8 is what you're referring to, and rates DID go to just about that. How many people then paid off their mortgages on account of that?
He USED TO say it was great, because he expected rates would never go so low. Then they did. And thus, he stopped saying that the 30-year mortgage was great, because the facts changed, and rates plummeted as low as he expected them to never go.

And this ties to exactly what I said; people keep insisting on home ownership because of outdated notions. When there was a massively expanding population, and real estate was being financialized, money could be made. I don't think it was ever what people thought, but people think making money off LEVERAGED ASSETS is magic. Of course you feel like a financial genius when you have an asset where you borrowed hundreds of thousands of dollars for, haha. "Wow! It's worth so much! I only paid $50,000 for this $300,000 house! Thank goodness interest and inflation don't exist!"

We have a declining population, now. Boomers are starting to die off, and the next largest generation is the Millennials (their children), but the Millennials never reached the peak size of Boomers, and Millennials aren't having kids. US household size has moved down significantly over the past few decades. Boomers own something insane like 70% of real estate, and have something crazy like 15,000,000 second homes.

Who's going to be buying all these homes? And why? Over 70% of houses inherited get sold. As the boomers start dying, and homes transfer to kids, who then sell them, what's going to happen to the housing market when it's flooded with homes? Where will the demand for these homes come from? Current prices REQUIRE dual incomes. Prices would need to decline for all the single parents to become home owners, and all the single people without kids to buy homes. Otherwise....why would these people buy a home?

This isn't rocket science. But the National Association of Realtors has spend DECADES paying for positive press and articles to shame people into buying homes.

But, I get it. That's a LOT OF DECADES of "this worked wonders," and no one is going to believe things have changed until...the market implodes.
Poke around at Texas and Florida markets, and you'll see there's some real nightmares awaiting real estate in the next few years.

We'd spent the last few years trying to sustain this bubble by letting somewhere over 10 million people into the country at once. That was artificially raising rental rates, and many were getting FHA loans (we've just started to see that).

The Gubmint was working out loans during COVID, so people could not pay, and just toss those missed payments onto the end of their loans, to keep people in their homes and keep foreclosures low. Those programs have ended.

I sure as heck wouldn't be going broke to hang onto a house in this market. If you're buying a house for a good deal, and you're going to live there for decades, and it's important to you to own a home...it makes sense. It doesn't HAVE TO be a good investment, either.
Buying a cool car is a TERRIBLE investment, but...if you like it and have the money, and it's important to you, why not?

I'm more cautioning people against the NAR pressure that you HAVE to buy a home or you're "wasting money" on rent. No one has to buy a home, and renting can absolutely make fiscal sense. It currently makes WAY more sense than owning an overpriced home.

And, remember, we're talking about this in the context of someone who's lost $260,000 in a get-rich-quick scheme, trying to buy out siblings on an inflated valuation due to the current asset bubble. THAT is a really bad financial move, anyway you cut it.

Schokokeks said:

But, I get it. That's a LOT OF DECADES of "this worked wonders," and no one is going to believe things have changed until...the market implodes.
Poke around at Texas and Florida markets, and you'll see there's some real nightmares awaiting real estate in the next few years.

Click to expand...

And nobody more than me is hoping the market implodes. I'd be thrilled if the price of the house crashed to $250K. Then I could look my siblings in the eye and say OK, I just need to give each of you another $30K or so each. A house is a place to live, not an investment.

Schokokeks said:

We'd spent the last few years trying to sustain this bubble by letting somewhere over 10 million people into the country at once. That was artificially raising rental rates, and many were getting FHA loans (we've just started to see that).

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Kind of my point about high rental rates. Point of fact this has been the case for decades in some parts of the country. One big reason I stayed with my parents is that I couldn't afford to live on my own, either via buying a home or renting. Rents 35 years ago were 75% of my take-home pay. They've only gotten worse since. My niece is still living with her mother at nearly age 33 for the same reasons. There was a family next door to us where all three adult children, all in their late 30s to early 40s, were still living with their parents. This was over 20 years ago.

Schokokeks said:

I sure as heck wouldn't be going broke to hang onto a house in this market. If you're buying a house for a good deal, and you're going to live there for decades, and it's important to you to own a home...it makes sense. It doesn't HAVE TO be a good investment, either.

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Yeah, I don't consider the house an investment of any sort and the plan has always been to live here until I die. My siblings were sold on the BS that they were somehow entitled to a large sum because of all the nonsense being pushed by realtors. I told them many times home prices are grossly inflated, and I'm willing to pay the inflation-adjusted price of the house relative to what our parents paid for it, not the current ridiculous market value. But they insisted otherwise.

Schokokeks said:

Buying a cool car is a TERRIBLE investment, but...if you like it and have the money, and it's important to you, why not?

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Cars in general are a horrible purchase but that's another story entirely. We've made too much of the country car dependent. I never owned a car and never will. Complete waste of good money.

Schokokeks said:

I'm more cautioning people against the NAR pressure that you HAVE to buy a home or you're "wasting money" on rent. No one has to buy a home, and renting can absolutely make fiscal sense. It currently makes WAY more sense than owning an overpriced home.

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It depends upon rents. In NYC it's still cheaper to own a home than to rent on a per square foot basis. Forget the average rents. Those are misleading because the numbers include lots of section 8 and rent-controlled/stabilized housing. The median, not average, price is what a person entering the rental market can expect to pay.


Queens rentals average $3,350 for a studio rental to $4,870 for a 4-bedroom rental. The median price of all currently available listings is $3,674, or roughly $44 per square feet.

To rent an amount of space equivalent to where I'm living now would be north of $6,000 per month at $44 per square foot. I'm not even including the garage. I would run out of money long before I died even renting something like a 1 bedroom apartment at roughly $4,000 per month. Using your 4% rule I could afford to pay about $25,000 annually to live based on the assets I had before I was scammed out of $260K. That's half what my total expenses for an average rental would be. I would need about $1.2 million in assets just to be able to afford to rent a relatively small apartment. So the renting idea never made much sense, even if you included the additional ~$250K I might have netted if the house were sold. As an aside, my siblings even told me I wasn't entitled to that because I never worked. Being in business for yourself apparently doesn't count as work.

My parents paid about $30 a month for their first apartment in 1961. It was within walking distance of a subway station. That's about $350 in adjusted dollars. If rents were still this much, then it would indeed be cheaper to rent than to own.

Schokokeks said:

And, remember, we're talking about this in the context of someone who's lost $260,000 in a get-rich-quick scheme, trying to buy out siblings on an inflated valuation due to the current asset bubble. THAT is a really bad financial move, anyway you cut it.

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My siblings insisted on it, not me. I've been to clear to them from the beginning that the house isn't worth the so-called market price, they're not entitled to a windfall for really doing nothing at all, and I should get some consideration for the years I took care of our mother. That was a complete sacrifice. I couldn't leave the house for more than maybe two hours at a time unless one of them could mind our mother. I cleaned my mother up after she urinated herself daily, and had poop incidents once or twice a month. Yeah, thankfully she did number 2 in the toilet most times.

Chauncey Gardener said:

Being debt-free is the safest investment one can make. Paying off your mortgage is a zero-risk investment. No one knows what the future holds. Perhaps you're involved in an accident or suffer a prolonged illness, and are no longer able to generate an income. Having your home debt-free is very comforting.

God's word instructs His people to be debt-free.

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I totally agree. Owning a paid-for home is gold. It really is. In the case of my brother my recommendation is to invest money he would otherwise use to pay off his mortgage, not spend it. So he would always have the money to pay his house off since I would tell him to only go with fairly low risk investments, but he could grow it so he'll have more left after he pays off his mortgage.

On the flip side if he was paying rates like my parents did north of 8% I would say to just pay it off as soon as you get the money. Not too many relatively safe investments return over 8%.

jtr1962 said:

So law enforcement is useless at recovering the money? I contacted the authorities as soon as I realized it was a scam. At the time I contacted them there was over $600K in cryptocurrency at one of the receiving addresses I had used to send the scam site money. The authorities could have taken this money if they wanted to.

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In Florida, we have the Economic Crimes Units within the District Attorney offices. My firm's worked extensively with them over the years. In my experience, they're underfunded and under-equipped to handle the work they're charged with performing, which is why they'd hire firms like ours to put together the cases for them.

In NY State it's a bit more fragmented and disorganised (no surprise). For what you're looking at, you want to contact the NY State Criminal Enforcement and Financial Crimes Bureau:

Just so you understand how this works (at least in Florida), a person calls the department and files a complaint. That gets assigned to a detective. In a week or two, the detective reaches out and gets the details, possibly sets up an in-person interview with the person. At that time, they try to get the person to provide any records, communications, e-mails, etc., in regards to the crime. From there it takes months. Research has to be done, records need to be verified, timelines created, dollars and their flows tied between accounts, etc. Then and only then do they take action. In some cases, they may be able to put a freeze or hold on accounts or assets in dispute during the investigation, but there are requirements for that. It's typically a year before a perpetrator stands trial, and that's in Florida; our guys are pretty good and motivated.

One of the issues you're going to run into is that it's crypto, not a financial institution. There's no bank/institution the government can go to, subpoena, fine, enforce, etc., There isn't even a technical support team to reach. As such, there's no way for law enforcement to freeze/seize assets. Crypto has no inherent value, no backing assets, no collateral.

That said, they can go after the people involved in the transaction and go from there. If you can identify the people in the transactions, you also can go after them in civil court as well, in addition to any criminal proceedings. Perhaps the people involved in the transaction are already known to law enforcement, and they can combine your case with others, which allocates more resources to it. Big dollars or large # of investors moves things up the priority and resource list a bit. Low-hanging fruit also moves things up the priority list as well. Everyone likes a quick win.

Having worked many Ponzi and other financial fraud cases in the past, recoveries are usually minimal at best. In a Ponzi scheme, typical is 0-10% recovery BUT, each case is different. Madoff was up to 90% recovery. We had a bankruptcy case which actually was a fraud case. Our recoveries, even after substantial and expensive litigation were 113%, which posed a problem: In bankruptcy court it's impossible to have a profit. New case law actually had to be written to allow that particular case to proceed.

I honestly wish you the best of luck with it.

jtr1962 said:

...bitcoin from a big scamming operation based in Cambodia I think.

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If you are interested I can post some pictures where your money is now. I was in Cambodia a few weeks ago

And I can confirm they accept USD, in cash and by credit card. You will not handle the local currency (Cambodian Reel). Only for a better feeling 1USD are ~4000 Reel. An investment of less than 250USD makes you to a billionaire (at least in Reel).
I also was in Vietnam. Also there is is easy to be there a billionaire too. I was a billionare .

In Vietnam and Cambodia I was unable to access a lot Websites (including CPF). It was only possible using VPN, now I know why!
--Edit --
Smileys were on the wrong place, added VPN statement

WarriorOfLight said:

If you are interested I can post some pictures where your money is now. I was in Cambodia a few weeks ago

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I'm dubious this operation was based there. There were already complaints to the SEC and it was based in NYC at the time. Now the "founder" has started a new operation in Las Vegas. The one in Cambodia was run by Chen Zhi and The Prince Group.

WarriorOfLight said:

And I can confirm they accept USD, in cash and by credit card. You will not handle the local currency (Cambodian Reel). Only for a better feeling 1USD are ~4000 Reel. An investment of less than 250USD makes you to a billionaire (at least in Reel).
I also was in Vietnam. Also there is is easy to be there a billionaire too. I was a billionare .

In Vietnam and Cambodia I was unable to access a lot Websites (including CPF). It was only possible using VPN, now I know why!
--Edit --
Smileys were on the wrong place, added VPN statement

Click to expand...

Not surprised. These are very shady people.

TPA said:

In Florida, we have the Economic Crimes Units within the District Attorney offices. My firm's worked extensively with them over the years. In my experience, they're underfunded and under-equipped to handle the work they're charged with performing, which is why they'd hire firms like ours to put together the cases for them.

In NY State it's a bit more fragmented and disorganised (no surprise). For what you're looking at, you want to contact the NY State Criminal Enforcement and Financial Crimes Bureau:

Criminal Justice Division

Criminal Justice Division Learn more about: Criminal Enforcement and Financial Crimes Bureau Investigations Medicaid Fraud Control Unit Office of Special

ag.ny.gov

Just so you understand how this works (at least in Florida), a person calls the department and files a complaint. That gets assigned to a detective. In a week or two, the detective reaches out and gets the details, possibly sets up an in-person interview with the person. At that time, they try to get the person to provide any records, communications, e-mails, etc., in regards to the crime. From there it takes months. Research has to be done, records need to be verified, timelines created, dollars and their flows tied between accounts, etc. Then and only then do they take action. In some cases, they may be able to put a freeze or hold on accounts or assets in dispute during the investigation, but there are requirements for that. It's typically a year before a perpetrator stands trial, and that's in Florida; our guys are pretty good and motivated.

Click to expand...

I'm in contact with another person who was scammed to the tune of $400K by these people. He's in Iowa. He's done exactly what you suggested. The FBI hasn't even been able to trace his funds, much less recover anything. Meanwhile not long after I realized it was a scam I found over $600K in crypto sitting at one of the receiving addresses I had used to send money to the "investment" site. I'm a novice at this stuff but I'm puzzled why I could find money and the authorities couldn't. Anyway in my complaint I did tell them about this. Sounds like it would have been an easy win for them to recover at least $600K for me.

TPA said:

One of the issues you're going to run into is that it's crypto, not a financial institution. There's no bank/institution the government can go to, subpoena, fine, enforce, etc., There isn't even a technical support team to reach. As such, there's no way for law enforcement to freeze/seize assets. Crypto has no inherent value, no backing assets, no collateral.

Click to expand...

True but hackers can still take out cryptocurrency once they trace it from the original victim to wherever it ended up. That's assuming of course it hasn't been converted to fiat currency by then. However, if it has, then they have bank accounts, possibly real estate, expensive cars, and other places where the money might be parked. A lot of these scammers are their own worst enemies. They spend the money lavishly, which makes them fairly easy to locate.


When they first seized these funds there was a picture of an overweight middle-aged Asian woman who was apparently #2 in the operation. The comments were hilarious. My favorite was "She looks like she ate all the bitcoin."

EDIT: I found a video about her:

TPA said:

That said, they can go after the people involved in the transaction and go from there. If you can identify the people in the transactions, you also can go after them in civil court as well, in addition to any criminal proceedings. Perhaps the people involved in the transaction are already known to law enforcement, and they can combine your case with others, which allocates more resources to it. Big dollars or large # of investors moves things up the priority and resource list a bit. Low-hanging fruit also moves things up the priority list as well. Everyone likes a quick win.

Click to expand...

While this operation is much smaller than the Chen Zhi operation it's most likely in the hundreds of millions. These people don't set up fake investment sites to scam hundreds of thousands from a few people. Also, I think this was a combination Ponzi/money laundering operation. And they also tried to get a few high-net worth, influential investors in for protection. These select investors actually would make good profits, paid for with money scammed from people like me, or proceeds from the money laundering operation. If the authorities caught up, then these investors were like an insurance policy. They could truthfully testify the operation is legit, which from their point of view it is.

TPA said:

Having worked many Ponzi and other financial fraud cases in the past, recoveries are usually minimal at best. In a Ponzi scheme, typical is 0-10% recovery BUT, each case is different. Madoff was up to 90% recovery. We had a bankruptcy case which actually was a fraud case. Our recoveries, even after substantial and expensive litigation were 113%, which posed a problem: In bankruptcy court it's impossible to have a profit. New case law actually had to be written to allow that particular case to proceed.

Click to expand...

Color me surprised they recovered up to 90% from Madoff. The whole Madoff saga shows how even sophisticated investors are taken in by these scams.

I wasn't aware of that limitation in bankruptcy court. Anyway I'm not filing bankruptcy. Because I reported this to the SEC I'm eligible for whistleblower awards should they recover anything. I'm sure I'll be waiting years for whatever I may get, if anything.

TPA said:

I honestly wish you the best of luck with it.

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Thank you. I'm still in touch daily with the person who got me into this, and who was apparently scammed also. I'm not sure how much she knows, but she did say she's prepared to tell everything to the authorities. That might help a lot.

jtr1962 said:

And they also tried to get a few high-net worth, influential investors in for protection. These select investors actually would make good profits, paid for with money scammed from people like me, or proceeds from the money laundering operation. If the authorities caught up, then these investors were like an insurance policy. They could truthfully testify the operation is legit, which from their point of view it is.

Click to expand...

Brother, this is EXACTLY what cryptocurrency is. The "money made" from those fractional transaction fees are imaginary fees for services rendered, imagine the times of old when people would shave coins. It's very similar to that, because the coin is still worth 1 coin, but the asset representing it is not. In this case, there is an artificially inflated projection of coin worth/value, causing people to pump money into it, and it becomes a collective reservoir of money, to which the initial investors pull out (i.e. pull the rug) and split that pot, with absolutely 0 assets besides inferred value.

In some of the places I've worked, some of the employees form a communal distribution pool...every week/pay period, people put in $100, and the pool was given to a certain member each week. It would help some people budget better, because eventually they would get their money back, and it set a better budgeting mentality for the more responsible people. HOWEVER, this kind of thing is blown out of proportion when you get thousands of people pooling hundreds, thousands, etc. amount of money into a single pool where they: #1 do not know how many or who the controlling interests are. #2 do not know how the wealth distribution actually works. #3 are deceived into believing that it works the same as stocks.

dc38 said:

#3 are deceived into believing that it works the same as stocks.

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Actually your analogy here seems spot on. In a way cryptocurrency is a lot like stocks. Some exchanges sell coins to get money to expand their exchange. Binance did this. BNB went from around $0.10 at presale to peaking at over $1,000 but only because Binance dramatically grew their business. It's much like when a company has an IPO. If there's a solid business behind it then many people make a lot buying the IPO. If not, they lose a lot, perhaps everything. People have sold stock for companies with no viable business behind them This is fundamentally no different than ICOs of meme coins. Those who issue them use hype to inflate the value, then pull the rug and sell their holdings when the price spikes, leaving everyone else with a loss. Some issuing IPOs have done exactly the same.

In the end either a stock or a cryptocurrency coin are only worth what people are willing to pay for them. That in turn is determined by whether or not there is a viable business behind it.

jtr1962 said:

Not surprised. These are very shady people.

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At least the people I met in real were very nice and honest.

In Vietnam you handle bank nodes with quite large numbers like 10000 and 100000 Dong or 20000 and 200000 Dong or 50000 and 500000 Dong.
Some of that bank notes looks almost the same and you pay i.e. With a 100000 Dong note and the intention was paying with a 10000 Dong note. That happened a few times and the people I gave the money, told me that the bank not is the wrong one. If they did not told this to me I would not recognized that at this moment....

In Cambodia I did not handled the local currency, only Euro and USD.

Strangest thread here. My judgment? Total BS.

JimIslander said:

Strangest thread here. My judgment? Total BS.

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I agree. Evidence that smart people still do stupid stuff.

Kestrel said:

I agree. Evidence that smart people still do stupid stuff.

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Which do you seek, wisdom or intelligence? Choose wisely.

^Light. I seek The Light.

Thread closed.

slumber said:

Thread closed.

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Oh wow! Dejaview. That's a blast from the past. I'm glad those days are over.

Oh golly gee wiz! Is this too controversial? I'm a nube asking for a friend