Talking to the Feds

As I mentioned yesterday, I actually had a chance to speak with the lead prosecutor on the case last week shortly after the news broke. Apparently Ms. Monaco had been contacted by a number of us so she wasn't too surprised by another call. Her advice was pretty straight-forward, which was to ensure that we all contact the Victim-Witness co-ordinator and get our names on their list. I have posted the name in an earlier post however for those of you that may have missed it here it is again: lisa.foster@usdoj.gov

Aside from this, Ms. Monaco did mention that she felt they should seize close to $20MM in assets. Potentially, more if more sources are discovered. She went on to say that one house that was searched was completely empty. One can assume that potentially an associate of MacCaull's had been able to clean it out prior to the arrival of the feds.

Finally, when asked how long I should expect the recovery process to take, she exclaimed that with trial and everything she would guess close to 2 years...which is apparently a lot better than the victims of the Evergreen Scam which took close to 5 years to resolve. One of the main differences between Evergreen and Razor FX is that most of the funds were kept in the US with Razor FX, which should also help for recovery. According to Ms. Monaco, Evergreen had bilked over $100MM and only $6MM was seized due to the offshore movement of the money. In Ms. Monaco's opinion, at this early stage she felt much more optimistic that a more substantial level of asset recovery should be expected for the victims of Razor FX primarily due to the lack of involvement with foreign financial institutions.

Please note, this was just her opinion and in no way legal advice. She strongly suggested that I retain the advise of a legal expert in this field...which I shall do once I save up some money :).

In the meantime, I have sent an email to the Victim-Witness Co-ordinator and Ms.Monaco explained that we will likely get an update later this week or next.

Time to start moving on with life.

Where we're at today

Ok, like I mentioned in my first entry, it's been under a week since I have realized that I had become a victim of fraud. It's been a rollercoaster of emotions, below are just some of them:

1. Fear - the first feeling I felt as I was reading the email alert was the fear I had of telling my wife. My wife is a lovely soul and was entirely disclosed on the amount of money I was investing, however she was never really comfortable with it. It was her trust in my judgement that enabled her to give me the go ahead. That first call to her to tell her I had lost all our money was the scariest thing I had done.
   
   
2. Disbelief - After the fear, came the disbelief. I can't believe this is happening. This kind of stuff happens to people on TV but not to me. I consider myself a well educated individual with good common sense. I felt I did my due diligence and still got screwed over.
   
   
3. Confused - what do I do next, who do I need to talk to, where do I sign up to ensure I am kept up-to-date, etc. All of these questions, and many more, went rushing through my mind. I stumbled across a few message boards and quickly realized I was not alone with these questions
   
   
4. Anger - Obviously, there was an extreme level of anger directed towards the bastards that stole my money, but I also felt extremely angry with myself. I know better than to risk the nest egg, and potentially the house on an investment no matter how stable it appears to be. I began to question my judgement, were there more signs that I should have seen and withdrawn my money prior to the entire thing imploded? Why didn't I take out the principal and play with $20K or so I had "earned" since I had started a few months earlier? So many, "what-if"s and "why didn't I"s that I could spend hours beating myself up just replaying the past few months in my head.
   
   
5. Depressed - This is probably where I spend most of my life these days. Coming to grips that the likelihood of me getting any significant portion of my money back is probably very slim. I think about all the other ways I could have spent $200K if I felt the need to finance it to blow on something. A complete house reno for one...that would be great right about now. Or perhaps capping out both of my kids education funds, this way they would have something when Harvard comes knocking. Even something more frivolous, like a trip around the world would have given me a lifetime of experiences that I may be able to stretch my judgement in an attempt to justify. Hell, even a single spin on the roulette wheel would have been better would have been better than this...at least with roulette there is a legitimate chance to make money. This FX sham had no chance at all, and that just really sucks.
   

I know there are many of you out there reading this that may be thinking, "You dumb schmuck, you deserve to lose your money. Everyone knows there's no such thing as a quick buck." In hindsight, I would have to agree with these people...I am a dumb schmuck...but I honestly felt that this was a reasonable rate of return for a smart investor. They weren't promising to double your money in a month, or even double it in a year. In fact most weeks reported earnings of 0.5% and 1%, which is still pretty good, but no way as high as the ridiculous numbers that some other FOREX companies were proposing. Also, I know people that have been in this for over 3 years. They never had any problem taking money out over this time, or putting it back in. Of course there were weeks where their portfolio "lost" money or essentially broke even after the fees. I liked their strategy of sticking to the big boards (US, GBP and the JPY), it all seemed solid to me. Finally, in October, after watching all of my friends increase their wealth dramatically all these years, i decided to make the plunge. Three Months later my life has been changed forever because of this investment, but not in the way I hoped it would.

Anyway, I could go on forever about this and I likely will. I don't profess to be an English Lit major so don't expect my posts to be very coherent or have much of a flow. Right now, i am just typing it as it comes to me. Some posts will be long, almost novellas, and others will be small and succinct. I guess it will all depend on what kind of mood I am in that day. :)

Also, one last disclaimer. I don't proof read...simple as that. There will be words missing, grammatical errors and quite likely spelling mistakes and the misuse of there, or their, or they're. Hopefully, with all of this you will still be able to grasp the message of my posts. If not, feel free to drop me a comment and I will do my best to clarify the spaghetti of my text.

Tomorrow, I will discuss my call with one of the Lead Prosecutors on the case (yes I actually spoke to someone) and my trip to the pharmacy to get some prescriptions anti-depressants.

Until then, stick in there and be strong. Reaffirm that the most important thing in life is your family and your health and that together we can all get through this.

Regards,
TFI