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by Willard Michlin
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ur people partners with care.
Fraud in real estate, are you being victimized? (Part III)
Jonathan's Story: Jonathan had the sadist story I ever heard. You decide how the story turns out. It was 1997 and I received a call from Jonathan. He had received my letter asking if he wanted to sell his business any time soon. He asked me to come out and see him. Jonathan was 81 years old. He owned a woodworking factory that had been going for 40 years. He also owned two commercial factory buildings and had a beautiful residence that was debt free.
His wife, Janet, also 81, was the sweetest woman I ever met. They were both healthy and they loved each other dearly. They had no children or grandchildren. Janet had nieces and nephews on her side of the family. Jonathan had no living relatives of any kind. When I met Jonathan I adopted him. Sounds like the perfect picture, doesn't it. It was until 5 years ago.
Jonathan received a letter from Nigeria explaining that if he would front them some cash to pay off some government officials, they would pay him millions of dollars out of what the government owed them. You may have heard this story. It has been on 60 minutes. In fact Jonathan had heard this story; the problem was that he thought that his contact was different. They showed him legal documents, had Nigerian attorneys certify the validity of them and they did everything else necessary to con a rich old man into believing that his ship had come in.
Over the next 3 years, Jonathan stopped paying his real estate loans, borrowed on his factory equipment, ran up $500,000 in credit card charges and cleaned out his wife's separate bank account, all without telling her anything. Every payment to Nigeria was supposed to be the last one, and Jonathan was hooked. When I found Jonathan he couldn't raise what he thought was the last $10,000 necessary to finish the deal. His creditors were getting very upse |
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