Flashback Fridays: Casey and Kiyosaki, Part 4

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Back in Part 3, I detailed how Casey Serin pocketed his $30,000 profit on his first investment property when he bought it, not when he sold it. Because Casey Serin is such a savvy real estate investor with mad entrepreneurial skillz, he managed to sell the property through a house swap and ended up buying a property for too much money. From the 13:25 mark of the video:

13:25: Casey: “Well, my other deals…after I sold this one, what happened is I sold it for 360, and I paid off my loan of 360, and I already had the 30 I pocketed, so that was the profit I took up front. So I was happy just to pay that off and move on. Now the only way I was able to do this though is, I found this guy who…I was having a hard time finding buyers because the market was already slowing down. But this guy who bought it from me, he had a house he was trying to sell, so that was a contingency, and I said, ‘Well, maybe we can work out a deal’, so I ended up buying his house, and he bought this one. The problem is I paid too much for his house.”

14:00: Kiyosaki: “How much was his house?”

14:02: Casey: “I paid 295. And 100% financing as well. And it would have appraised for a little over 300 at the time, so I thought…because at least buying it at a discount…but the problem is, it wasn’t a big enough discount, and it wasn’t the best inventory either. It had a garage conversion and it had some oddities about the house, and so I knew I wouldn’t be able to sell it quickly. I ended up renting it out at a loss, and that was a mistake. I did a lease option where I rented it for $1400, and my mortgage on that house was $2400. And that house is one of the ones I’m trying to get rid of. I’m still stuck with it. That’s the Burdett house in Sacramento. And it’s on my website, but…(audience laughter)…if anybody’s interested…(audience laughter) We just got a short sale approved on it, ‘cause I couldn’t sell it for what I owe on it, unfortunately. And so I’m working with an investor on asking the bank to take a small loss instead of taking a bigger loss by having the house go through foreclosure. I owe 295 on that one. The short sale was approved for 248, so there’s a little bit of a discount there for somebody who wants to pick it up below market value."

Casey also explains in the video that instead of holding back, getting a job, and focusing on making mortgage payments on the Burdett property, he kept buying more properties to see if he could extract money from them through profits or cash-back-at-close. I guess that's what Casey calls "entrepreneurial". Well, I call it "mortgage fraud" and a "Ponzi scheme", because that's what it was.

After Casey gets done explaining how he achieved Epic Fail in the real estate business, Kiyosaki tells Casey to say "Screw You" to the critics. But Kiyosaki misses the point. People are critical of Casey not because he failed, but because he failed with little to no moral compass, and he committed blatantly illegal acts that should have placed Casey in jail long ago.

Kiyosaki justifies Casey's illegal business dealings by saying that all of the critics are no better than Casey by making the following comments:

21:45: “Do you know someone that pretends to be a saint, but they’re having sex with their dog?”

Classy.

25:35: “95% of people who fill out credit apps lie.” Then Kiyosaki says “99% of the population are frickin’ liars."

As usual, Kiyosaki is pulling numbers and generalizations out of his ass that make no sense and have no factual basis whatsoever. Must be an entrepreneurial thing.

So much for a Friday post...

Well, I woke up Friday morning and found out my Internet service wasn't working. Usually my first assumption is that the Internet service provider is screwing up somehow, but I looked over a few things and concluded that something wasn't working at my house. After calling tech support, we confirmed that I needed something replaced. The replacement arrived today and now I'm back online. I tried to solve it earlier by going to Radio Shack, but they said they didn't have what I was looking for.

While I was offline, I wondered what Casey would do if he was offline for 4 days. Would his head explode? Would he tweak something else more frequently instead of his sidebars? Or would he use the time for something productive, like coming up with an old-fashioned offline scam? One can only wonder.

Anyway, I'll try again this Friday for Part 4 of Casey and Kiyosaki. I'm not sure if I'll have a post up before then. My wife comes back tomorrow so my posts should resume shortly. Thanks to all of you for dropping by.

New post tomorrow

I thought I was going to have time last weekend to post Part 4 of Casey and Kiyosaki, but no dice. I will be posting it sometime tomorrow.

Also, keep in mind that you can track new posts for this blog by getting set up on Google Friends Connect. By doing this, you will have done more in one day than Casey has done in a whole month.

December blogging update

I apologize for not posting for several days, but I've run into one of those instances where I need to focus on matters unrelated to Casey Serin and his trail of grifting behavior. Also, starting this weekend, my wife will be out of town for 9 days and I will have to play Mr. Mom on a full-time basis until she returns. Therefore I expect my posts to be much more sporadic during the month of December. Part 4 of Casey and Kiyosaki may drag into the weekend.

In the meantime, for one of the most thorough critiques of Robert Kiyosaki ever written, you can read John Reed's analysis here. (After looking through John Reed's website over the years, it's pretty clear he enjoys writing about anything --- a LOT.)

The California court system is waiting for Casey

I found this website which gives a basic overview of the California court system. Casey's court developments would likely take place at the Superior Court of Sacramento.

If you scroll down to the part that says "How a Case Moves Through the California Court System", you will notice that small claims cases are generally those civil cases where the plantiff is suing for $5,000 or less. Since US Bank is suing Casey above that amount, Casey Serin can be represented by an attorney in court.

In his infinite wisdom, it wouldn't be the most surprising development if Casey represented himself with the "itsallgood" and/or the "It's a gray area" defenses. If those don't work, the "NO DEAL!!" defense may suffice.

Flashback Fridays: Casey and Kiyosaki, Part 3

You can see my previous posts about this video here and here.

In this third installment, Casey talks about the first property he bought for investment purposes back in 2005. Before we get to that point, though, here's what Casey says at the 7:05 mark of the video regarding one of the ways that he racked up debt on his credit cards:

"Yeah, I did do my round of seminars and, you know, going to ‘boot camps’, they call ‘em, it’s a weekend seminar where they cram you with all this knowledge and sometimes it’s kind of like drinking out of a fire hydrant, there’s so much information. And you pay thousands of dollars for those things. I’ve also done some books and tapes and study-at-home courses."

Then at the 8:03 mark:

“..the first set of boot camps, I spent 15 thousand dollars on, and I put it on credit cards ‘cause they told us, you know, ‘Raise some capital’, or, it was ‘seed capital’. Well, they were telling us, you need more money for their boot camps, you know, it wasn’t even for the deals. And so I did raise some ‘seed capital’….that was my plastic, right?....and 15 thousand dollars later, I’m committed, ‘cause I spent all this money. I need to make this thing back. And my wife hates credit. She hates debt, and so I’m using her credit cards. And so she tells me, ‘You need to pay this thing back fast.’”

Okay, so Casey basically lays it out by saying he spent $15,000 on these ‘boot camps’ and he was motivated to get that money back, so Casey goes out and buys a property. At the 9:35 mark:

Casey: “I bought it for 360 (thousand).”

Kiyosaki: “Holy moly….this is after your condo or your residence?”

Casey: “Yes. This is just for investment purposes. A motivated seller….the internal price was actually 330, okay? What I did is I negotiated for some repair money to come out of this price, so when I closed escrow, $30,000 was a cash-back-at-close, and that’s what paid off my credit cards. And then 3 months later, I sold it for 360, ‘cause this was the loan amount. It was 100% financed. And so I sold it for what I bought it for, but I already had the $30,000 I took out on purchase. And that was, you know, it was repair money. That one really didn’t need too much repair, really, that was money so I can float this deal. I paid a payment with it….I only had to do one payment, I ended up selling it and pay off my loan. So that was my first deal.”

Whether or not the deal worked, Casey extracted $30,000 when he bought the property, not when he sold it. Therefore, Casey would have profited from the deal whether or not the property went into foreclosure.

But also look at how Casey said he used the money while keeping in mind what he said earlier in the video about the boot camps:

"...I negotiated for some repair money to come out of this price..."

But then he says:

"That one really didn't need too much repair, really, that was money so I can float this deal. I paid a payment with it."

So Casey admits that one monthly payment was made with the money before he sold it. Based on the financing, this payment was probably somewhere in the $1500-$2000 range depending on the structure of the mortgage.

But the $30,000 he pulled out on the front end was also used to pay off the $15,000 from the real estate seminars. And that's not all, as Casey notes at the 12:05 mark:

“Besides the 15 thousand I had on my credit cards, I had another 15 (thousand) on credit cards from other things…marriage, some other things that…just, things we’re carrying, and so I was thinking, what’s the fastest way to pay off that 30 thousand dollars of credit I have, or that debt? And I thought, well, I can create a chunk by doing a real estate deal the way they taught us in these seminars, and so, you know, this time it worked…"

So what does using the money for "marriage" and "things we're carrying" mean? The only way to find that out is to pull all of Casey and his ex-wife's credit card statements for 2005 and possibly 2004 to figure out what was paid off. And if he used $15,000 to pay for real estate seminars and $15,000 for other expenses on the credit cards, where does that leave the money for repairs?

Note that what Casey did is illegal because he didn't tell the lender that extra money would be used from the financing for other things, like paying off real estate seminars, making a monthly payment on the house, and other expenses on the credit card statements related to "marriage" or "things we're carrying" which could be anything from wedding ceremonies and honeymoons to blue-collared shirts and Jamba Juice.

For the lender, it's water under the bridge because the lender was paid back, but what Casey did was illegal because he duped the lender into providing more financing than what was needed to buy the house. This allowed Casey to use the money for whatever he wanted.

And there was even more incentives to use cash-back-at-close for everyday expenses on his subsequent properties because around the time that his first investment property was sold in January 2006, he left his job at Pride Industries to become a full-time real estate investor.

In Part 4 next Friday, I will conclude the video review.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you "W-2 loosers"

Casey hired as your worst valet nightmare

As mentioned in the comments on the previous post, Casey has been hired as a valet. Yes, this was the sweet opportunity brought to him by an old friend via the Law of Attraction. As Casey puts it, it gives him the chance to make "connections".

Good fricking grief.

And we all knew that Casey couldn't keep away from posting a picture of himself on the Internet. This time it's in a $2 tuxedo.

If only these people knew they were handing their keys to a serial fraudster, they would park the car themselves, clutching the steering wheel tightly with both hands.

Anyway, Casey seems determined to get himself fired again. Therefore, I would like to make a toast.....to Epic Fail!

Casey -- you got served!

Casey has posted on Facebook (hat tip to Jim) that Casey's "corporation" has been served a summons by US Bank. The bank is trying to collect about $5,300 which is a paltry amount compared to the money he has bilked from various lenders, but it's a start.

Like I mentioned in the comments for the previous blog post, if anyone happens to be a "friend" on Casey's Facebook page, I would greatly appreciate any updates to Casey's comments on that page. You can always post the comments in the latest blog thread here. I would also be interested to know when and where the court hearing is expected to take place. Thanks.

Helping Casey buy his "fantasy island" - Part 3

In this third and final installment, we take a look at Isla del Encanto which is an island on the Pacific Coast side of El Salvador. Although Casey is not a details guy, this island is 23 acres which may be large enough to hold Casey's cult sustainable community. Here's some of the description:

Uses: Private retreat, eco-tourism, marina resort development, bungalows, golf, casino

Vegetation: coconut palms, mango, papaya, avocado (very fertile soil)

Wildlife: Birds are abundant

Beaches: Sand, free of rocks

Fishing: Excellent fishing in the ocean as well as in the estuary surrounding the island.

Buildings: Small cottage with palapa roof - 6 meters by 6 meters. Cement pad 6 meters by 12 meters covered with palapa roof.

Other: The island also is near a Mayan archaeological site. Direct access to Pacific Ocean.

I have checked out the pictures for Casey, and I am sure Casey will be pleased to hear that this island has a very cultlike feel to it. The palm trees, wispy grasses, and hammock under a palapa roof seem right up Casey's alley.

So let's take a look at the terms noting that the asking price for this island is $3,950,000:

Owner will consider financing with reasonable down payment. Substantial discount for cash purchase. Seller also will consider a joint venture or partnership in an eco-friendly project involving the island.

And here's how Casey would read the description:

Owner will consider financing. Substantial discount. Seller also will consider a joint venture or partnership involving the island.

The negotiation will start with Casey proposing a partnership (since he's so good at maintaining and sustaining partnerships without any misunderstandings) where the seller provides all of the financing and Casey provides mad eco-tourism skillz. It's a win-win...for Casey's ego and his wallet!

Flashback Fridays: Casey and Kiyosaki, Part 2

You can see Part 1, including the actual video, here.

Here in Part 2, I decided to write out some highlights from the video that was recorded on October 31, 2006. Since the video is about 43 minutes long, I will be doing this over several "Flashback Fridays". The time, in minutes, is shown here so that you can go to that portion of the video if you wish.

00:50: Kiyosaki points out the article from the Money section of USAToday that mentions Casey. Article is titled “10 Mistakes that Made Flipping Flop”.

01:10: Strangely mentions that for some of Casey’s acts, he was “brave” for doing them because many of those acts constitute fraud. (I think most of us would use a lot of words to describe what Casey did, but “brave” isn’t one of them.)

01:15: Kiyosaki mentions that for some of the more serious offenses, “he may go to jail and become someone’s boyfriend if they catch him”.

01:22: Kiyosaki laims that he is proud of Casey for “taking responsibility” in the article for his actions and that he wants to pay the money back. (As we all know by now, Casey says he wants to do a lot of things, but we’re still waiting for the results.)

02:00: We get our first glimpse of the entire audience for Kiyosaki’s presentation. From L to R: Casey Serin, Joy O’Day, and Erin Morgan. As you may recall, O’Day and Morgan pressured Casey to sign a contract shortly after this presentation as I mentioned in Part 1. This led to Casey saying “NO DEAL!” on the contract in December 2006.

02:15: Kiyosaki writes out “Mistakes Are Only Sins When Not Admitted”, apparently using a different book than the book of law to justify Casey’s actions. Kiyosaki then goes on to say how most people are “programmed from birth not to make mistakes” and it’s valuable to learn from your mistakes. Somehow Kiyosaki has mistakenly believed that Casey has “taken action” by learning from his “mistakes” which Casey definitely hasn’t done as evidenced by his future dealings with Nigel Swaby and other investors.

04:08: Casey is now speaking and he mentions that he moved to the United States in 1994 from Uzbekistan when he was 12 years old.

04:37: Casey mentions that he has “one unit of college” which gets a laugh from the group. The class was a ½ semester class on “Introduction to Linux”. He claims that he only went to this brief stint in college “for social reasons”.

05:00: Casey starts to talk about his various entrepreneurial endeavors – website design and charging people to rent the use of his server. However, he began focusing on real estate. A transcript follows regarding the first property he ever bought, a condo which he used as a personal residence:

"...the more I read the books, and I see that the financially independent are either investing in real estate directly – and that’s how they made their money – or their business is investing in real estate, so I thought this is where I need to be. So I started learning about it and my first experience with real estate was, I bought a condo just for a personal residence when I was 19. And…”

Kiyosaki: “How much was the condo?”

Casey: “That was $100000.”

Kiyosaki: “How much did you put down?”

Casey: “Zero. I put down zero. That one, I qualified for a government first-time buyer program, FHA program. And that was great, I really didn’t think I was able to buy a house, but I was moving apartments, and I thought, hey, let me look into it and maybe I can get into a house, and I was able to do it, and everything was good. It was a slight fixer, I needed to do a little bit of work, so it was at a little bit of a discount. A year later, I ended up selling it for a net gain of $30,000. And I was making $30,000 at my job at the time, for a year."

This would be one of the few times where Casey would actually meet the terms of a contract he signed.

In Part 3 of "Flashback Fridays", I will talk about the first property that Casey Serin bought for investment purposes back in October 2005.

Sacramento con artist arrested

Sorry everyone -- it's not Casey Serin.

It's actually a guy named William Arthur Sassman, who used four companies to solicit investments from over 50 individuals in a classic Ponzi scheme:

Sassman, 41, of Sacramento, was arrested at his residence...on a total of 100 counts: 43 counts of grand theft, 40 counts of misrepresentation or omission in the sale of a security, 16 counts of first-degree burglary and 1 count of use of a device, scheme, or artifice to defraud in the sale of a security. If convicted, Sassman faces up to 52 years in prison. Sassman is being held in the Sacramento County Jail and bail has been set at $3.2 million.

Some of the investment returns that Sassman was promising were ridiculous, so in some circumstances the investors should have known better. Of course, Sassman couldn't go without his favorite toys with all of that money pouring in:

However, Sassman made few, if any, of these investments and rarely paid the double to triple digit returns he promised. Instead, Sassman spent investors' millions financing his lavish lifestyle, including $1.1 million on his American Express card, $300,000 on automobiles, $75,000 at Polo Ralph Lauren and three homes.

I also placed a comment with the Sacbee article to make sure the Sacramento community doesn't forget about someone else that the attorney general's office should have arrested also.

Flipping short sales and "sweet cashback"

Long article published in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune yesterday about flipping short sales.

The article also comes with a map where you can look up specific properties in the Sarasota and Tampa areas that have flipped quickly for a profit. These properties involve the dealings of 3 individuals: Joe Wright (listing agent), Kevin Byrne (owner of Florida Home Deals LLC), and Chris Rodriguez (title agent).

Since September 2008, Tampa real estate agent Joe Wright and accountant Kevin Byrne have worked together to buy more than 30 pre-foreclosure houses and condos, with Wright's brokerage as the listing agent and Byrne's company as the buyer.

In each case, the men arranged a short sale and quickly resold the property at a higher price. Of their 33 deals, 22 properties resold within 24 hours of purchase. The median one-day price increase was $25,000.

Byrne and Wright did not return repeated calls seeking comment.

Yeah, no shit. Maybe they're too busy doing sweet deals.

Of course, the banks in many instances are screwing themselves with how they value a property:

Instead of hiring appraisers to value distressed real estate, banks often use computer programs to estimate values or turn to Realtors who provide what are known as "broker price opinions," or BPOs, at a relatively inexpensive $60 each.

The Realtors hired to estimate a property's value sometimes end up as the listing agent on the house, said Chrissi Rhea, a Tennessee mortgage banker and outspoken critic of short sale flips.

The article then goes on to say that these listing agents often will give a lowball value of the property to the bank. Meanwhile, one of the agent's friends or business partners will offer to buy the property at the lowball price while the agent ignores higher offers.

Too bad Chrissi Rhea wasn't involved when Casey Serin bought his properties. Check out this story:

In one deal uncovered by Rhea's mortgage company this year, a distressed homeowner was about to walk away from a Maryville, Tenn., house for $231,000 less than he owed.

The short sale consultant representing the owner planned to buy the house at the discounted amount then resell it to an outside buyer 30 minutes later for a $100,000 profit, Rhea said.

Rhea's company discovered the flip deal when that outside buyer applied for a mortgage on the house. Rhea refused to approve the mortgage. She contacted GMAC and CitiBank, the original lenders, and warned them that they were about to lose more than $100,000 if they allowed the deal to go through. Then she contacted the FBI and asked agents to investigate.

Rhea said she told the buyer she would approve the mortgage only if he arranged a sale directly from the distressed property owner. Instead, he asked to have his mortgage application forwarded to another lender.

Rhea said she asked the second buyer why he wanted to work through the short sale consultant. The second buyer "admitted he was getting a kickback as part of the $100,000 short sale profit."

That's another version of what Casey Serin would call "sweet cash-back-at-close".

Joe Wright, Kevin Byrne and Chris Rodriguez are basically asking themselves to be investigated further by the FBI. They might as well have coffee and donuts ready for the FBI agents so they’ll feel right at home.

E-mail Addresses Posted

I have two e-mail addresses shown in my profile (right sidebar) if you want to e-mail me about anything. Although you can make suggestions to improve this blog in the comments, you can also e-mail me as well. Note that any e-mails sent to me will not be mentioned or posted on this blog unless you give written permission to do so.

Helping Casey buy his "fantasy island" - Part 2

In this second installment, we take a look at Dinna Cay which is located in the Exuma island chain of the Bahamas. Nicolas Cage, another "I Am Facing Foreclosure" graduate, bought an island in the Exumas back in 2006.

Let's take a look at the sweet description:

Seven-acre private island situated in beautiful Exuma Land and Sea Park with deep-water access. The island is undeveloped and is well suited for a single family home plus caretaker’s quarters. Dinna is the only small island like this on the market in Exuma, and in a beautiful location near Halls Pond Cay. Motivated seller.

Exuma Cays are well known for their pristine beaches and crystal clear waters. This island enjoys the environment of the park and will always be ensured an abundance of sea life and limited development. It has no beach, just rocky shoreline, but the area is stunning and it has good elevations and deep water for a dock. There are plenty of islands nearby that are deserted with beautiful beaches, just a couple minutes by boat.

Since Nicolas Cage's island is reportedly 40 acres, this appears not to be the same island. Too bad for Casey because not only could he rub shoulders with a celebrity, but he could also help Nicolas Cage avoid all of those financial mistakes, right?

The "motivated seller" tag is the big draw for Casey. He can utilize his little-known creative financing techniques that usually involve putting down no money at favorable terms. The really creative part is when he doesn't pay the money back.

And sure, it's only 7 acres, but who cares? They fit a few million people on Manhattan, right? What's a thousand people on a 7-acre island? That's about 300 square feet per person, so there's plenty of room to stretch out and move around.

Casey better move on this one fast. Once he gets the house and caretaker's quarters set up, the delicious part will be outsourcing all activities to the caretaker while Casey blogs about everything.

Flashback Fridays: Casey and Kiyosaki, Part 1

In this first installment of Flashback Fridays, I'm taking you back to 2006 where Casey Serin meets up with Robert Kiyosaki.



Casey was offered the opportunity to meet with Kiyosaki by the No Limits Ladies -- Joy O'Day and Erin Morgan -- shortly after Casey was interviewed by USAToday. At the 2-minute mark in the video, you will see Casey seated next to O'Day and Morgan. According to the No Limits Ladies blog, the video was taped on October 31, 2006 (October 31 occurred on a Tuesday of that year).

Shortly after the meeting with Kiyosaki, O'Day and Morgan pressured Casey into signing a contract that led Casey to famously announce "NO DEAL!" which everyone knows is the appropriate legal term for rescinding any contact instantaneously.

I will break down some of the highlights in the video starting next Friday (that's why this is Part 1). However, for those of you who haven't seen the video, Casey admits to various actions that constitute fraud, starting with his first real estate investment deal. Kiyosaki doesn't seem to mind because Casey is so "brave" for coming out and telling his story.

Crisp & Cole & Mortgage Fraud

I found this story off a comment on Lou Minatti's blog. It was posted by "Casey Serin: Homosexual Con Artist" who has previously posted on this blog.

Two years after a highly visible raid by federal agents investigating Crisp, Cole & Associates, a key former employee pleaded guilty Monday to taking part in mortgage fraud and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.

Jerald Allen Teixeira's plea agreement is the first criminal proceeding in a federal investigation into borrowing and investment activity at the once high-flying company. In September 2007, FBI and IRS agents raided 13 local sites looking for evidence of criminal wrongdoing at the now-defunct Bakersfield real estate firm.

Teixeira, 29, worked as a loan officer at Crisp & Cole's lending arm between October 2005 and January 2007. In Fresno federal court Monday he admitted to committing wire fraud on the job and now faces up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 at his sentencing, set for March 22.

In addition, Mr. Teixeria did something that is fairly close to what Casey Serin did to acquire his properties:

Teixeira himself purchased 11 properties with a total value of $4.4 million between October 2004 and December 2006, the document shows. In order to buy them, it says, he lied or left out important information about his income and his debt from other purchases.

With all of the other illegal activities going on at Crisp and Cole, this portion of the article was mentioned as an afterthought. Similar timeframe and similar number of properties as Casey, although these properties appear to be worth almost double what Casey paid for his properties.

P.S.: Lou Minatti seems like a good guy and he has posted many times over the years about Casey Serin. Shortly after Casey's pirate party in the park, he decided not to write about Casey anymore. I can see how the sight of Casey in an ugly gay pirate outfit could drive anyone over the edge.

Taking you back to the original Fraudcast...

I have started to rummage through the historical information about Casey Serin that is still hanging out there on the Internet. I am doing this because I want to organize and reference all of the occasions where Casey has committed various acts of fraud.

As part of this effort, I obviously went to CaseyPedia to look up some things. To this day, I continue to be amazed at the level of information contained in this website. It is truly a marvel.

Anyway, I went to the website to look up some information related to the Talkcasts (or "Fraudcasts") that Casey Serin hosted during 2006 and 2007, and I was reminded of the initial Talkcast with Jerome Mayne on December 6, 2006 (you can see his website here).

Jerome Mayne spent several years in prison for mortgage fraud so he's really done some hard time, and he basically told Casey during the Talkcast that he should turn himself in to the FBI. I don't see any evidence of the entire transcript out on the web, but you can get some of the highlights by going to Casey's old blog post located here. In the comments section, Casey decides to rile up the crowd in comment #11 by dashing into a phone booth and coming out as Supertroll:

The mortgage fraud Podcast was pretty good. But what was the big deal about me admitting to doing mortgage fraud? I already said “Yes I lied on those loans” in one of the earlier posts.

The only thing is that I didn’t think this was a criminal offense back when I was doing the loans. I thought it might be unethical and just gray-area type of thing but A CRIME?? If I knew I was commiting a crime I would have never done that.

Of course, everyone knows that stupidity doesn't clear you from wrongdoing, even if you are really that stupid. Kevin in comment #19 says it pretty well:

How in the world do you think that getting money from a lender by providing false information is NOT a crime? Don’t you think if it wasn’t a crime, that would open up the gates & then everyone would lie & get money? Where would that leave us, as far as the financial security of this nation? Have you thought ANYTHING through?

Putting on my Casey no-thinking-cap, I can answer Kevin's questions as the following: Itsallgood, I dunno, I dunno, and no. And considering where this country has ended up over the past year, it seems like everyone lying and getting money pretty much put us in the crapper.

Of course, Chase Gochnauer in comment #27 basically sums up the reality of the situation at the time, and lets us know that millions of people enjoyed lying to get a house or two:

What you have done is done on a daily basis across the country. It has become so commonplace sometimes that it’s locally known and no one complains and everyone participates. I’ve seen personal property included in mortgage loans, all the cash back to rehab the property, money back for their 5-10% down, it happens every day.

Of course, Casey did this eight times so he might be in a slightly smaller subset of fraudsters.

Comments now require registration

I have changed the comment settings so that only registered users can post on this blog. I haven't run into trolling issues yet but I figured that would eventually happen if I didn't set this up. Also, with the demise of Casey's brother's blog, I would expect more people to show up here looking for a new place to hang out.

Note that you don't have to register specifically with a Google account. It can be with other accounts including those with LiveJournal, WordPress, TypePad, AIM, or OpenID. If you don't have an account through any of these sites, I encourage you to take a few minutes of your time to set it up.

At this time, anyone who registers an account will be allowed to make a post. That may eventually change, but there are aspects of an invitation-only blog which I think might be too time-intensive for me to deal with. There will be some occasions where I won't be checking my e-mail or other accounts for 4-5 days at a time, so inviting people into the blog could be occasionally frustrating on both sides. So I'd like to table that issue for now.

One more thing before I end this post....I haven't set up rules for ways you can get your posts kicked off the blog. I would just ask that you use common sense and be respectful to each other when you want to say something. Of course those rules don't apply when you're talking about Casey Serin the serial grifter. Thanks in advance.

To those who are new to this blog...

First I would like to say welcome, and I'm glad you decided to stop by.

As you can see in my first post, I originally reserved this blog to keep up the awareness that Casey Serin should be arrested for a multitude of various crimes.

However, I really don't want him arrested if he continues to work a steady job and make a steady income without chasing another "bright shiny thing". That's the best thing for taxpayers and the best thing for Casey.

But there's a pretty decent chance that something will eventually go astray in Casey's wobbly little brain that gets him fired. If not, a "bright shiny thing" is likely to come along and make Casey decide that a full-time job is not for him.

Do I think anything successful will come out of this blog if that happens? Not Casey's level of success, but REAL success?

Hell, I don't know. The chances are actually pretty high that nothing will come out of this.

But maybe something will happen. At the very least, maybe it will help prevent Casey Serin from committing another act of fraud for the umpteenth time. That, in itself, makes it worthwhile.

So please come back, and come back often. I will try to post as regularly as I can.