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John T. Reed’s views of various real-estate-investment gurus 4

Michael R. Enelow (Duquesne Heights, PA)—I do not recommend
I got an email from a reader who told me there was a story in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette newspaper about a real estate investment guru who was in trouble with the law. The story is at http://www.post-gazette.com/neigh_city/20020808cburbs9.asp. According to the article, 61-year old Michael Enelow was indicted on 29 counts of wire and mail fraud by a grand jury in connection with a real estate invesment scam. He reportedly ran ads in periodicals around the U.S. from 1995 through 2000 offering money to people who would refer real estate deals to him. The indictment said he lied about how much money he had and how many deals he did. He charged $1,500 to sign up and got over a thousand people to send him that much. (1,000 x $1,500 = $1,500,000) The FBI said Enelow lived off the $1,500 charges and that his real estate dealings were insignificant.
Richard Epley (Houston)—Unknown
The “Blue Jeans Millionaire.” One-time “real estate investment expert” now selling multi-level health stuff through Rexall. A reader comments that’s “peculiar since at one time he espoused staying away from multi-level and other business opportunities since they were a needless distraction from real estate--where the ‘real’ money was to be made.”
Gary DiGrazia (San Lorenzo, CA)—I recommend
My one-time adult baseball teammate. His Diamond Farming (510-733-3771, FAX 510-317-9644) is a solid book on probate investing in California. As with Coats' book, in the land of the blind, the California book is king. If you live outside California and want to invest in probates, DiGrazia's book is probably the best thing you'll ever find. You'll have to modify it to reflect differences between your local law and California's laws. I wrote about him in How to Buy Real Estate for at Least 20% Below Market Value.
Joe Dominquez—I recommend
Jim Kerr wrote: Mr. Reed -You mentioned that you were unaware of Joe Dominguez and his book "Your Money or Your Life". Joe is now deceased, but in the early 90’s he wrote (with Vicki Robin) the book "Your Money or Your Life". It is NOT a get rich quick book. Basically, he feels most Americans spend way too much money. The book promotes the idea that financial independence and early retirement can be achieved through frugality. I enjoyed the book and agree with most of what he says. Probably the only thing I disagreed with was his recommendation to buy 30 year US treasury bonds to provide you with a steady stream of income. I believe he downplays the danger of inflation. His book is readily available in bookstores. I highly recommend it.
By the way, I really like your site and what you are doing! Jim Kerr
John T. Reed responds: Thanks for your kind comments about this site. Dominguez sounds like my kind of guy. I agree with your comment about 30-year bonds.
Gayle B. Ellison---I do not recommend
Use my Real Estate B.S. Artist Detection Checklist to evaluate this guru.
Cliff Enz (Morrisville, PA)-I do not recommend
On 7/25/97, a reader alerted me that Cliff Enz's Web site had plagiarized mine. I visited his site and found that Enz had copied the guru portion of this Web site including my copyrighted “B.S. Detection Checklist” article and a reader-input-soliciting page I used to have here, and put it on his own web site with some changes. He presented my material without permission and without attribution to me and even said “The material is copyrighted,” implying that he owned the copyright. He claimed the material was “the product of personal observation, research and analysis...” You bet, mine and those of my readers.
The only business I have ever had with Enz is that he asked for a free copy of my annual update booklet. If anyone finds he has published that anywhere as his own, please let me know.
Words cannot express my contempt for Cliff Enz.
David Finkel—Unknown
Use the business name Mentor Financial Group, LLC. The purpose of an LLC (limited liability company) is to make it harder for you to sue the owners of the company in question successfully. Use my Real Estate B.S. Artist Detection Checklist to evaluate this guru. Advocates use of lease options. See my article on that subject. His Web site says Mentor Financial is “Registered by the Colorado Secretary of State’s office as a company in good standing…” That seems to imply some sort of approval or endorsement by the state. In fact, all corporations and LLCs are required to register with the secretary of state’s office. That’s about as meaningful as my saying I am “Registered by the California Department of Motor Vehicles as a vehicle owner in good standing.” The products on their Web site sound like the same old mix of nothing down, lease option, etc. that so many other gurus are pushing.
Foreclosurebargains.com---I do not recommend
Here is an email I got from a reader about this company.
"A foreclosure listing service that advertises on television. They provide REO listings. I sent for a three month subscription in September 99 which consisted of three monthly issues for approx. $50 non-refundable. The two issues they sent were received late and the third was never received. Calls were not returned. The information in the issues was over two months old by the time I received the issues. The only charge authorized was this $50 charge back in September. Move forward to March 23 and I find that this company has charged $499 to
my credit card they had on file. I cannot reach them at their customer service number or order line. New VISA guidelines require the card issuer to send to the card holder a dispute form that must be filled out and signed before the dispute can be processed. Now I have to wait for the card issuer to contact the merchant for their side of the story." Chris Golianis
ForeclosureListings.com---I do not recommend
I received a complaint about this company from Ryan Ballard. He also sent me some emails he says they sent him. Please click here to read those emails. Warning: the emails from ForeclosureListings.com contain profanity. In one email, ForeclosureListings.com questions Mr. Ballard’s intelligence. He is a college graduate. For what it’s worth, he is also a professional baseball player (minor league).
Foreclosureworld---I do not recommend
I got a letter from a reader about it. Click here to read it. Use my Real Estate B.S. Artist Detection Checklist to evaluate this guru.
Fortune 21 (See also Success Magazine)-I do not recommend
Click here to read letters I have received about Fortune 21. Use my Real Estate B.S. Artist Detection Checklist to evaluate this guru.
Dan Franklin---I do not recommend
Click here to read an email I received about Dan Franklin. Use my Real Estate B.S. Artist Detection Checklist to evaluate this guru.
Richard Gardiner (last known address Rocklin, CA)—I do not recommend
Big advocate of lease options. Wrote a book called Real Estate Option Techniques.
Gardiner was always arguing with me, which I normally love. Taking a position and debating it is my favorite way to figure things out. But there are only two legitimate debate tactics: finding errors or omissions in the other party’s facts or logic. There are a bunch of illegitmate debate tactics: changing the subject, strawmen, name calling (e.g., “you’re too negative”), and so forth. Gardiner would hit me with multiple illegitimate debate tactics in rapid fire. He subscribed to my newsletter as recently as March of 2000. When he came up for renewal, I tossed his renewal notices in the trash rather than mail them to him because I decided I did not want his business. I had never done that with any other subscriber.
He was always arrogant and bragging about what a big-time real estate guy he was. On 1/24/00, he filed bankruptcy in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of California in Sacramento. I did not learn that until a year later. On 1/24/01, I called his phone number to ask if what I had heard was correct. It was disconnected. As a result of his not appearing in court when ordered, an “order to apprehend” him was entered in the Federal Bankruptcy Court in Sacramento. The authorities there cannot find him and would like to know where he is. I am trying to find the full scope of what happened. One story I heard was that he was a property manager who sold his clients’ properties without their permission and kept the proceeds! One account of that says he could do this because he had broad power of attorney from them. Another said he got his clients to give him “unrecorded deeds” to their properties saying he needed such deeds in order to manage their property.
A person who said he “represented” her in setting up a bunch of lease options was in a panic because five were coming due and the index Gardiner had her tie the option prices to had not gone up enough. As a result, each property was worth about $60,000 more than its option price. She was looking for an “aggressive” attorney to “defend” her against the buyers who wanted to exercise.
Marc Stephen Garrison
Pepe1989@aol.com wrote: have you ever heard of Marc stephen garrison ? he takes people on real estate buying tours out of the area where they live because he finds better markets. does this make sense to you?
Garrison was an associate of Robert G. Allen. He and Allen had a falling out. Allen apparently gave Garrison his newsletter to satisfy or partially satisfy a debt Allen owed Garrison. Garrison strongly urged me to write an article exposing Allen's financial difficulties. I said I needed proof and Garrison helped me get key interviews and told me where to look for key documents. I wrote the article in my 9/87 issue. Garrison also tried to get me to take over the newsletter. “I don’t want to put out a July issue,” he said. I believe that was in June of 1988. I made my standard offer for taking over newsletters (I have taken over three): You pay me the cost of printing and mailing my newsletters to your subscribers and I will pay you half of each renewal by your old subscribers for the first year and 25% of each renewal the second year. He wanted a better deal. I believe he sold it to Mark Haroldsen.
Brief (six months) windows of opportunity have opened in various areas like Anchorage and Oklahoma City in the last twenty years. I don't think anyone could make a living taking people to such opportunities because they only occur once every five or ten years. Plus most people would be chicken to invest in such dramatically depressed areas.
A more common pattern is investors from high-priced areas erroneously concluding that real estate is a bargain in lower-priced areas because they are cheaper than in the investor's home area. The classic group that made that mistake was the Japanese coming to the U.S. I have also heard of New Yorkers (high priced) being taken to Camden, NJ (ghetto and also my birthplace) by Sonny Bloch and various people have capitalized on the propensity of Californians (high priced) to conclude that prices in places like Arizona (lower prices) must be too low because they are so much lower than California.
I think it's possible for opportunities to exist in some areas of the U.S. other than the brief windows of opportunity I described above, but it would have to be a rather esoteric niche which the typical investor who uses someone else (Garrison) to find properties would be afraid to invest in.
His 1986 book Financially Free is one of many real estate investment books which I describe as "Real estate dictionaries that are not in alphabetical order." You do not need to buy a real estate dictionary. There are several on-line for free.
A reader tells me he found a Chapter 7 bankruptcy for a Marc S. Garrison in Gilbert Arizona in 1997. I do not know if it is the same person.
Jane Garvey (Glen Ellyn, IL)-I recommend
Solid, down-to-earth experienced author publisher of Creative Investor newsletter and several how-to books. President of the Creative Investors Association Chicago, a former Bob Allen Club. Widow and former partner of the late beloved guru Marc Goodfriend. Former college professor.
Bill J. Gatten—I do not recommend
Gatten has complained about this portion of my Web page. He told me on 5/9/03 that it had cost him “exactly $51,456.57 in sales.” He did not explain how it would be possible to know such a thing.
Click here for my analysis of a free seminar he gave on his PACTRUST.
Genesis media
Here is an email I got from a reader.
I mention Genesis Media in this e-mail message. Not sure if they are mentioned at your site but they have provided Telemarketing services for Ted Thomas, Fortune 21 Inc., and possibly Michael T. Warren. There is a post at papersourceonline that mentions Michael T. Warren and the person was given the number for Genesis Media as a contact number. Ted Thomas and Fortune 21 Inc. are mentioned in SEC forms filed by Genesis Media. If you ever want to know more about Genesis Media check the posts at ragingbull (www.ragingbull.com; message board - GENI). The posts by Charles_Ponzi are simply amazing. Genesis Media is a subsidiary of GENI (whatever that symbol stands for). This is an activity you would undertake if you had a lot of free time on your hand and like good spy novels. It reads like a great fi! ction spy novel except it ain't ficition. …ex-Saud arms dealer Khashoggi, who controls GENI.
Charles Givens (deceased)-I do not recommend
If you look up "glib" in the dictionary, you'll find a picture of Givens next to the definition. Givens was the Cliff Claven of finance. His International Administrative Services, Inc., which did business under 16 names including some involved in real estate, went bankrupt in Orlando in the summer of 1996. In 1993, he lost a lawsuit stemming from the uninsured death of a man killed in a car accident by an uninsured driver after Givens advised the deceased to drop his uninsured motorist coverage. That same year, he settled a fraud and deceptive trade practices suit filed by the Florida attorney general by agreeing to pay $177,000 in refunds to 135 disgruntled customers and to reimburse the state for its investigation costs.
In 1995, the Florida Attorney General got Givens to agree to pay $377,000 to cover refunds and the cost of the Florida investigation. Givens also agreed to stop making certain claims about the value of his teachings and to make full refunds to anyone who requests them within three days of receiving his materials. Two juries found him guilty of fraud.
In 1996, a California jury said Givens had defrauded 29,000 customers in that state and ordered him to refund $14.1 million to them.
The Wisconsin State Bureau of Consumer Protection published a Guide for Wisconsin TV stations which lists several "Questionable infomercials," among them those of Charles J. Givens. Givens died of prostate cancer in July of 1998.
Global Resource Network---I do not recommend
A reader tells me they charge $5,000 to teach note brokering. That's too much. The reader also said they tried to pressure him into borrowing money to pay the $5,000. I find it hard to believe that anyone would stoop so low, or that there are idiots out there who respond to such pressure.
Steve Goff---unknown
Use my Real Estate B.S. Artist Detection Checklist to evaluate this guru.
Bill “Tycoon” Greene (fugitive)-I do not recommend
The biggest character among the real estate gurus. Doonesbury's Uncle Duke come to life. He made a big splash in the late '70s with his book, Two Years for Freedom and multiple appearances on the Dinah Shore Show. He was convicted of federal income tax evasion and sent to prison. He escaped. One version I heard was that he escaped while on emergency leave visiting a sick relative. The other was he disappeared from a half-way house. In any event, he is apparently living in England using the name Dr. William G. Hill. Numerous books are for sale there by that author. They are virtually identical to Greene's books. When John Beck came across the books in England, he asked the publisher how he could get in touch with “Dr. Hill.” He was told they could not even get in touch with him, that Dr. Hill calls them.
I thought Greene had some good ideas but I could never recommend his stuff because it contained too many bad ideas, like backing out of a deal based on a clean termite report. He explained, “You could say you wanted a building with termites.” No, you can't. The courts will not allow such nonsense. See also David Martin letter.
Kevin D. Haag of Douglas Realty, Inc. (4821 Coronado Pkwy, Cape Coral, FL 33904)—Unknown
Use my Real Estate B.S. Artist Detection Checklist to evaluate this guru. This is Russ Whitney’s Realtor®. His office is across the street from Whitney’s building.
Mark Haroldsen (Salt Lake City, UT)—I do not recommend
Author of How to Awaken the Financial Genius Within You. Publisher of the now quarterly Financial Freedom Report. His main claim to fame is that he invented the densely-worded, full-page, magazine, direct-mail ad to sell his book. The novelty of that trick apparently has long since worn out. I haven't seen it in years.
Financial Freedom Report was accused of 83 counts of deceptive sales practices by the Utah Division of Consumer Protection according to a 5/19/97 KLS-TV story in Salt Lake City. Utah had received over 900 complaints about Financial Freedom Report nationwide since 1993 but only took action based on the 83 complaints from Utah residents. KLS-TV said the Commonwealth of Virginia had also taken action against Financial Freedom Report.
The Wisconsin State Bureau of Consumer Protection published a Guide for Wisconsin TV stations which lists several "Questionable infomercials," among them those of Financial Freedom Report.
Haroldsen's people once called me to ask permission to reprint one of my book chapters as an article in their magazine. I said, "OK, for $375." They said they only paid $125. I said no deal. They went ahead and printed it anyway and sent me a check for $125. I sent them an invoice for $250 and a strongly-worded note. They ignored me. I then told everyone I met who had the slightest interest in Haroldsen about that incident. Many months later, Haroldsen was coming to Monterey, California to give a seminar. I plotted how I could obtain a judgment against him and have the sheriff execute the judgment by till-tapping, that is, seizing his receipts, at the seminar. About that time, he sent me a check for $250. If you'd like to be treated the way he treated me, deal with Mark Haroldsen.
On another subsequent occasion, Haroldsen's people asked me to speak at his annual convention. I refused.
Here’s an email I got about Haroldsen.
“In 1976 I was one of the one's that purchased Mark Haroldsen's How to Awaken the Financial Genius Within You through the mail. I was 12 years old, and not to be funny, but it was written right on my level. He had a very simple easy way of explaining the power of compounding, but even at that age I could see a flaw in his math. He stated that he was worth millions and planned to double his net worth every year for the rest of his life. Let's see... If was worth two million in 1976 then he should be worth over 67 TRILLION DOLLARS in 2001.”
Haroldsen apparently won an FTC complaint case against him. I do not fully understand the FTC’s Website. Look at it for yourself at http://www.ftc.gov/ogc/status/injunct2.htm. I had not been aware that the FTC had filed a case against him until a Haroldsen supporter told me about it.