gOOD POINT
In a couple of months everyone would have got their money?
Maybe they should have went in as a "Consultant" and waited, if the money was there, to we were all paid and then went after them?
Not enough $, then freeze em.
Ex fast food employess??.......They were sure trained fu_king well!!
all i want to know is if James and Nick were in on it? Then they lied to me at least 20 MOTHER FU_KIN TIMES!!!!!!!
12k for 3 mos to live on?......Thats half the $ he owes me!!!!!!!
Well, damnpinn has, at least, proved one of my points. Did anyone notice how well a recent college grad can put their thoughts in writing? I don't mean to be too critical here, government education is also to blame here.
O'Neal intentionally hired the ignorant, thinking that they would not catch on to the scheme. Most of the employees were just pawns, some were not. It is true that O'Neal cleared out the night before the SEC stepped in. Did it while everyone was gone. A thief and a coward, he let his employees face the eviction and humiliation.
I have been reading this post from the beggining and have never said anything until now. I work with a real estate investment company and have many of my investors tell me that they have money in Pinnacle and they are not sleeping at night. The main reason I am posting is that I to have worked for bad invesmtent company in the past that has ruined many lives. I left the company and my heart goes out to the employee that just posted. I know how it feels because even as an ex-employee of any bad company you feel like the curtain was pulled over your head and you sleep little at night thinking about all the lives that have been ruined. It is extremly sad to see so many people trust something and then get dumped with no money left. My heart goes out to all of you and I wish you all the best.
Most business organizations operate on need-to-know basis - most staffers never get a cluse what is going on at higher level and other departments. People have their tightly-defined narrow and scripted roles. That is typical corporate culture. One should not assume that employees were in it or should have blown a whistle, therefore to blame. Pinnacle as we know it is hardly a year old and most of the staffers only few month - in time, some of them would found out and it would have come out eventually. So taking out anger at employees is misplaced. One could argue that how come none of the investors found it out until scam hit the media? Aren't investors supposed to do due dilligence before investing their life savings? That is how non-investors would look at us - we are not going to earn sympathies from non-investors just as employees as insiders are not going to earn any sympathies from investors - so lets be fair even if it is hard to do so.
Right on KERTY:
My thoughts exactly. In the end, the investors pay Pinnacle's back taxes (if there's any), fines, O'Neals lawyers, his monthly stipend which he's getting now and any other monies owed. I think the receivers deserve a piece of the pie as long as it's fair and equitable, although I wish a gov't agency paid for it...
I guess we just have to go after O'Neal, Hendree, Kunkel & others?, in a civil class action lawsuit afterward. Think about it. 2000 people paying $1000 each to pay a lawyer thats $2,000,000. Think a lawyer will take the case ONCE THE SEC IS FINISHED? and maybe a % of the take? The Pinnacle higher ups are going to be hounded by us for a very long time.
I realize it's difficult for plaintiffs to actually receive the money in a civil case but we can try and make their life a living hell in the process!
I am not an investor but watched Pinnacle for sometime, I considered investing but was ver leary for the simple fact that 99% of the time when something is too good to be true, IT IS! I know a few employees and I can say for fact that they had NO clue as they talked to me about the company and gave me info that was given to them. What stiked me is that if you lived in Georgia, you couldn't invest. Real Estate and Investing takes some know how and if you never dabbled in it, how could you pin point anything. I know some of them didn't even know what a Ponzi Scam is.
I agree that accounting, legal, etc. should have had some clue as this is what they do but as far as the other employees that were hired such as receptionist, security, or simple worker bees they came on board told what to do and this is what they did. They invested their time where they could have been working somewhere else. They were deceived as well just as an investor. Some of them may quit a job to work there by thinking it is a legitmate company. I don't think many people applying for a job research a company as thorough as an investor would. I have been reading this board for sometime and the red flags were thrown all around, but I also saw that many said, I will go ahead and do it and see what happens. Why was Pinnacle investigated in the first place, everybody on this board that invested stated that they have been paid, many posters shared information that they found on Pinnacle. So many were leary but did it anyway. I would never put my money in something I had doubts on especially investing life savings. The bottomline is that people saw opportunity and it looked too good to be passed on that many didn't listen to their gut feelings. I am in no way say that it was a investor fault, I am just trying to play devils advocate as some were angry with some employees and try to put the blame on others. The ads are just what it said "Ads", you pay for them to be in the magazine. Maybe there should be some kind of guidlines these magazines set up if it comes to something like this but you can't hold the magazines accountable unless they endorse it.
Don't get me wrong they need to do something about this because I seriously doubt that at this point the company has ever been legit otherwise the SEC wouldn't have stepped in. The investigation took place over sometime and if it still leaves questions open for some experts, it believe it is what it looks like.
I don't know much about how the SEC handles stuff but I guess my question would be, where is all the money and what they should do is try to pay out the investor some kind of money, maybe half for time being. Maybe create some kind of pool where investor would be paid back some money until this is cleared up.
Anywho, I hope that this will work out for the people that lost their money in this. I wonder if the SEC didn't stepped in if maybe more people would have gotten their investment back faster
The up side...if there's only 500 investors, this would mean a whole lot less to payout from Pinnacle's and O'neal's current assets.
When I initially started to invest back in Dec. 2005 I asked Chris Schaefer (my financial advisor at Pinn.) if my daughter who lived in Atlanta could invest as well. He told me nobody from GA. could invest because in their early days local people would pose as interested investors. Then Pinn. would take them out and show them the properties they were considering on buying. The potential investor then would buy the property out from under Pinn. before Pinn. had a chance to purchase it. He said this happened to them 3 times so they quit letting locals invest. In hindsight, this is all rediculous since I don't believe they've ever shown any investor the actual properties they were buying. I know they didn't show me anything when I was there. I even had my daughter play private eye before I gave Pinn. one cent. Since she worked in Buckhead just a few blocks from their offices, I had her go there on her lunch break and check out the facility and their offices to make sure they actually had a viable business location. It seemed legit so unfortunately I went ahead with my initial investment, and over time especially after I flew there myself and met up with all of them, I added alot more money.
After visiting Vegas a few times I know from personal experience how easy it becomes to be seduced by money and bet more than one should - usually resulting in losses.
I owe gratitiude to a couple early posters on this board who pointed out a simple truism to me when I started having urges to dump excessive money into Pinnacle;
"Don't invest more than you can afford to lose."
Thank God I took their advice.
The order does allow him to gain future employment, and he gets to keep that money. Maybe there's a chance that once this is over, and if he's found at fault, that there will be a judgement against him that could help funnel his future earnings back to people who lost out (but I don't really know how any of that works).
It would be good to know, even approximately, how many investors are out there. Receiver would know by now. 2000 to 500 is a huge swing and depending on an actual # of investors could play a big difference in our recovery of the principle.
Wow, I am sorry to hear the other side from the ex-employees. However I know that employees were paid way too much money and I think that clouded judgement a little. If you are being paid 80K-120K to be a CSR, be for real. We all know that in Atlanta at best may 40K.
I don't blame you guys for it because they say ""Don't look a gift horse in the mouth" I would have done the same thing. I think most here would have also. A $120K a year job that's really worth $25K I'll take it. It makes you not want to acknowlege the obvious. :mrgreen:
It is not clear if 2000 refers to number of accounts or number of investors - since many investors have multiple accounts, actual number of investors should be lot less than total number of accounts. I am not sure if all accounts belonging to an investor will be aggregated to calculate amount to that investor or each account will be treated independently to calculate amount due for that account.
I am posting for the first time...
I am also an investor who lost big time with Pinn(25K). I think as more Pinn investors realize that they are in trouble they will find their way to this site.
Has anyone been able to download that form yet? I visited the haysconsulting website and cannot find where they put that form!
I also think the guys at the "advisor" level had some idea as to what was going on. I hold Nick Rogge personally responsible.
I hold myself responsible also...I should have trusted others who warned me to take my money and put it in local real estate that I could keep my eyes on.
It would seem like the fairest way to divide up the money would be as follows:
For each investor, take the total amount they gave to Pinnacle and subtract out the total amount Pinnacle paid out to them. This difference is the investor's net loss. Some investors may have been paid back all (or even more than all) of their money. They have no net loss.
Once you know each investor's net loss, add all the net losses together. This result is the total amount investors have lost.
Then, total up how much money there is to give back to investors. Obviously, if it can cover all the net losses, then everyone would get their money back. If not, look at what percent of total losses it can pay. If it's 80%, then each investor should get 80% of their net losses back.
At least, to me, that seems like the fairest way to do it. You can't just take the total amount of money and divide it by a number of people or a number of accounts. Say one investor is out $100K and another $5K. The total sum divided by the total # of accounts/investors could be something like $30K. That second guy would be getting way more than he even lost.
Bigman...........where did you get those numbers?
I have a voice mail still from Nick Rogge on the wed, 9-20, before he quit or got fired........EVERYTHING IS FINE!!!!!!!!!!!!!........blah f'n blah.
Talked to Nick Fri 530 time in Ga on Sept 22, day before he quit got fired, RE ASSURED ME same program til spring where the Consulting was going to take place and everyone was getting cashed out....
I TOO HOLD NICK ROGGE RESPONSIBLE................
TN APPRENTICE........whoever has received hardship the most ( % of money returned, not returned ) will have to be the order of reinbursement.
This really really should not take that long..........hopefully Hays will not pile up motions upon motions.....
I think most of the financial consultants were privy to the dirty dealings that were going on. When I talked to Chris on the phone he always acted very positive and upbeat. When I met him in person, he seemed like someone who had alot of weight on his shoulders. Very quiet and withdrawn, not at all like I had envisioned him. Shortly after that he was gone! Maybe his conscience go the best of him. Nick Rogge was always full of positive feedback up to the last day I spoke with him. I think that was the last Thursday of Sept. Next day, he was gone too! I think they bailed while they still had the chance. When I was in Atlanta in April Chris told me himself that they had 1700 investors (not accts.) That's when the Newsweek article was ready to come out. He said when they reached 2000 investors they were going to stop taking new investors. Some type of law. Only about 1 month ago I spoke to a lady there after some friends of mine wanted to invest. My friends told me Pinn. said they weren't taking new investors anymore. That's when I called Pinn. to find out why. The lady I spoke with said they changed their minds and decided to continue taking new investors anyway. I thought they quit because they had their 2000 investors. She said that law mean't nothing because they (Pinn) were a privately held company and they currently had 2400 investors and were ok with taking more.
"scrambler", your last reply i do take as an insult on us personally. Maybe my post was not as articulate to your liking, but please know that I took the chance to inform investors.
LOOK!!!!!!
I was only there for a couple of weeks like I stated in the first post, but what about the individuals who have been there since February of 2006? They were working 12-13 hour days and on Saturdays. Okay, so they were recent grads. Do you know or care how they are feeling right about now? They worked hard for a man who gave them a bunch of lies, some actually did care about the investors and this is hard on them as well. Knowing that all those man hours were for what, a man that basically used them. So blame who you want, oneal, employees, government education? HA How about blaming yourself. If you claimed that all you saw were a bunch of individuals that skills were for fast food jobs, well you SHOULD HAVE went your gut.
However do not blame individuals who took positions that would better themselves. We have worries and issues also. Should we even put this on our resume? How do we explain ourselves to new employers? Can we even trust new employers? How about we do this, go to McDonalds since you feel that we are great at that! I went to college and graduated with honors. I took this job because I believed that this could be a great stepping stone in my corporate career. So now I am a bad person and not to mention ignorant person. Lets see, with my position I NEVER had to converse with an investor, so........Never mind.
Once again, my purpose was to give the investor some insight on the employees. I did not proof read the first post because I was doing as an impulse. Just wanted to give as much information as I could give before I lost my nerve.
I have nothing else to say.
Scout, I got them from two different consultants.
Someone cashed a check on Wed eve.. That is what I heard.
damnpinn...........
what was your job? how did you make? What did James drive? Nick Rogge drive?
Be realistic............we dont care about what the fu-k your going to put on your resume....or your next interview.
Alot easier to sell your self on your next position, than for us to get back our thousands we paid you with..............
WAKE UP!
Scout,
You really need to step back alittle before the administrator boots you out of this forum like he did to Bodhi. You can get your point across without capitalizing everything and say F***K, F****K, F****K , in every sentence. What difference does it make to anyone what Nick or James drove as vehicles?? I know a person who make over a million dollars a year and drives a VW. Who cares? Anyway that office complex is so huge unless one of the employees chased Nick or James out of the building to see what they drove, they would never find them as they left the area. Let's focus on the problem at hand and stop attacking people over things that don't matter.