Anonyc
No one has replied to my posting yet. But I do see we are making a much higher return on our Frozen money, it seems Mr. Hays switched bank accounts. Nice Job Mr. Hays. I wonder if it is possible to find the highest yielding account. Could we be of any help with that Mr. Hays?
I feel really bad for everyone. I lost money as well. However, I feel destiny has brought us together. If we work together as a team we can accomplish our goal as investors. I believe everyone whom invested is a hard working American, we value our time as well as other people’s time, and we do no harm to others and expect others not to do harm to us. Well we can cry, or work together, I myself am willing to work together. My name is on the list that we are compiling.
I wonder when this is all over, if Mr. Hays’ Company offers services to unite investors like us. I believe destiny brought him into our lives as well.
Best of Luck,
Sammy
Vince,
I appreciate you sharing what you have found. Of course I Will be filing the claim peprwork from Hays' website, and before I release that into the universe I must believe that it is going to the right place.
You raise a good question about filing a suit independently of the SEC. I do not have a lawyer and want to avoid throwing good money after bad.
Everything on Hays website indicates we are in good hands. All the posts on this forum also indicate that ohters believe we are in good hands. Call me cynical, but everything I read and heard about PDP also indicated a solid company.
I know that being garded is not a productive way to resolve a problem. Itruly want everyone to know that once I get a comfort level with this whole thing I will drop the lack of faith.
Tommr
It appears that things have changed into a positive bias. That is certainly great news. While it may take a while for the payouts, at least Mr. Hays and his company took immediate action which seems to be fortunate for everyone. Hopefully, the return of funds will approach the aggregate principal and lost funds will be kept to a minimum...... Good job Mr. Hays.
While I do appreciate the efforts of the receivers, it makes me sick to my stomach to learn the we will recover much less than 100% of our principle. I can understand giving up all of the 'promised' returns, but and huge cut on our principle? I'm so sick of this. :protest:
well, I certainly dont want to wait a year to get my money back(However that will probably be the case) , but I'd be willing to bet that we will not see any of our money until Spring. Seeing how the deadline to file a claim is Dec 31. Common sense tells me that we'll have to wait at least that long, plus whatever time it takes to gather up all those claim forms and analyze&verify them, probably another 30 days.
Maybe we could get paid fron the cash in the bank accounts first and then get paid from the proceeds from the real estate later.
Or here is a another idea...
Maybe we could all get partial or joint ownership of all of the real estate that pinnacle owned. Since they were all purchased with our money, and as we know most real estate appreciates in value over time. Might be beneficial to all of us later on down the road instead of liquidating them now at pennies on the dollar. Just a thought.
Vince
Some of the properties are so overvalued it makes you wonder who did the appraisal. Properly done appraisals would show comps that were from the same neighborhood, same type of structure, etc. We would be holding these properties for years to get our money back out of them. Also, do you want to deal with vagrants, vandalism, and the like? Remember many are vacant. No thanks.
Pinnacle undoubtedly had an in-house appraiser...
Investor 13 -- I share your distress on this count. It seems to me that we should recover as much of our total principles as possible. Whatever we lose can be regarded as our fee to the investigators who've sheilded us from complete loss.
We're all antsy for an estimate of "when?" and "how much?" But in many ways, even though these last three weeks have been torture, we've been relatively lucky: the investigation is proceeding at a good clip and substantial funds have been claimed. I've known of other cases where people took off and were never found.
What do people think O'Neal was planning, based on the evidence we now have? Do you think he was going to vanish suddenly, or do you think he was going to keep playing this game a while longer? What about this Pinnacle Consulting biz, what WAS that? A big cover? A front for a new scheme? This is still vexing. I hardly feel sorry for this guy, but I do not envy him. He is one beached whale.
He obviously doesn't know the first thing about business or crime.. The fact that he was looking into long-term leases across the country says that he was looking a ways down the road. If he wanted to disappear, he wouldn' t have been looking into all of that sort of thing, he'd have been stashing money away. O'Neal doesn't have a lick of sense. He had all that money and not a clue of what to do with it!! He didn't reailize that his business was unsustainable.. By putting his ad campaign out there for everyone to see, he may as well have called up the SEC himself. He was spending money faster than it was coming in: ads, leases, Maserati, etc, etc... He couldn't even figure out to put $14MM into an account that made any interest. He's not a businessman, he's not even a good criminal! He's just a moron who ripped off a lot of people. Even with all of that money, he couldn't find any decent Real Estate ventures! Every property that he had was a pile of crap!
We've been thanking SEC and the Receiver for everything so far (and they are due plenty!). But it was Barry Minkow (ex-felon gone straight, pastor, PI) with the Fraud Institute that picked up this fraud and fast-tracked a report to the SEC because he pegged it as a case of fraud that was going to hurt/ruin people on a massive scale if it wasn't stopped immediately. I think we owe a huge debt of gratitute to Barry for stopping it before it really got out of control! Once they branched out ot all the other cities, our money would have vanished! Pinnacle Consulting... Consult what??
California, I didn't know that about Barry Minkow. Thanks for being so viligant, Barry, you saved us a lot of money and more pain.
Imagine if this scheme had gone on a few more months or years...
:violin:
But I could not help but wonder if SEC had left Pinnacle alone until he phased out PDP - would the majority of us receive our principle and MAYBE at least one return??? I realize that life can be cruel with "what if's" and also I do realize that it could have been worse and all of that 14.4M would have been wiped out. Guess we'll never know.
By the way, does anybody know what became of Catherine Wageuspack? She seemed to be on the top of everything and the only competent person I ever spoke on the phone with at Pinnacle.
Your thoughts?
You know, Beebee, I had the same thought -- that we might have actually gotten our principals if Pinnacle had been left to their own devices. Either that, or we would have suffered complete loss and breakdown.
I'm still confused about the "logic" behind all this. If California is right, and O'Neal did not stash money away and plan to split, then how WAS he planning to pay everyone off before phasing the business out? THAT's a question!
Any thoughts, speculations?
Maybe O'Neal was relying on $150K per investor in the "Pinnacle Consulting" to finish off the PDP and use the existing properties he purchased to pursue those investors to set their businesses on one of those properties. I m speculating here.....
After reading the interim report, the only conclusion I could make as to O'Neal's intentions was filing for Chapter 11 for PDP. He was going to squander whatever little money was left on corporate Jet, etc. and leave investors holding the bag - happens everyday even in honest business ventures. Everything else he did defies logic - it does not look like he was going to run with the Maserati and the house he bought for himself with our money - I think he was just going to play hard ball with us and not return the principal and file for bankrupcy. I just hope that at least one of the investors was the "Tony Soprano" type that will get his hands on O'Neal one of these days and nothing will be left of him.
The only logical thing for O'Neal to do would have been to file bancruptcy . If he hadn't planned to shut down the Atlanta operation, the the returns would eventually have gone to every 6 months to slow done the paybacks. Once he decided (or the SEC decided for him) to close the Atlanta offices, they were stalling our returns. Simply put, there WASN'T and still ISN'T enough $$ to pay all of us back our principle let alone the 25% interest on top of that. His smartest move (short of fleeing and being a fugitive forever) would be to ride it out till the "jig is up" and then file for Chapter 11 bancruptcy. Yeah, if he was any smarter, he would at least have gained interest on such a huge amt. of money. Alot of us could live for a year on what he could have been getting a month in interest. There probably is alot of us who are smarter, more educated, and think we have more common sense than G. O'Neal. Well, I've been humbled! The thing Pinn. had was the facade of a profitable, promising, business and of course the "WOW" factor to seal the deal!
I know it wont help any with this PDP but thought it may would help others for future investments.
When I was reflecting through my experience with PDP, I must admit there were few signs that I overlooked.
For instance, why would a company spend lavishly on brochures, give away nice pens, etc. and yet be using yahoo.com as their email system. A lot of sophiscated businesses would have their own server. It'd be more credible if PDP had their own email system such as [email protected] something like that.
Perhaps others could share few signs they noticed that would help us to be on the look out for future investment decision making.
Guess we all have to live and learn. Life moves on and this shall too.
Here is the link to the 32 page document Barry Minkow produced regarding Pinnacle. Very interesting. Thank you Barry!
http://www.frauddiscovery.net/FDI_Pinnacle-Master.pdf
My question is the same as BeeBee: Has anyone else's assets been frozen who's connected in any shape form or fashion with this scam? Oneal's girlfriend drives around in a brand new Benz and has a diamond engagement ring the size of a dime and lord knows how much money he's probably stashed with and through her according to one of the employees. Then there's all these high level executies as PDP who was clearly aware of all of this and that benefited handsomely from taking advantage of us?
Again with Mr. Receiver, could you please make is CLEAR to us if you are investigating these other people associated with this MESS and ANYONE who's benefited from taking advantage of US, the investors?
The Receiver's intial report says that they are looking into other third party involvement that could substancially add to the Pinnacle Estate that is now frozen. Sounds like they're going to dig deep. The grilfriend may be harder to peg though unless they can prove that she had direct involvement.
My understanding is that they are investigating O'Neal's fiance...whether or not they have frozen her assets I'm not sure. But I agree, other higher ups should have their assets frozen and I would even go further and freeze the assets of all of the employees. I think anyone working for Pinnacle should have their future earnings garnished until our principal is paid back in full. This is not an investment gone bad...it's fraud....and they should do time or pay.
I understand that the Receiver has located an additional property worth $3million that is not inlcuded in the interim report....
also, we are getting ready a site for Pinnacle investors to sign up for a class action lawsuit after the SEC investigation is complete. This is replacing the spreadsheet and is more secure. I have sent a group email (blind carbon copy)to all on the spreadsheet to fill in their info....
I will post the new site on this blog in the next day or so...
O'neal is recieving $12k each month for living expenses! With WHAT MONEY????? If they have probale cause for a crime, why isn't he in jail,instead allowing him to pay his bills and hide more money!! I might be speculating but I'm out $20K! I'm LIVID
My guess is that it was a financial decision. They give him the living expenses to make it easier for him to consent to the decree. If he had appealed the court order there would have been a lot more delay and legal expense. Both would have eaten up a lot of money. Remember that he is legally entitled to the presumption of innocence until proven guilty by a jury trial. By getting him to consent, rather than forcing a court battle, a lot of money has probably been saved. Look at how much he was about to spend on new headquarters, corporate jet, etc...