All Forum Posts by: Jon P.

Marco faces up to 20 years in prison.  Hope justice is served here.  I know some people that invested significant amounts from their retirement accounts and now cannot retire...

@Sultan Ali wow man, you are way off here.  I would not recommend Norada, mid south or morris.  Have you been living under a rock over the past few years?  Norada raised $92M from investors and lost it all and have been under federal investigation for more than a year.  They have multiple lawsuits pending.  You need to read these threads: https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/960/topics/1196567-nora...

https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/70/topics/1198271-bewar...

@Abhinav Pande, sorry to break it to you, but there are no such thing as BRRR providers. If they tell you they are, that would be a red flag. The whole concept of BRRR is where you acquire a home below value and force appreciation through rehab. If someone else is selling you a "BRRR" and doing the work for you, they are going to capitalize on the upside. There's no way they are giving it to you. Sounds like what you are looking for is more of a trusted turnkey provider. I would stick to the two names you initially mentioned as they both have good reputations on BP for a long time.

@Tibor T. recommend avoiding them at all cost.  If you do any sort of research about them online, it's not good, and I've read things about possible multiple lawsuits.  Also, seems like they only work in one geographic area, PNW, which is one of the most expensive locations.  There is no easy switch here for flipping from a distance.  If anyone tells you they will do this for you, then they are the ones making the profits.  Why would they need you if they are doing all the work finding the deal, fixing it and selling it.  Sounds like that is actually 3 ways they are profiting.  Maybe you would be a private lender, which still has significant risk, as you are 100% relying on the team to return your capital and pay the interest.  However, with a good operator, lending funds is a decent option to earn a decent return on your capital.  Maybe that is a better fit for you.

I understand the blanket, public answer about being investment agnostic, educating people about risk, blah blah blah...

The reality is that many Tardus investors have already commented that their coach actually recommended Norada as the best investment option along with the owners doing webinars with Marco promoting his investments...

Still no communication or update from Marco even though we were all told more info would come out.  Looks like multiple people have already filed lawsuits and reported to SEC.  We will see where this goes.  If Marco was truly sincere about trying to turn the ship around, he would at least communicate with the people that he & his sales team convinced to cash in their entire retirement savings to invest in his "bulletproof" investment opportunities...

Recent items that are being uncovered:

-Money was continued to be raised right up until the public notice to stop interest payments

-Many people that invested recently either received only 1 or 0 payments prior to notice

-The recent notes changed the venue from WY to TX, and the new TX contract doesn't allow for litigation and forces arbitration, not sure what to think about that, but seemed like it was done in anticipation for this

-Still no transparency or communication from Marco about what is actually happening or plan moving forward

-It appears that norada banking information was immediately changed when the notice was sent out and some of the last interest payments bounced

I share this information to encourage others that have information to also share it so we can all be more educated as no one is receiving any updates or information from norada.  I encourage you to speak up.  You don't have to pay attention to comments on this thread that bother you, but you should speak up and share information so we can all be more educated.  There are some very good points on this thread from many people that I've learned from.

I believe @Dewayne C. is referring to Nate Hall.  I am familiar with Michael Johnson.  Both are real estate advisors that sold real estate, but also sold these investments.

Agreed on Eddie Wilson, disagree on Andrew Cordle and I know others share my same viewpoint.  Also concerns about CFO charged and banned by SEC previously.  It only takes one bad apple to ruin the bunch.

My recommendation for anyone in this mess is to simply educate yourself as much as possible right now to ultimately make an informed decision on how you proceed.  Yes, that means consulting with counsel and government agencies to get all of their opinions before deciding on what to do.  The more educated we all can be about our money, investments and solutions to challenges like this, the better the outcome.

@Jay Hinrichs you sound like quite an optimist, which is good in some cases.  I'm sure if you invested money with Norada you may feel differently.  I'm sure you wouldn't have if you were presented with this strange business plan.

I consider myself more of a realist.  If even a fraction of the things discussed on this thread are remotely accurate, then the outlook is not good for Norada or investors.

Based on how things have evolved with the conversion to equity in a seemingly failing business and no communication about how Norada is going to turn this around, it leaves little hope for me to see how any water is left in the glass...

I don't view this a syndication, at least in terms of what most of us are used to in regards to a syndication in a true real estate project that is backed by a physical asset.  This appears to be more of investing in pure speculation of an unproven business model.  It's unfortunate, but I do think there was a high degree of trust people instilled in Norada because they historically invested in real estate, and then went 180 degrees with this strange offering.  I do believe there to be a large degree misrepresentation and miscommunication from how these offerings were presented to people.  Sure, they can have everything on paper done correctly (which I don't think is the case), but the way this was marketed, pitched and sold to people also needs to be handled correctly as well.  We've already seen in the response from @Dewayne C. that the sales people pushed this hard ignoring facts about accreditation, pushing investing from retirement accounts and likely not disclosing necessary information or using high pressure sales tactics, which would also be inappropriate.  I'm curious how much the sales reps got paid for each investment made... 

@Dave Hagen brought up a very good point.  We know the people selling this investment to each investor was the same real estate sales team at Norada.  I don't think these people are licensed to sell real estate or securities, which is an issue by itself, but that could have misled people to believe that the same people selling real estate in the past are selling them on another opportunity involved in RE.  I do think that the cross over involvement could lead to some assets or funds being garnished from the other businesses for investors that lost money in norada capital management because of this.  Of course, time will tell as things play out with SEC investigations, etc.

There are a ton of people that are in a really bad position from this that are posting on BP seeking guidance.  It would be nice to see some actual concrete advice from industry experts on what options people may have if this investment was not handled appropriately (which seems to be the case) vs just shaming people saying "you're stupid for investing in this, live and learn." 

@Jay Hinrichs not sure there is any coming out of this for Norada Capital Management.  That seems like a completely failed business venture that is beyond saving.  From what I understand, it was lost a while ago, but investors were not given the heads up about concerns on the investments until much later...  Yet they still continued to raise funds for NCM even though it was a losing venture.  My guess is that it's a lost cause with no recovery, and has been that way for a while.  Not sure how you see any situation where investors come out of this in a positive way with any recovery?  It clearly seems like their attention is on their other businesses that are still profitable, and why wouldn't they be?  They have the RE side and they are still raising money from investors for "another business" that is some mastermind or something.  Just seems like they are letting this one go and have the equity conversion clause as a CYA for losing capital in nonsense investments.  I don't like giving anyone false hope and recommending they don't seek legal guidance when they 100% should in this scenario!  And they should speak with government authorities as well.  If wrongdoing is identified, maybe these other profitable businesses Norada is still operating would be forced to pay investors back with those funds/assets.  Why would they?

@Don Konipol shared the most black and white feedback on this whole thread about the accreditation question.  We know this was filed as a 506C (as it's public information) where Don showed us what is required for the sponsor to do.  We can already see from many responses on here that no effort was put into accreditation verification, and possibly even encouraged people to invest after learning they are not accredited.  Certainly not appropriate per the SEC standards Don mentioned.

I'm not super versed in this area, but is this clause to convert investments to equity normal?  Especially without approval from anyone?  I've never heard of anything like that before and I'm not sure how common it is?  To me, it seems like a strong protection clause like this would be used when someone is not confident at all about performance...or worse...plans to fail...???

Time will tell how all this turns out, but I really don't see how there is any positive outcome for money invested in Norada Capital Management when you look at what they invested in and learn more about performance.  They are not going to sink their other businesses to try to bail out NCM, nor can they mix funds.  

Please do not discourage people from seeking legal guidance or reporting to government agencies if they feel anything was handled inappropriately.  That is really doing them a disservice.  They most certainly should seek legal opinions and consult with government agencies.

Massive loss of accrued interest and principal????

Have you seen what the funds were invested in?  The money is already gone in failed business ventures, and really bad ventures for that matter.  There is no positive outcome for anyone here.  People are in a very bad position with Norada and there needs to be some level of accountability for parties involved.

It is quite clear that there is a tremendous amount of things that need to be investigated further to include:

-Improper disclosures and handling of investors capital 

-Conflicting information about accreditation requirements for investors

-Questions around the legality and legitimacy of the actual note documents

-Predatory sales and marketing tactics with false information provided to investors about the investments, returns, etc.

-The fact they are still aggressively raising money with an advertised higher return than before (screams Ponzi & desperation)

-Unlicensed individuals actually selling the investments and receiving commission for it (and other companies referring clients for a fee likely)

-CFO previously convicted of fraudulent activities and banned by SEC from participation with anything related to this type of activity

The list goes on and on.  So regardless whether or not they can actually convert funds to equity taking away all control of people's money, there is still a ton here that needs to be investigated.  Not to mention that equity is worthless in a company that is not worth anything... 

There is no way this doesn't turn into a large lawsuit and investigation based on the seemingly hundreds of people that invested in this.