Speaking of sorting your true supporters in life, I was just reading the front page of the Vancouver Sun newspaper today and there was this story about a court case involving a lottery winner and how he was defrauded out of millions of dollars from a couple that became very close friends with him after he won the jackpot.
In a nutshell, from what I read the person was a carpet cleaner who occasionally preformed services on the couple’s house. The carpet cleaner bumped into the husband one day and since the carpet cleaner looked up to the couple in some ways they began chatting with each other more frequently. As evident, he then won about $24,000,000 in a lottery and as a result he was congratulated by them and they became very close friends afterwards.
I guess we all know what happens next when people suddenly become like your best friend once they know you have money huh? I thought this incident was so conniving from a business and personal stance. The carpet cleaner was defrauded by the husband into investing millions of dollars into a company with a promise of some sort that he could sell it for like $20,000,000 afterwards and would give him a fifty percent share in it.
Not only was the value of the company well below what was claimed, but he did not share financial records of the company that was being purchased despite requests. Even though the lottery winner was weary over this, the person convinced him to trust him based on their apparent very close friendship and as a result millions of dollars were transferred over to him.
Shortly after, it was discovered that the money was mostly used for things such as paying off a mortgage for a house as well as buying a new car. To add to the sophistication about $100,000 was spent on lawyers to try and “cover up†the situation I guess you can say. Although, the person did learn the truth afterwards and took the couple to court. It was also mentioned that they would get jail time as well as a result of some of their conduct to continually mislead about the situation in various ways.
While I guess for one thing there is a business lesson in this on how you should rightfully be weary if someone uses friendship as a reason to simply trust their word for a business transaction, I was just thinking how it is so crazy on the lengths that some people will go to in an effort to try and defraud people that they have some kind of close relationship with for some kind of financial gain.
It’s stories like these that make certain precautions that people take, such as in my previous post, sound like the sensible thing to do. Even as a kid I’ve always heard the examples on how you should sit down and think where if you took away all of your items or belongings that make you popular how many “friends†would you truly have afterwards still?
As we get older we expect people to naturally value other people better as oppose to being like a child that always just wants more things without thinking about the welfare of others. Make no mistake about it, a lot of people are simply just out there to leach from you until there is nothing left to take and are willing to put on any type of mask to do so. To them, they haven’t realized yet that money isn’t everything in life.