This Couple Might Lose Their Home Because Of A Fake Prize Win | Ep 71

James: What would you do if you were talking to a couple who is facing foreclosure because they were taken for a ride with a publisher's clearinghouse scam. We're gonna talk about that today on the Furlo Capital Real Estate Podcast 'cause that's what I did today. No, and our mission is to dive into the intricacies of passive real estate investing.

To, to help people invest wisely in both properties and people and to not get taken advantage of by horrific scams.

Jessi: Wow.

James: Yes. And so through doing that, we can help people build their wealth Yes. And improve housing. So I'm James and this is my wife, Jessi. You are so right.

Jessi: He, he told me I was gonna be so intrigued by this hook, and I am like, what?

Yeah. Okay. I hate scams, by the way. Mm-hmm. I, I regularly get, this one's bad. This one's bad. I like, is this a thing for everybody? Like the regular text, like, you didn't pay, you know, this particular text thing, click here and we can help. Or, this is a deck collection service get so much worse. It's so much worse all the time.

I get emails that are like, they try to use a name of someone in my contacts.

James: Mm.

Jessi: This is worse than that.

James: Okay. So so part of what we do is, so we, we advertise. Yeah.

Jessi: For people.

James: And then what we also do is we call on like foreclosure

Jessi: types of like, like you advertise for to buy Yes.

James: Different properties.

Yes. We, yes. Sorry. Yes. We advertise to buy properties and we get leads that way. Sure. And, and then what we also do is we will reach out to particular people. Like for example, there's a pre foreclosure list.

Jessi: Mm-hmm.

James: We'll call people on it and be like, Hey, I saw you're on the list. How can we help?

Jessi: Yeah.

James: So that was, that's the appointment that we had today was with this lady who had, she's on a pretty big lot.

Decent house and she's facing pre foreclosure right now. And so we started talking to her story or you know, started learning about her story.

Jessi: Yeah. Asking questions.

James: And and usually what we do is we end up, we go to someone's house and, and we just sit down at the kitchen table. Like we don't actually usually take a tour to the place.

Mm-hmm. Sometimes we'll do at the very end, kind of depending on where the conversation goes. Sure. But in this case, has it been a year, I think it was six months. They received a notice that they had won the million dollar prize from the publisher's Clearinghouse.

Jessi: Okay.

James: And she got super excited. But here's the deal, right?

When you win a million dollars and you get cars and other free stuff mm-hmm. What they tell you is you're going to have to pay the taxes on those gifts.

Jessi: Right.

James: Because that's, you know, whatever, how that works. And they're like, oh yeah, that sounds familiar. I remember the whole Oprah scandal. Sure. They give everyone a free car and then it turned out they all owe taxes on the cars.

Jessi: Yeah.

James: Well, super expensive. So what they say is like, you just need to prepay the taxes and then we'll send you the prizes and the money. Oh. And so they went to Walmart and they got the gift cards and they sent them, they

Jessi: prepaid.

James: Yes. 10% of their million dollar prize.

Jessi: No,

James: they emptied their retirement accounts, they sold other vehicles and stuff.

She stopped paying her mortgage, stopped paying her car loan, stopped paying her electricity bill

Jessi: to, to prepay this. Does that even mathematically make sense? Like if you were. Okay. They've living with electricity

James: for over 20 days. Oh my gosh.

Jessi: Okay. I'm just, this is like mind boggling to me. Like I'm just, I'm trying to do the mental math.

If I won a million dollars Uhhuh and I'm gonna prepay mm-hmm. All of this. Taxes. Okay. Which, which is it a hundred thousand dollars is not

James: to the, not to the IRS,

Jessi: no, to this, to this company. Uhhuh, apparently, who's gonna gimme the prizes.

James: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jessi: So I'm paying them a hundred thousand dollars uhhuh, and then theoretically

James: Uhhuh,

Jessi: they're gonna give me $900,000

James: Uhhuh.

Well, they give you the full million.

Jessi: Right. But I, so you get it back, I got the.

Okay. I, I mean, I guess if that is actually what was gonna happen, but I'm, I'm just like, who in their right mind, like

James: I know

Jessi: like pays the taxes to. The game show. It was a very interesting

James: conversation. So

Jessi: interesting.

James: The, so there's a lady, she owns the house. She used to be married, husband passed away.

Mm-hmm. And now she has a boyfriend who they met online, started dating. Mm-hmm. I'm pretty sure he lives there now. Okay. But it's not his house. He's not on anything. She, they both, they both make about a couple grand a month. Okay. So 4,000 total on a fixed income like combination of social security. So we're talking that.

Okay. And interesting. Yeah. And so we were talking with her and I mean, it was like, so her car. It's going to be repossessed at the end of the month. They've already taken her car. It's already in the impound. She doesn't have it anymore.

Jessi: Yeah.

James: And she owes like three grand on the car she owes. It's like 25,000 total is what She's in the hole.

Okay. It's actually not that much, but her credit's not totally trashy. Right. And she's got a pile of equity in this house.

Jessi: Yeah,

James: like a, it's. It's at least a hundred thousand. If not

Jessi: so why does 50,000, she just borrow against the equity? Her

James: credit's trashed.

Jessi: Oh, oh. The bank won't allow her to borrow.

James: Well, she's been too embarrassed by the entire situation to even call and ask because she's like, she's also been in the mindset of like, well, just a little bit longer and all my problems will be solved.

Why would she call a bank and ask for a short term loan when like in a little bit, she's gonna have a million dollars

Jessi: Wait, she still thinks she's gonna get the million dollars.

James: So I was talking with her. And they, in three days or in two days, the price for her to get her car back is going to essentially go up by 30%.

Mm-hmm. And then by the end of the month, it's gone. It's, she's like, if I could just get my car back, that would be great. I was like, okay, well when do you guys get your next check? And she was like, well, like I get paid the third Wednesday of the month. He gets paid on the ninth. And, and I was like, third Wednesday of the month I went, so that was last Wednesday.

Mm-hmm.

Jessi: And

James: she goes, yep, I okay. And she goes, and the money's totally gone. And I was like, oh, where too? She goes. Publisher's clearinghouse. Oh my gosh. She's still sending the money. She sent the money last week, and I think what finally happened was for whatever reason, something clicked in her head right before we called her or she went, I think this might be a scam.

Jessi: Oh my gosh.

James: She's been living with a lot without electricity for three weeks. Oh

Jessi: my gosh. She'd been without

James: electricity for two weeks and sent them money.

Jessi: Oh my gosh, that's so incredibly

James: so. So here's, here's the other part. So she's like, I think I need to do something. Like, I don't think this is gonna happen.

Yeah. But she's still like, I don't think this is actually real anymore. She's like, no one's ever come to our house, that kind of thing. The boyfriend, he's like, he's still like, oh, no, no, no, no. Like. In a couple days we're gonna go to the bank and they're gonna meet us there. And, 'cause we decided to do a private thing, not a public thing, so we didn't want ourselves on television, so we just gotta go to the bank and meet them there.

Mm-hmm. And they're gonna have all the funds and we're gonna be good to go in like a couple of days. Mm-hmm. And so he's still, I mean like I got to a point at the end of the conversation I went, so lemme make sure like if you show up to the bank in a couple days and they're not there, like,

Jessi: yeah,

James: are you done?

And he was like, probably. Probably interesting. He's still in the like, like he's like, we're so close. Like, and apparently they did send him each of them like a $5,000 check, which I'm like, oh yeah, classic Ponzi scheme move. Give him a little bit of a taste to keep it coming. But it was written so poorly, like one of the banks wouldn't even deposit it.

Like, dude, this is clearly a scam. We're not gonna participate in this. Right. Her bank did, but then they came back like four days later like, Hey, we just need like $3,500 more. And it was just like, and she gave it back.

Jessi: Yeah. Wow. Yeah.

James: So

Jessi: that's

James: awful. We're sitting at, we're sitting at this table talking. Her sister was there.

She was willing to tell her sister, she's trying to keep it a secret from the rest of the family. 'cause she's, you know, embarrassed. Embarrassed, yeah. Or whatever. Or doesn't want them to know about their impending millions, you know, it's kind of a combination of the two. Sure. So sister knew and she was definitely like.

I wanna listen to what you guys have to say. Mm-hmm. I was like, yeah, a hundred percent. So, like for us, right? How do you walk into this situation and have the right posture, right. Because our whole thing is like, we like to buy properties and,

Jessi: and you, you didn't know this going into,

James: My partner Lawrence, he knew, he knew some of it and he briefs me a little bit about it, but like, he just don't like, interesting.

You don't know

Jessi: all the ins and outs until you really sit down and have the conversation. Yeah.

James: And so we decided, so oftentimes when we talk to people in foreclosure, our. What we do, I guess, is we don't instantly go, well, we could buy your house for cash and keep money quick. You just listen. Instead, what we say is like, well, we have 12 different options that we can work you through.

Mm-hmm. Let's just see which ones are even a fit. Mm-hmm. But we start with step one is like, we gotta figure out what's the situation here? How much do you owe? What's your income? Like, what's your actual situation? 'cause that will kind of determine Yeah. What, which route we can do, which route we can go.

Mm-hmm. You know? And what's the timing? Right? When's this, all this stuff due? Mm-hmm. The, the auction for her place is the end of June. Okay. It's like all

Jessi: a little time, little bit of time. A little time. Time, little bit of time.

James: And so after we like, we went through all the documents and we figured it out and we like kind of did the math.

We were like, okay, look like, yes. The way that we earn money is we buy homes. Reasonable price for what they're actually worth. Mm-hmm. And then we fix 'em up, resell 'em. That's how we make money. Yeah. But there are a bunch of other options and I, and a total and a win for me is if one of these other options work, we just want you to avoid foreclosure, whatever that looks like.

She's like, well, I wanna stay in my house. I don't wanna sell. She's like, cool. So in my head, I'm instantly like, well, I'm not gonna make a pitch to the buy the place. Mm-hmm. She doesn't want that. And so I was like, all right, number one, do you have any family or friends who'd be willing to loan you money?

She's like, no, I'm not telling anybody. So, no. There we go. We then went through a couple other options. One of them is like, have you called your bank to ask about a loan modification? Mm-hmm. Like, maybe they'll change stuff. She goes, no, I haven't called them. I'm like, all right, well let's go find their phone number.

So we found it and we're like, it's a little bit tricky once you get into the pre foreclosure process, 'cause there's like four different phone numbers. Try all of these and you might have to stay on hold for an hour. Do it. Yeah. I've been there. It takes a while.

Jessi: Yeah.

James: And I was like, and this number here that it says this is not the real number.

'cause there are a bunch of fees and other stuff that has now been like, you gotta add 20% on top of this. Like, that's kind of how that works. She's like, okay, that's good to know. So what

Jessi: you actually. Trying to get your bank to do at that point.

James: Say, gimme, forbearance, gimme a little bit to do it, or essentially change the, like, take the part that I owe and just tack it on the end of the loan.

Charge me for a, oh, just

Jessi: make a bigger something mortgage.

James: Her situation though, is kind of a weird one, right? 'cause it's not like, Hey, I temporarily lost my job and I just need time to catch up.

Jessi: Right? It's

James: like I've been giving my money away to scammers,

Jessi: right? So I

James: don't know how they react to it, but so, but you gotta have that phone.

And like for us, I'm like, I need to demonstrate, like I care more about your outcome Yeah. Than me making money. This is something that you can do that. I don't earn anything from, but you should do it.

Jessi: If they stopped giving money to the scammers, would they theoretically be able to afford the mortgage payment?

A

James: hundred percent Easy,

Jessi: because they were Yep. Doing that before everything.

James: Yeah. All of their monthly obligations are, let's see, the mortgage is like 1200. Electricity's like 500 bucks a month. That's a, that's a lot.

Jessi: So if she called the bank and explained what was happening and was like, Hey, I'm, I'm not, I, I was scammed.

I was giving money to this. I'm not doing that anymore. Here's my proof of income. Here's how much I'm making. I can make the payments. They, in

James: theory, they could. Yeah.

Jessi: They could say, okay,

James: yes, cool.

Jessi: Let's get back on track. Yes.

James: The problem. Yes. Yes. Potentially. 'cause it's

Jessi: not great for the, for them to foreclose either.

Yeah. They don't

James: want to. Yeah. And if she started making payments, they'd probably be like, okay, all right. Yeah, let's talk.

Jessi: Interesting.

James: Probably there's some government programs

Jessi: mm-hmm.

James: I, we give her those contact, we're like, here's, here's the phone number. Mm-hmm. To call for this one. That can help with housing situations.

Mm-hmm. We walked through a couple others where we were like, you know, there's, you can try to refinance, you can sell your home, you know, that kind of stuff. And she's like, I don't wanna sell. I'm like, all right, no problem. Those are options. And so we, that was how we ultimately that was where we got to in this conversation.

And we could tell, we, we hit a good note. 'cause halfway through her sister was like, all right, I'm gonna go outside and do something else. Like, okay, good. She's, she's decided we're cool. And, and that was like. So we're like, yeah, that's what we want. And, and so the way that we've gave our final thing, we're like, look, call your bank first.

Call this housing program, call all the different banking sources. Mm-hmm. See if you can get an extension on this. Yeah. Like that's the hope, right? You got about a month to pull this off. I went, if you hit June and it still doesn't look like anything's gonna move forward on this, you're still giving your money away.

I was like, give us a call. We could be your backstop. Mm-hmm. Because if you hit June 25th. They'll foreclose and you will lose everything.

Jessi: Yeah,

James: I know you got a ton of equity sitting in this house. It's all going to go away. If you call us, you're at least gonna get some of the cash back. We can't give you all of your equity 'cause that's just not how our business model works.

But we can close quickly. You'll at least walk away with something.

Jessi: Mm-hmm. In her

James: case, it's probably gonna be like 40 grand.

Jessi: Yeah.

James: Which is better than nothing. Than nothing. You'd have to find a new place to live, which we'd be like, we could give you time to move. You know, that kind of stuff. And that was how we, it's we said, we're your backup.

Interesting. Hopefully you don't need it. We gotta to the end conversation. She's like, well, like, appreciate your help. Like, how much do I owe you for this? We're like, nothing. Nothing. That's not how we, that's not how we make money. We make

Jessi: our money if we Yeah. Did a deal with you. We told her, we

James: talked to a lot of people where it just doesn't end up happening and I, I'm totally okay with that.

If they come up with another solution. Mm-hmm. Like that's great.

Jessi: Yeah.

James: If it was me, I'd be like, man, swallow your pride. Talk to family and friends. You're about to lose your house.

Jessi: Right. Over

James: 25 grand.

Jessi: Yeah. It's like just, but I

James: get it. It's this. This is the hardest part of the job is talking about foreclosure people.

'cause it's usually not just about the money. There's some other stuff going on there. Yeah.

Jessi: They got there

James: and like, yeah. He was still like, I don't know man. We'll see.

Jessi: Oh, at

James: one point he was like, search 'em online. Look 'em up. I didn't, it was just like, first one was like LinkedIn profile for the guy doing it.

Mm-hmm.

Jessi: And it

James: was like, scam, scam, scam, scam, scam. And he was like, yeah, keep scrolling. You'll see eventually. Mm. I was like, I'm pretty sure I've seen enough. But yeah. And, and she was. Their relationship was very contentious as well. Which, interesting. Which I was like, yeah, man, I get it. Like this is a stressful time.

Right. But we're both like, ah, why? Why are they hanging out together? Yeah. Outside of, yeah.

Jessi: It's messy. She can't

James: actually afford that house on her own income anymore. Mm-hmm. And she needs someone else there to help pay for it all. And he's willing to be that guy, but, oh my gosh.

Jessi: Yeah. That's messy.

James: It was. It was hard and

Jessi: sad.

James: I, I can sleep well at night knowing that we did what we could. Right. At one point in time she was like, I just want my car back. And, and it was like, and here's where other stuff happens, where they're like, she's got this awesome car. It's worth like 30, $40,000 and she's gonna lose it because she, like, she, she only owes three grand on, like, that's what she's behind by.

She really gonna lose all that over three grand. Like, and it's like she has two days to figure it out. And, and then, or like it tax on another like 800 to it. Mm-hmm. And, and like I was like, okay, well let's do the math here. I looked it up and well, your existing mortgage balance on this is like a little over $13,000.

Like, and you owe 3000 right away. And I'm pretty sure that three's part of that 13. But anyways. So then I was like, all right, well let's look up the car. Let's see how much it's actually worth. So I went to Kelly Blue Book. Mm-hmm. It's like, tell me all the stats. We're pushing it in and they're telling me all about it.

It's like, it's an awesome, it's an XLT, whatever. I get there and it's like 16,000. He was like, that can't be right. Well, I'm pretty sure it is. And and so I was like, yeah, you don't have any. And so I told him straight up, I was like, you just don't have any equity in the car. Mm-hmm. Like if it was generally a $30,000 vehicle.

Mm-hmm. And, and I knew like, Hey, if I gave you a loan for three grand, then I could put a second on this car. I was like, sure, I'd go for it. But like, there's no equity here. Right. Especially when you think about transaction costs. And I guarantee you it's not free to get it outta the impound.

Jessi: Yep.

James: And so it's, I was just, it's, those are hard conversations.

We're like, man, you gonna lose your car?

Jessi: I, there's so much of that too, that's like the average person doesn't really understand A, how the, the scam is working. Oh, yeah. B, how impounding and foreclosure actually works. Yeah. And what they have to do in order to mitigate it. And like, I, that's just so complicated and hard.

I know. Like they get in the spot where they're just like, I don't even know how to solve this.

James: Yeah.

Jessi: You know, like, that's crazy.

James: Yeah.

Jessi: Ugh. I hate scammers.

James: Oh, it was, this one's a bad one. So

Jessi: bad.

James: Milked them for, that's

Jessi: awful.

James: Like they drained their retirement accounts to do this.

Jessi: And you know, she's not the only one.

James: Oh,

Jessi: that's terrible.

James: It's horrible. Wow. Going into foreclosure, like, what's a bank to do? How do you, they can't be like, yeah, that's a bummer, man. That happens.

Jessi: Right? Well, the, that's not the bank's role

James: I know to,

Jessi: I know, you know, warn people or,

James: so I was talking not to do scams, so I was brainstorming an idea, I'm gonna workshop this.

It's two in a row, I'm workshopping

Jessi: Ooh.

James: I was like, man, they're genuinely sitting on, on a pile of equity for this house. Mm-hmm. And they wanna stay there. It's 25 grand. I was like, man, what if you went like, okay, what if I became the equivalent of a hard money lender and went, I'll give you a loan for $25,000.

You are gonna pay 12% interest. Mm-hmm. And you're gonna pay three points upfront. And I'm gonna be backed. I'm gonna be in a second position on the house, but. You get to keep your house. You get to keep your house, you're out of all the other stuff. You can start to build your credit back and eventually you can pay me back, you know?

And it's like there'll be a balloon payment due in a couple years that you gotta save for, but you make enough money, you could be able to save for it.

Jessi: Hmm. That's an interesting idea.

James: It seems like it would be win-win,

Jessi: it's different business model.

James: Totally different,

Jessi: you know, high risk, to be honest, at point.

That's high risk. You're not, you're a bank, you're not property invested, but there's enough equity

James: in the property where even if it doesn't work out and ends up being foreclosed upon, I would still get paid back. You would

Jessi: get paid, yeah.

James: So it, it could work out. I

Jessi: mean, essentially that's, that's what the bank is doing.

James: Yeah. A hundred percent. So, yep. Yeah, just become a bank. You're just

Jessi: making, yeah. You're. I'm

James: like proactively looking for that because I was like, because I was thinking about we had this, Jesus was a year ago. Now we're looking at that place where you had that weird home equity line of like that home equity loan thing.

Jessi: Yeah.

James: And I was like, the more I thought about it, I was like, man, it seems very predatory. But I was also like, the more I'm thinking about it, like predatory iss, just 'cause of the rates, like mm-hmm. If they, at the end of the day he's in his house. Mm-hmm. Still gets there. Still like. It's just a problem. If he ever wants to sell, it makes it really expensive, but as long as he wants to stay there, it's a great deal.

Jessi: Yeah.

James: Which is like this lady's situation. She doesn't wants to move. Like honestly, I'm like, you should look into something like that. It's not a bad idea.

Jessi: Yeah.

James: And they don't care but you, they don't care about you trying to make payments. Like that's not important to them. 'cause it's all about the house sale at the end.

At the other end of it.

Jessi: Hmm.

James: And, and like the rates are. I was also thinking like, what if you tied some sort of, Hey, I've got this financial class that you gotta take. It's like an hour. Mm-hmm. You gotta sit down and watch it. You gotta answer questions, go through it.

Jessi: Yeah.

James: Before we send you the funds, if this is really important to you, you'll find the hour today.

Jessi: Mm-hmm.

James: To do it. And then maybe like, could you do some sort of, hey, there's an ongoing education piece. 'cause like just a one time class isn't gonna do it. You like regularly get in front of them, maybe even weekly. And what if it was like, well, your actual rate, like 16%. But every week that you watch one of these financial video classes, we knock a percentage off, have

Jessi: some incentive for

James: that month.

Jessi: Hmm.

James: You know, so you can get it down to 12% if you do four weeks worth of classes. And those inherently, like, you're gonna be saying like, here's about budgeting,

Jessi: right? Here's

James: about whatever, you know, and it's just like,

Jessi: Here's how to identify a scam,

James: potentially. Yeah. I, yeah, I don't know. I'm trying to like, that's

Jessi: awful.

James: It seems like there's something there from a business model standpoint that could potentially work and, and the way we would do it is we'd have investors. Mm-hmm. They would earn that 12%.

Jessi: Right.

James: And then the points that we charge upfront like that, three points or whatever. Mm-hmm. In this case, it'd be seven $50, like that's what we would earn.

Jessi: Does that still fall under the realm of. Property investment? 'cause the property's involved, or is that I think so, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's totally different.

James: No, it's, it's, it's lending at the end of the day. Yeah. Yeah.

Jessi: I mean,

James: which now I'd have to work. That's kind

Jessi: of what you do. Like

James: my biggest problem with this one is like the dude still was like, I.

Jessi: Yeah, it's not gonna work. If he's just gonna give, gonna keep giving money, we give

James: him 25 grand and he just goes, he put it right. You go to

Jessi: publishers', clearinghouse, scammers and they're

James: still in that foreclosure process. Oh my dude. Which, I don't dunno, maybe part of me is like, eh, gets accelerated. I guess I get paid back sooner than later, but, ah, yeah, that's, it's a hard, it's what I'm learning in my interactions with folks in this situations is just so super messy.

I don't, I think oftentimes. Or sometimes investors like us can be like, oh man, you're just like, you're going after getting there and you know, carpet bag and trying to get a deal. I'm like, maybe. But like, these are messy situations. It is not as straightforward as it's often portrayed. Yeah. Or it's just, oh, we just got behind.

Jessi: No, yeah, no, there's like, there's reasons why you got

James: behind. Yeah. Yeah. And this one, it's like, oh, it's just. It's bad. Ugh. Anyways, there's an, there's an uplifting scammers. Yeah. So I don't know if we're gonna get the deal. Like I said, we just had the meeting today, so it's kind of top of mind.

Jessi: Yeah.

James: We'll follow up with them and as it gets closer to the deadline, see where they're at.

Part of my hope is hopefully she figures something out, so my hope is that she figures something out. Right, right. And avoids it all together. Yeah. And then my secondary hope is if she doesn't figure it out, she calls us. Yeah. And we're able to help. You know, that's kind of like Right. It's a constellation prize, but obviously I'll take it and we'll try to be fair in what we offer her.

Yeah. Obviously we gotta make it work for all, for us, for our investors, all that stuff. Yeah. And she won't like, I mean, if she did it right now, she could, the property's in good enough shape, she could list it today. Really Could probably sell it. I mean, it's got new enough roof. It's dirty, but like nothing's broken.

It's got, yeah, it's got a new roof system. It's got a new HVAC system like. Wow. They've taken care of the place and so they could list it today and sell it and be totally on the clear and, and she could potentially walk away with like $150,000 Interesting. From it. But she doesn't wanna move. And she'd have to, and that's the other thing, like she'd have to find a new place to live like that, you know?

So it's not quite that, like the money would have to go somewhere.

Jessi: Mm-hmm.

James: Which part of me is like, man, I wish you could refinance because that would also solve your problems. Which she's got like an awesome three point something, but

Jessi: the bank won't.

James: They're not gonna do that. Don behind. I think she shoulda called them.

It would be hard. Interesting. But

Jessi: I mean, if she could borrow money to get caught up on payments, they, they might consider something

James: Correct, but she's got the income. Yeah. I don't know.

Jessi: Wow.

James: Yeah. Anyways, messy situations. That's people were trying to help though. Mm. So hopefully she figures it out.

Jessi: It makes me, this is like kind of unrelated, it makes me think of that guy who, who stays on the phone with scammers.

James: Oh,

Jessi: it just totally. Or emails back and forth

James: like, so this is gonna harken back to, keeps to last week's episode. There are now guys where they create AI bots that talk to scammers and their whole thing is like, just keep going. That is a

Jessi: great use of ai.

James: There

Jessi: you go. I am. Onboard for that.

James: Yes. Yeah.

Jessi: Let's distract the scams and keep them. Yeah.

James: As long as they're talking to AI dot we're good to go. Yeah, sure. I'll send you

Jessi: cards.

James: Yeah. In some ways I, I like the syndication route as well, doing bigger deals. 'cause like, oh, you're dealing with investors, like it's different situations. It's

Jessi: different.

James: It's not quite as messy, but,

Jessi: sure.

James: Hmm. So there it is. Alright. I'm trying to think of a way to make this more upbeat, but I don't think it is. It's just sad. And that's okay. You know, sometimes that's what we have to deal with.

Jessi: Those are sad stories.

James: So if this made you sad thanks for listening. Anyways.

Jessi: You could still like podcast.

You

James: could still like it. You could still say, man, I feel for 'em. Yeah. And yeah, it's tough. But yeah, so again, thanks for listening and if you are interested in investing with us to try to help situations like this, we'd love to talk to you. You can learn more about us and our investing thesis and how we operate at furlo.com.

So again, thanks for listening. Have a great day.