Marco Kozlowski has posted a video on YouTube with his views of the reporting last fall by CBC News (link to the 2nd story). The video appears to have been made at his home in Maitland, Florida.

He doesn’t say if he is just as unhappy about the reporting by the Montreal Gazette, the Vancouver Province and the UK Mirror. Perhaps there will be more videos on those stories…

See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpUScvfcn00 . Below is the text of the caption to the video.

“Published on 24 Apr 2016

Is this real reporting on Marco Kozlowski
A Candid outline of the CBC report on Marco Kozlowski –
They never asked for a testimonial – the people doing well they never mentioned or aired”

A screen grab from the video:

 

 

The usual  Marco Kozlowski “At Will Events”, “U.S. Property Network”, “U.S. Property Success” three day program has been running this weekend (April  15, 16 and 17, 2016) at the Toronto Airport Marriott Hotel. Today, Sunday, is the most important part of any confidence game: the “sting”.

The “ropers” got the attendees to come to the evening seminars. In the modern age of course it is the media that accept and publish the ads that perform the “roper” function for the con.

(For confidence game slang see, for example, this useful page: “SCOUNDREL’S SLANG” Here is the Wikipedia article on the “Confidence Trick” A 2015 academic paper by Braucher and Orbach titled “Scamming: The Misunderstood Confidence Man” * can be found here.)

From the Wikipedia article:

“A confidence trick is also known as a con game, a con, a scam, a grift, a hustle, a bunko (or bunco), a swindle, a flimflam, a gaffle or a bamboozle. The intended victims are known as “marks”, “suckers”, or “gulls” (i.e. gullible). When accomplices are employed, they are known as shills“

Full page ads in the Toronto Star lured the “marks” in. (Interesting of course as the Toronto Star itself has run articles warning of these programs – see “Beware ‘free’ real estate seminars” by Mark Weisleder from Jan. 1 of 2010.) 

Here is one of the recent advertisements.
These full page ads ran in the Toronto Star on at least April 1, 3, and 4, 2016

The ads had essentially the same content as discussed in earlier posts on this blog. The ad gave the URL of the website used for this round of promotion: www.yourpropertymillions.com.

A few of the attendees at these free seminars were convinced to attend the 3 day that started on Friday. Saturday was about qualifying the top prospects that could be put on “the send” ( “Stage of a swindle in which the victim is sent home or to the bank for more money.”)  Sunday is for the the “Grifter”, the “Shill” and the “Inside Man” to take the “marks” or “rubes” that have money aside to make the large “sting”.  Today is the day for the big payoff! The only question is how much can the mark be persuaded to part with?

From the Montreal Gazette Story:

“Only on the third day of the conference, he said, are people told they can invest in additional training — a “platinum” program for $60,000 or a “diamond” program for $100,000. That additional training is not mentioned at the first free seminar.

“You’re never under the impression that you have to pay something else besides that $3,500,” the man said. “You think you’ll be good to go after that weekend.”

He says that on the first day of the weekend workshop, attendees are asked to fill out forms detailing their financial situations.

On the third morning, he said, some participants are asked to attend a “VIP lunch,” where they’re told that “only people with great potential” are asked to attend.

“Really, it’s only people that can plunk $100,000 that are invited,” he said. “But it’s all about ego and making you feel special.” “

“The Touch” (the money) will quickly be gone out of Canada – to places, companies, and bank accounts unkown.

The how to of this is contained in the Trump University Playbook and has been discussed in many places – including of course in the Toronto Star paper itself.

For comparison’s sake, here is the Toronto Star ad from September 12, 2015. ( see page GT4) I wonder how much was gained from that trip to Toronto? How much in comparison to the cost of the advertisement? This ad featured the the typical “Diana” and “Steeve” testimonials. That didn’t work out so well… This version of the ad had Diana living in Toronto (she actually lives in Ottawa) and Steeve living in Markham (he actually lives in Montreal.)

 

* Braucher, Jean and Orbach, Barak, Scamming: The Misunderstood Confidence Man (August 1, 2015). 27 Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities 249 (2015); Arizona Legal Studies Discussion Paper No. 13-37. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2314071 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2314071

 

 

With both Marco Kozlowski and Nick Vertucci running programs in Toronto Ontario this week it is useful to have another look at what is going on with the hotel real estate seminar phenomenon.

A March 12, 2016 posting on the JohnReed.com website nicely details how the real estate seminar industry works:

The link: http://johntreed.com/blogs/john-t-reed-s-real-estate-investment-blog/114332355-media-still-not-quite-getting-the-whole-story-of-trump-unviersity

Some quotes from the posting are below. John Reed’s comment about “Utah” certainly applies to Kozlowski, as the address used in his emails is “765 East 340 South American Fork, Utah 84003 United States ”

“Similarly, the Utah companies provide the various celebrity gurus with a turnkey series of beginner real estate investor seminars: An initial free evening seminar, a three-day paid seminar costing almost always $1,495 or $1,492 or thereabouts, followed by four-day bus tours where they urge you to buy properties which the guru has an ownership interest in or gets a commission for selling you, followed by ever-more expensive “diamond” or “platinum” packages that include seminars and “mentoring.” I think the top ones can cost you $90,000 or so. “

Actually, Marco Kozlowski’s At Will Events / US Property Network / US Property Success package will cost you $100,000.

….  Now that the Trump University Playbook is available, we can see how the various programs stay very close to the script. As John Reed writes:

“Only the celebrity branding varies, not the content or refund policies

The content of the seminars are the same no matter who the celebrity guru is the brand used. The “instructors” are mostly, or fully, commissioned high-pressure salesmen. The purpose of the whole exercise is to part you from as much of the credit limits of your credit cards as possible then discard you.
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They make you sign a contract. Why? Because that prevents you from reversing the credit-card charges when you figure out you’ve been had. They also pressure you to fill out a favorable evaluation on the instructor or program and/or record a verbal evaluation with the person you are evaluating listening in and making sure you know he’s listening in. After getting that A+ evaluation from you when you are still under their spell, they taunt you with it when you later demand your money back and threaten to sue.
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The gurus have nothing to do with the content, instructor selection, refund policies, etc. They just provide branding: their name, picture, video for commercials.
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If you go to a lot of these, you may well see over time the same instructors as Brand A teachers, Brand B teachers, and Brand C teachers, teaching the exact same stuff each time. They move around from one guru to another frequently like Major League Baseball free agents. And the differences in how they teach are about the same as the difference between how a Major League shortstop plays shortstop when he is at the Dodgers, the Bluejays, and the Giants.

In other words, when you attend the games of those three teams over the years, you will see guy X playing shortstop the exact same way he always did at each team. Only his uniform changes. Similarly, if you go to the seminars of three different celebrity real estate investment gurus, you may see the exact same instructor at each one teaching the exact same material the exact same way even though each of the brands claims to be unique and superior to the competitors.”