Mormons Lose $50 Million In Gold Scam...

[BlooInBloo]

I guess the only thing to say is: The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=an7Pm3hkmauw

" Sept. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Henry Jones delivered the good news in a conference call with Tri Energy Inc.’s investors: The gold deal the company had been working on for years was about to pay off.

Jones, 55, a record producer in Marina del Rey, California, and his two partners had raised more than $50 million from 735 investors, which they said they were using to broker the sale to Arab buyers of 20,000 tons of gold owned by a group of Israelis. They promised to triple investors’ money -- if only Tri Energy could overcome some last-minute glitches.

All the company needed to close the deal, Jones said on the Dec. 20, 2004, conference call, taped by one of the participants, was a “safe-passage letter” that would cost $450,000. A few days later, on another call, he said Tri Energy had to come up with $100,000 to open a “commission account.” Then, on Jan. 15, 2005, a new request: The bank handling the deal wanted $125,000 to conduct an audit.

Like those caught up in other get-rich scams -- from Bernard Madoff’s $65 billion Ponzi scheme, which initially snared wealthy Jews, to an alleged $4.4 million fraud aimed at deaf people -- Tri Energy’s investors had something in common. Many were Mormons and born-again Christians who shared dreams and prayers on nightly conference calls. They vowed to use the profits for charitable works and kept raising funds, at times taking out second mortgages, draining retirement accounts and recruiting relatives. "

[Taverner]

1. HA HA

[lib_wit_it]

16. +100

[truebrit71]

30. [phone]

:rofl:

[TexasObserver]

2. The feel-good story of the summer!

All's well that ends well.

[arbusto_baboso]

3. Utah has long been the widely acknowledged American capitol of fraud.

After all, mormons believe that an angel brought golden plates to Joseph Smith and that polygamy was instituted by God, so they're already gullible and ripe for the picking...

[charlie]

4. 'Jones, a native of Nigeria..."

I was going to say, it sounds just like a Nigerian email scam, with success just in the offing, if only these minor fees would be paid first. And there he is...

[DevonRex]

5. That's wonderful! Karma is a bitch, ain't it? nt

[DainBramaged]

6. Gelt, the evil of ALL men.

[defendandprotect]

7. Tax the churches . . . on everything but their church, surrounding property and soup kitchens!

[BlooInBloo]

8. Not a fan of the churchoration I take it.

:P

[defendandprotect]

9. Why would I support male supremacy in any form?

Organized patriarchal religion is fascism . . . is it not?

Why would you be giving your tax dollars to it?



:eyes:

[BlooInBloo]

10. I'm just about the last person to ask for a good reason for that on.

[defendandprotect]

12. Why?

[mitchum]

11. When grifters get grifted

[texanwitch]

13. What a shame.

If it looks to good to be true is usually is.

[bridgit]

14. Oh Honey, it's the sleazy under belly of the Salamander Letter itself...

Morons, pft, they paid 5 times the price for wheels, axles, and shovels just to get out there and be took like everyone else from the git-go "I'm so fair-ass" 'jack' think'n wannabees anyhow

http://www.mormoninformation.com/salamand.htm

[Jo March]

26. A bit off topic but I checked out the link you provided

Wow. What an, um, interesting website. I read through some of it but had to stop after a while.

[Fumesucker]

15. The financial equivalent of the square root of minus one..

An imaginary number.

[slay]

17. If there was ever a group that deserved it - after their funding of Prop 8 - it's the Mormons

They will get no pity from me.

[krispos42]

18. Some math.

990 dollars per troy ounce.


Okay there are 14.58 troy ounces to a standard pound, ergo one standard pound of gold is worth $14,434.

At 2,000 pounds per ton, one ton of gold is worth $28,868,000. So they were trying to buy 1.73 US tons of gold... a princely sum indeed.


What I find interesting is that the Israelis supposedly had 20,000 tones of gold (over $577 billion dollars worth), but according to Wikipedia the sum total of all gold mined, ever, is about 175,000 tons. So they thought that these Israelis had 11% of all the gold ever mined in the world???


Keep in mind that Fort Knox and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York hold about 10,000 tons of gold combined.



So basically, somebody walked up to them and said "Hey, I have four times as much gold as Fort Knox... want to invest with me?"

[The Magistrate]

19. Simple Arithmetic, Sir, is the Beginning Of Wisdom....

"You can't cheat an honest man."

[krispos42]

22. Well it's only a thousand cubic meters of gold

I mean, what's that, a cube 33 feet on a side? Pshaw. Barely the size of a small house.

[surrealAmerican]

25. So, what you're saying here is ...

... that they thought they were buying a solid gold bungalow.

[krispos42]

28. They thought the Israelis had that much gold

And that they would carve off a chunk the size of desk for them. :-)

[bridgit]

23. Uh, well that tears it - they've plagiarized the Old Test itself chapter & verse and never...

Understood the brilliance of diamonds what fools those mormon mortals be what were they reading & why?

[liberalla]

24. well... gold was about $442/oz on Dec. 20, 2004

but that's still way more than $50 million... Unfortunately, you don't get volume discounts on gold.

http://www.kitco.com/charts/historicalgold.html

[Contrary1]

20. $50 Million wasn't enough for them, huh?.

:cry:

[DaveinJapan]

21. Good.

That's $50 million less that can go towards their anti-civil rights campaigns.

[TankLV]

27. HA HA!!! GOOD for them!!! Kharma is a bitch, huh you CHARLATANS!!!

Couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch of SOCIOPATHS!!!

[bushisanidiot]

29. HAHAHAHA! Suck it, you haters!

I hope this turns into a huge scandal and they lose 1/2 their church membership over it. Haters!

Why are so many churches obsessed with gold anyway? Isn't their stuff in the bible about not seeking wealth???

[Raineyb]

31. Good.

I'm hard pressed to feel sorry for them on this one.

[Stevenmarc]

32. I guess Moroni wasn't guarding all their gold