Foreclosure Help Crew Mad at Work

A new post on FHB, obviously written by Casey but attributed to "Foreclosure Help Crew", highlights the previously mentioned contact/evaluation forms.

Competitive Landscape for Syndicatered (aka Andrew Guzik)

Syndicatered's commercial lending "business" has a cookie cutter web template with a copyright notice on it: © Scott Bishop, 2006.

Note that Bishop is the last name of the guru he trained with, Kellene Bishop. Out of curiosity, I was wondering how many other people have used the cookie cutter to generate their own fabulous wealth generation opportunity.

According to Google, quite a few. Take a look, and see who your competition is.

Free Pre-Foreclosure Evaluation!

One of the links on FHB has been fleshed out into a "Pre-Foreclosure Evaluation Request Form". Translation: Come let us skim a little off of your tragedy by getting referral fees from real estate and/or loan companies.

This contact form looks pretty intricate, but it has no CAPTCHA. It'd be a shame if some botnet decided to request 8 billion different evaluations for $RANDOM_FIRSTNAME $RANDOM_LASTNAME.

In addition, the contact page now has an email form. Go ahead and say hi!

Swabcast: Anonymous Insider Tips!

Nigel Swaby hosted a talkcast tonight. Over at CaseyHaterz.com, a thrilling play by play thread followed the action.

At one point, an "official anonymous representative" called in, obviously Casey talking about himself in the third person. Because, you see, if he's pretending to not be online, he's not online! 15% success!

Major points of the talkcast include some pontification on whether the Fed will raise or lower rates, Utah politics, and other extremely boring subjects, interlaced with occasional nuggets from our favorite shiteweasel. Er, I mean, from an anonymous representative of our favorite shiteweasel.

According to Casey anonymous, the launch of ForeclosureHelpBook was not well thought out. That's the surprise of this young century! In addition, the flashy cars are troll bait, meant only to inflame the reactions of the haterz. Which is good, because Casey anonymous admits that nobody who's facing foreclosure actually visits FHB. But, enough haterz are commenting that they will outsource moderation to virtual assistants in India.

Bingo! Oh, sorry, I had five Caseyism in a row on my card, I'll redeem my prize later.

Apparently Casey is having "limited success" in improving himself, partially due to his perceived lack of Jamba Juices in Phoenix. A shortage of which Google Maps is blissfully unaware. Or perhaps it's just that, with no car, Casey can't get to Jamba Juice (and Damion won't take him on the way to work.) Buck up, little shiteweasel, you could ride your bike! It's gotta be easier than riding around Lake Tahoe.

Casey's apparently giving the Utah wrappers a "grace period". Due to Cashcall giving Casey an involuntary grace period, his FICO score now hovers at a dismal 501. That and his Google footprint has made him virtually unemployable.

In relationship news, Casey thought that his marital separation would be temporary. Now that divorce papers have been filed, at first he thought he would not file a response, but then he did. For those uninitiated in California divorce procedures, not filing a response means "OK, let the divorce happen just the way she wants." Filing a response means "Wait, I want more of the CD collection and permanent custody of Smushkins!" and generally drags the process on for some undetermined amount of time.

Foreclosure Reminds Me of the Time I Crashed My Porsche...

The latest post from Damion compares foreclosure to overcooking a corner in a sweet v-dubs Porsche.

It won’t be fun or stress free but it is our obligation to take personal responsibility and stop swerving all over the track of our lives trying to correct our path at 100mph. We need to slam the brakes on our dumb old patterns and habits, stop our out of control ship and then look out at where we really are. Only then can we have a chance at a future.

It’s one thing at time. The first thing to fix is us.

Would running around in Porsches and Lamborghinis and stocking the conference rooms with San Pellegrino count as stopping to look around?

Big Launch! Woohoo!

So the official launch day is here (a day late), and brings a rambling post by Damion.

It's so boring, that my only response is to post a boring post in return.

Eggplant
Chicken breasts
Canned Tomatoes
Milk

There, that's the shopping list for today.

Blog "Redesign" & Flash Game

The ForeclosureHelpBook.com site has been "redesigned as boasted about by Casey in this comment:

Talk about massive focused action… check out the changes to the blog design. Big thanks to our graphic person for the header image and our flash person and cartoon person for the sweet foreclosure casino game. Of course I had to use my mad HTML and CSS skillz to integrate it all and make it look right. (And a little bit of management skillz to coordinate all the staff)

The amazing redesign results in such spectacular all caps navigation links as BLOG and THE BOOK and STOP FORECLOSURE, all of which lead to a fascinating "Coming Soon" page. All he's missing is 1995's de rigeur icon for such pages. [ed. note: Horrible seizure inducing animation omitted for your safety. This is the 21st century now.]

But the best part is the Foreclosure Help Book Online Game! Now how much would you pay out of your impossibly debt encumbered foreclosed-upon budget for Casey's stellar advice?

Casey "Decides" to Go Silent; Flip Flops Again

First, Casey emails Nigel and says he's not going to be blogging anymore.

Nigel, wanted to follow up on this. We recently decided to modify my involvement with FHB. I'm going to move away from blogging and publicity and focus on IT / book / online marketing instead.

Then, he reconsiders in comments to that same blog post:

Man I hate, HATE making conflicting promises. That has been the story of my life and it sucks.

He also spanks Nigel for "sharing private email", as if he didn't want to leak the email all along.

In comments on ForeclosureHelpBook.com, he reiterates the promise to reconsider reconsidering flip flopping on his flip flop and potentially leverage his flopping flipperhood towards blogging once more.

Thanks guys for the positive feedback and asking me to get back to blogging. You guys catch on pretty quick. I shouldn’t be suprised. Last 12 months gave me a lesson on keeping secrets from an eager and investigative crowd. Anyway, Damion and I are meeting tonight about roles and good stuff like that. Will try to finilize our course modification.

Get Ready: Thursday is the Day!

Damion writes:

Get ready for some fun, Thursday is the big launch for the site!

However, the main point of the post seems to be to pontificate on economic policy:

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke dropped rates and the big three (Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase and Citi) announced a super $100,000,000,000 rescue fund. The crazy thing is they are setting this fund up to rescue themselves from this mess. Instead of letting the bad loans be written off, the bad assets foreclosed on, they are trying to protect themselves from their SIV’s (Structured Investment Vehicles) reckless activities so they can keep their profits high and asset prices artificially inflated. These banks wanted to jump into the subprime party so they did what Enron did, they set up off balance sheet conduits (entities), to go out and make them a bunch of money on the high profit sub prime loans without having the liabilities on their books. This was great for their share prices and earnings reports…at least for a while. Meanwhile people all over the place are getting crushed with debt they can’t pay. President Bush proposes some new rules to help people out of their jam with the IRS after a foreclosure but that only applies to a few people and doesn’t help most.

But most shockingly, he appears to want to take responsibility for his own mistakes. Let's see if he has better success than Casey in that regard:

I took a risk and invested over $1.150 Million dollars into this house building it and the market turned. It’s currently listed on the MLS for $799,000 and there is virtually zero interest. Shit happens. I personally signed on the debt so my credit is getting turned into hammered dog crap. There are many places I could point fingers, ex-partner that ran the construction, moronic draftsman that designed a very strange house, foolish Realtor who insisted the house was worth $1.2-1.3 and we should do lots and lots of upgrades…the list goes on and on. The only problem is that’s all wrong. At the end of the day I, ME, the face in the mirror, made the call and signed the papers to buy the property and build the house. I could have said no but I bet that it would work. I bet and I lost. Now I’m going to face the consequences. I’m not looking to the federal government for a bail out. I’m looking to ME for a bailout.

Portrait of Philanthropy Inaction

Damion comments:

Part of the proceeds from the Foreclosure Help Book are going to be put into a fund to help people in this type of situation.

I can't wait to see how many poor families are helped by this portion of the proceeds from the megabestseller.

Divorce Proceeding

Today was a "Status Conference" in the Serin v. Serin divorce case. This may explain the silence over at ForeclosureHelpBook.

Let us all hope that his long suffering wife rids herself of the stain.

Damion Comments - Lost $1.2 Million on a Deal

Damion comments:

The apartment investment was a terrific flop. I’ll talk more about that soon. It cost me over $1,200,000. Even after making several million dollars in the single family house business this mistake hurt a good bit.

So he's made several million dollars in single family homes, that's great! How could he possibly have any debt left?

Later:

The book rights to Foreclosure Help Book are owned solely by Foreclosure Help Book LLC. Any previous book concepts or ideas Casey was working on do not relate to this book. It’s my understanding that the old book issues have been resolved. Casey stepped up and took care of this himself.

Well, that's a relief. It's not like Casey has ever said something was "taken care of" only to be found later to be, um, full of koi.

Later:

[In response to Arthur Wankspittle's question “What are you expecting to get out of employing Casey?”]
Excellence.

hukkllllllllghghfdjjcyftvyjk fewdyfjhgvsetfkwyukkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk

Huh? Sorry, I passed out from reading something so amazingly clueless, what was ita;lsdjfuifaerFerhnubhsdfgkj

Crap, it happened again. I'd better stop reading.

Damion Lupo Speaks

Casey's business partner posts on ForeclosureHelpBook.com:

I’m Damion Lupo, the other side of this blog and the real world experience that brings a new level of credibility to our words of advice, analysis and encouragement to our readers, those in foreclosure and those just looking for some reality in the media circus that spins just about everything these days.
...
Casey and I are learning from each other and as a team, along with the rest of the folks in this organization we’re going to do what we’ve set out to do, promote the new book Foreclosure Help Book, help the tens of thousands of people in foreclosure right now and eliminate our own debts through honorable transactions that are fair for all involved.

He seems to be somewhat intelligent from his post. One has to wonder, then: What the heck is he doing working with a proven flake like Casey? Anyone with any intelligence should see that Casey is bad juju. The deal cannot help but fail. If it does even remotely succeed, then there are at least two other parties who already "own the rights" and will sue the living bejeezus out of them. I'm baffled.

Mystery Woman - "Jenny"?

Here is an adjusted version of a photo from the ForeclosureHelpBook photostream. Click the image or the main link line for a larger version.


[photo was marked, private in Flickr, sorry about that]

It's good to see that even with crushingly huge debtloads they can afford San Pellegrino and Lamborghini rentals.

Casey "Explains" Missing Posts/Comments

In a pair of comments at ForeclosureHelpBook.com, Casey writes:

I started to compromise so certain posts and comments have been removed. Part of the process we’re going through is figuring all this stuff out: policies for blogging, topics to cover and topics to stay away from, tolerances for certain things, etc.

The policy on comments and posts:

Nothing about marriage or too personal or hateful.

I don’t want any more “gray area” on my promises. I’m either keeping them or I’m not. I justify and split hairs too much. Enough said.

Next post will be by Damion and he might address some of the questions / concerns including all this silly stuff about having lack of credibility to help people, etc.

Yes. Silly. Of course you're capable of helping people! I'm sorry, I guess the fact that you've already sold the book rights twice and are working on the third time, and have never come up with anything but pie-in-the-sky schemes and that you constantly fall for the latest internet scam to come down the pike was clouding my view.

Let's see how you could help people - this could be your table of contents:

• Chapter 1: How to use overpriced gold coins to avoid foreclosure
• Chapter 2: How to use a corporation to borrow even more money, and then flush that new money on Macaroni Grill and Jamba Juice and overdraft charges
• Chapter 3: Rule #1 of holes: When you're in one, keep digging!
• Chapter 4: How to change your name so you can get a brand new credit history! Because banks have never thought of this.

I only stopped because I got bored, how many more chapters could we come up with?

Divorce Case Proceeds

The link is to a Yolo County Court website calendar listing:

Date	Time	Dept	Name	Case #	Hearing Type
10/22	830	DP11	SERIN VS. SERIN,	CVFL71021	STATUS CONFERENCE

The Business Plan

From the second photo in that previous post, the "business plan" as best I can read it. Words I'm not sure of are in [] (except [sic] of course), words I'm assuming are off the edge of the photo are in {}.

Foreclosure Help Book - Business Plan

[Outline] to come soon, [for now] how about some quick notes / brain dump:

Goals

Goal for blog

Be top position for the term "Foreclosure Help" in all the [engines]

Goal for book

Be best seller in some category on Amazon or even better [be #1] bestseller on New York {Times bestseller list}

Book Marketing

One liner:

"The Complete No-Non-Sense Foreclosure Survival Book"

other ideas: maybe put something about "illustrated" in there? Referring to the {...}

Customer Benefits

Bullets we can put on the book, website, and other pieces. Benefit [selling] is {...} for me?"

• Stop or avoid foreclosure
• Save Your Home
• What to do if you you [sic] can't save your home
• How to sell your home fast, as-is
• Save your credit
• Avoid (or learn about?) bankruptcy

Possible TODOs:

• Read Timothy Ferris' blog and blogs about his success in mark{eting...}
• Look at successful competition and evaluate strengths, weak{nesses...}
• research market and demographic to see what they want, {...}

Celebrity brokers?

Contact a celebrity for endorsement, directly or through broke{r...}

www.celebbrokers.com
www.celebrityendorsement.com
www.contactanycelebrity.com

Credibility Indicators

Media, testimonials, endorsements, BBB / association {...}

Contact people like Robert Kioysaki [sic] and other contact {...}

Risk-free Gurantee [sic!]

{...}policy but actually Giv{e...}

Help Casey Plan His Mission!

This is a great opportunity for all of you to get in on the ground floor of yet another round of planning something that is guranteed [sic] to never happen!

In a new post, our favorite shiteweasel posts pictures of himself and the too large watchband of his partner Damion at - where else? - Macaroni Grill. The post itself makes me feel as if I'm watching the Little Engine that Could attempt to cross the ocean. Hint: The Little Engine that Could thought he could climb a railroad line because he was a train locomotive. He didn't try build a rocket.

Excerpts:

Things have been a little slow here as we’re still planning our next move. It’s also nice not having to deal with too much traffic or comments at this early stage. We’ve been holding back on a formal announcement to a list of over 8,000 people.

Translation: We're going to spam Casey's family, friends, and acquaintances once again and see how many are interested in watching a fourth (or is it fifth? I've lost count) train wreck.

On being just a foreclosure resource rather than a fix your credit/file bankruptcy/cook a gourmet meal resource:

There’s something about giving you the exact information at the exact time you need it. No more, no less. “Stop foreclosure and keep your home”… or “stop foreclosure and sell your home fast”. (Most people in foreclosure try to keep it first and then realize they can’t afford the home to begin with.)

Oooh! Let me have a crack at it! How to stop foreclosure and keep your house: Make the loan payments. Wow, that was easy!

We’re kicking around the idea of having a logo and theme contest. The winning logo / theme will be incorporated into this blog, the book and all our promotional materials.

Gentlemen, start your sarcastic Photoshop filters!

[edited to add:]It has been noted that the timestamp on the photos is September 5, so the entire email "I'm not coming back" drama was BS.

Cracks Appear in the Partnership

In the latest post on ForeclosureHelpBook.com, Casey indicates that once again he's flip-flopping on his partner.

Ok, so yesterday I talked with Damion and he got pretty pissed. I made the last post without getting it reviewed by him. Especially when I said I’m gonna shut the blog down!
...

Damion has been very instrumental in keeping me accountable and focused. I’m very blessed to have this opportunity. He has been very patient with me.

But also direct. He made it clear that he cannot continue putting up with my crap.

I believe that in literature this is called foreshadowing.

Dr. Phil, & Another Abortive Attempt to Stop Blogging

Casey describes his visit to Dr. Phil's studio, and engages in some class A rationalization in a new lengthy post.

In addition he decides to stop blogging to "keep his promise" to his completely estranged soon-to-be-ex-wife.

The blog portion of this site is most likely going to come down in the next day or two. At least the personal stuff will. I’m not accepting any more comments. Sorry.

On the bright side, though:

If [Galina] does [come back to Casey], Dr Phil offered to provide counseling for us. Pretty sweet!

Divorce, and Dr. Phil: DEAL!

Nigel comments that Casey did Dr. Phil after all.

Casey expounds at length on the process, in a post that has since been deleted:

On Saturday I did a whole day of field taping for the Dr. Phil show. I’m pretty used to the drill by now. All the practice in the past. I think this segment will be the best one yet.

On Wednesday I’m going into the studio. I’m excited. My first studio experience! (Well, except Suzi Orman, but it was a remote call-in studio). The show will air in a few weeks.

But he's burying the lede:

Lets go back a few days. I found out from my parents that I got served divorce paperwork.
...
This is it. I am getting divorced. Man, do I hate the sound of it. Sounds so foreign. We had such a great start. We both believed in “till death do us part”. Is this really happening to me?

Accepting reality is tough sometimes. My emotions did a number on me last couple of days. I started thinking about anything I can do. Anything to get her back.

Accepting reality is tough? How exactly would you know that? My absolute favorite line is the first one here:

But how am I going to pay off my $500K of defaulted debt with a JOB?

Doing the foreclosure book / blog (and related services) is still my best opportunity to accomplish that. Especially now that I have Damion Lupo as my partner.

My rhetorical question would be, how am I going to pay off this debt WITHOUT a JOB? Once again, income is "limiting". Because actual income is a concrete number, not having income means you have unlimited "potential income".

Later, in a comment on that same thread, he whines:

Man, I still wonder if being back online is a huge mistake. I couldn’t sleep last night, thinking about it.

I know she’s giving me a clear sign that its over. But if we were still together she wouldn’t want me back online. She doesn’t want any of this publicity and wants to live a quiet life.

What if she is just testing me to see if I’m willing to REALLY give all this stuff up for her?

Because I’m definitely willing. Before I wasn’t. Now I am. So maybe I’m shooting myself in the foot by coming back.

This is insane!

That’s OK, I’ll ask Dr. Phil about this. Hopefully he will give me some direct advice.

Casey Returns to Blogging - Foreclosurehelpbook.com

Note that the previous posts were written in hindsight, so no credit to us for predicting this, but, he's back.

Apparently up to almost the same exact thing he was with his Foreclosure Code buddy, he's working on a book to help people (and make millions of dollars.)

Nigel confirms that it's really Casey behind this site. Guess all that talk about living up to promises was so much hot air, as usual.

Welcome back to the Caseyverse!

Casey Follow Up

Casey issues a follow-up to the previous email. At least he's not coming back to blogging!

Some may argue that this "final statement" is itself a breach of my promise. I said I will not be back online right?

Maybe so. But hey at least I'm not going back and blogging. So if I have to do this to get the last bit of "publicity" out of my system and go away for good, so be it.

Casey Serin Update

After nearly two months without hearing any updates on Casey Serin, I was starting to worry that we'd never find out how the story would end. Fortunately, it seems like we'll get to watch the rest of the trainwreck after all.

Keith over at HousingPANIC posts an email from Casey Serin. He claims he's not going to return to blogging, so we know he will.

Excerpts:

I'm working a stable consulting job for an experienced entrepreneur. Consulting is a generic term which means I'm doing whatever needs to be done. The best part is I have a slice of ownership in the venture.
...
Turning down the Dr. Phil show recently was a very tough one! I have to remember that it was the online/media over-exposure that was the "last straw" in my marriage breakup, amongst many other things.
...
In the end it was much more harm than good. Loosing my wife that is.

Having said that... I'm not giving up on my dreams of financial success. God gave me those desires for a reason. Instead I am even more determined to pursue it but in a safer way - even if takes longer. Biggest thing is I must put my loved ones first. For it is because of them, my family and friends, that I want to become financially independent. I'm looking forward to that day when I can share my abundance with them.
...
Anyway... this is the last the online world will hear from me for a long long time. All in all, the past year has been some of the craziest times of my life. That's for sure. I thank both the haterz and the supporterz. Everybody played a role.