Come back, Syndicatered!

We miss you!

There are rumors that you're in Nepal. If so, have a great time - I went in '98 and it was an amazing place. I truly hope it refreshes your soul, and helps you realize that the path to success is through hard productive work rather than get rich quick schemes.

Speaking of which, if you are in the US tomorrow, check out Dr. Phil.

Casey will be on Dr. Phil!

Dr. Phil will feature Casey tomorrow, January 16. The show topic is "Get Rich Quick Schemes".

Next, Casey is only 24 but has already racked up $2.2 million in debt with rash real estate investing. He's been foreclosed on, receives calls from creditors, is considering bankruptcy, and recently, his wife handed him divorce papers. He's desperate to save his marriage, but is his wife willing to work things out?

Short answer: No.

Casey's Wishlist: How to Disappear

Link is to Casey's amazon.com wish list. Highlights:

• Bulletproof Privacy: How to Live Hidden, Happy and Free!
  
• Hide Your Assets and Disappear: A Step-by-Step Guide to Vanishing Without a Trace
  
• Acquiring New ID: How To Easily Use The Latest Technology To Drop Out, Start Over, And Get On With Your Life
  
• New I.D. In America
  

Because I'm sure the banks have never thought of that.

Casey thinks a Job is Slavery

Nigel posts an email exchange with Casey. Beautiful stuff:

The slaves worked hard all day long and all they got was shelter and food. That's all the average person working an average job today is able to buy with their income. We're slaves to our jobs.

And then when we want a little something more than just shelter and food we have to go into debt. That puts us into an even deeper slavery.

The dollar is eroding away (inflation) at a much faster pace than our income is increasing and the rest of the money is taxed away.

Slavery.

I guess he missed the part where people working average jobs have air conditioning, plasma TVs, computers & the internet, cars, Starbucks & Jamba Juice, and Macaroni Grill.

Syndicatered: Credit "Repair" 101

Syndicatered is back online, and posts about the credit repair mechanisms he's mentioned before (paragraph breaks added):

So how exactly do you kick out one of these credit killers? Two techniques work, one is to kick out the legs of what made up the BK or Foreclosure, so say for instance you had 3 credit cards that were wiped off in your BK, these items are listed and reflected on your credit report as BK items. You dispute the 3 credit cards until you get them wiped off, its a matter of time and persistence and you can get pretty much anything knocked off, sometimes it just takes a little bit longer time. So if you get everything that made up the BK removed via the 30 day method, than how can the BK possibly stand if everything it represented cant be accounted for? Because they can't prove the validity of it anymore, they have to delete it whether you really had a BK or foreclosure or not, your just working the system and using your rights.

The second method is soo awesome, I love this, so when you get say a Foreclosure they lodge you in county records, depending on your city where you recieved the foreclosure or BK determines you may have a little bit different variation because of how your court system handles its paperwork. So your courthouse will either house your record in the court house in an offsite store place. There are only two people who are actually allowed access to your file, you and the clerk of courts. So lets say the credit bureau's want to verify that you have a file with them they call the clerk to access it. So how do you spin this?? You go and request your file and depending on where it is you may get it immediately or they have to send for it so it could be a day or two. When you have your file or the clerk of courts has your file waiting for you, the file is in limbo to other parties. So if the credit bureau goes to pull for your file, it comes up as file not found. The idea is to delay your file from being returned for as long as humanly possible, whatever bullshit you have to feed to keep your judgment from going back into the system.

The more he clarifies the method, the more shady it seems.

Is it ethical? I think so. The laws are there for me as a consumer and I for one am all about working the system in my favor. A lawyer can charge you a few grand to do that for you and get them removed or you can do it yourself with some deliberate effort. It's not easy and you have to keep good records. Is it wrong to answer no on a loan app to the have you ever had a BK or Foreclosure question? I'd say in that case your lying and breaking the law as it applies but good look on them even caring cause they can't prove it. So thats all there is to it.

Well, there are several reasons to think this is unethical if not illegal. First, we have the tragedy of the commons. Just as people who abuse antibiotics by "working the system in their favor" end up helping to create super-resistant bacteria that endanger everyone, people who abuse the bankruptcy system will end up killing it. The legislature will not stand idly by and allow people to do this.

Second, it appears from a quick Google search that in order to dispute an item on your credit report, you need to say that you believe the item is incorrect, and state your opinion as to the facts. So what do you say? "I never had these credit cards?" "I never filed for bankruptcy?" A simple fix for this would be to require that people who dispute credit items do so under penalty of perjury - as in "I certify that the above information is true to the best of my knowledge," and if you're lying, you can go to jail. I would be disappointed to learn that this isn't already the case.

Beyond the legal and ethical issues, there's just the practical issue of does this process actually work. He's saying that if you can't get a credit card record off you need to be persistant. This seems to mean that if you dispute a credit card, and the bureau gets proof it's valid, you just dispute it again. You would think that after the first few times this happened, the bureaus would learn that someone who disputes an item is likely to dispute other items or the same item again. They could easily have a file folder for you in which the simply place a copy of the proof for future reference. In fact, here's a quote from the FTC's web page How to Dispute Credit Report Errors (emphasis added):

Consumer reporting companies must investigate the items in question—usually within 30 days—unless they consider your dispute frivolous.

My guess is that the third time you request to have a legitimate credit card record removed from your report that they can just consider all further requests from you to be frivolous, and at least in Syndicatered's case they'd be correct.

Let me revisit some individual things he said:

So if you get everything that made up the BK removed via the 30 day method, than how can the BK possibly stand if everything it represented cant be accounted for?

I'd say the fact that there's a public record at a courthouse of your bankruptcy or foreclosure would mean they could keep it even if you manage to annoy them into removing credit card records.

so when you get say a Foreclosure they lodge you in county records, depending on your city where you recieved the foreclosure or BK determines you may have a little bit different variation because of how your court system handles its paperwork. So your courthouse will either house your record in the court house in an offsite store place. There are only two people who are actually allowed access to your file, you and the clerk of courts.

That's very interesting. Care to explain how any Joe Schmoe with an internet connection can get a link to, say, this document?

In case you don't want to click it, here's what it looks like:

Final KoiCast Fireworks

Link is to a post on DontHateCasey concerning the "final" koicast. It's "final" only if Casey stays the heck off the internet, as M. Singh might say. For some reason the link to the actual talkcast is buried in his text, so here's a more obvious talkshoe link.

Apparently things were a little boring at first until the excrement hit the air circulation impeller. Here's a summary of events, pieced together with great help by soemdood of CaseyHaterz.com.

Casey wrote to Nigel, and indicated that his "relationship with God is foremost."

LossMitPro called in for shites and giggles just to say that Casey lacks integrity. Shocking! In other news, Casey is doomed to failure because he lacks integrity, and um, Casey lacks integrity.

The real meat starts when Casey calls in. He's still praying for a reconciliation with his soon to be ex-wife. He's got a job now, apparently hawking some kind of naturopathic or homeopathic erectile dysfunction pill for men. $14/hour sweet active income.

Duane was on the line and acting all buddy buddy with Casey until Tracy (Nacho's Orion slave girl) called in and revealed that Duane sent Galina $1500 for lawyer's fees for the divorce, and also sent money for her to have a night out on the town with Annie and others. Duane absolutely delaminated at that comment, and dropped about 400 F-bombs.

There is now some speculation that Annie was involved in pushing Galina towards divorce, though I don't see how anybody could see that as a bad thing.

There, I just saved you 3 hours. You know you want to listen to it anyway...

Goodbye Casey, Again

Casey has scrubbed his EscapeMyHouse blog. The page is just a blank white slate in a web browser, but behind the scenes we see this:

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Oh, don't worry. He'll be back for his next fix of publicity and sweet sweet humiliation arbitrage.