How I (and 11 Other Professional Bankers) was Fake-Hired by A ‘Prince’

I’m confused. What exactly was the point then? Seems like quite a lot of effort for Ted to not actually “scam” anything from anyone except their time.

@Zee After thinking about this some more, I am fairly sure this was a set up for a ponzi scheme. Having the legitimate looking PE opens the door to start fake businesses and draw in big investment. That could net him millions (even hundreds of millions). This is similar to what Tom Petters did Minnesota. I used to live in Minnesota and I know several guys who lost large sums because they invested in Petter’s fake businesses.

So it looks like he was setting up an elaborate house of cards but it fell apart before he could get the Ponzi machine going. I’m betting had he started getting cash flow going, a lot of those bankers he higher would have stayed on and it could have gotten going. Its hard for people to turn down the big salary even once they figure out its not legal (reminds me of Boiler Room).

@Zee I forgot to mention, its a good thing you found out early and got out!

When I was a kid, me and my mum were scammed right in front of our door. Some door-to-door salesman managed to sell us this hotpot cooker and a stone water filter for something like 4x the retail price.

He started by selling the hotpot cooker to us, and when we bought the cooker, pretended that there was a winning ticket in the cooker’s box that could win us 1 of many exciting things (holidays etc), of which by far the shittiest prize was the water filter. We had to pay X for the ticket, and then of course, ‘won’ the water filter.

This was ages ago and I was about 8 years old, so life lesson learnt early. Scumbags are everywhere!

Holy crap. This is an awesome story! Thanks for sharing, glad it all kind of worked out in the end.

@oleg but that doesn’t explain the unpaid salaries and incommunicado. If he was really a bigwig, the exposure to litigation surely isn’t worth it.

Great story BTW. Would like to see more (if there is more!)

Great story @zee, I agree that the most bizarre thing is the inherrent lack of an end game.  Seems like an elaborate practical joke. 

Fantastic story. I’m a big fan of these actually. The thing is, when I was reading this, I kind of got the idea that in fact this may as well have been…not fake? It’s just that with my experience with some of the people who you would call “new money” or otherwise “unsophisticated investors”, he could have been acting for someone else, and then the plan simply didn’t work out…in a way that his ultimate employer did one day simply wake up and think: “Naaah”. I am familiar with so many situations of this character. This story simply stands out due to the ultimate con-act with the 10 interviewers, which is hilarious.

Otherwise, if this is not it, then I’m puzzled. What would the motive be? I mean, conning the other girl out of money for the serviced office? What did he do, hide drugs in there?