Greed Knows No Bounds

Q. I thought you would be interested in this story. Up until January of this year I had been a client of a financial advisor in the Chicago area. My wife and I had opened VUL's with him two years earlier and I had introduced him to my mother to help her with some finances.

In January of this year we had our annual meeting with him to go over the investments we had. I recently changed jobs and had a 401k at my old company and he suggested I roll the 401k money into an EIA. Leading up to our meeting, I was getting skeptical of his investment strategy so when he made the EIA recommendation I wanted to find out more information on my own.

Well, I found your site, plus many others, that confirmed my suspicions about his investment advice. At the same time that this is going on he is supposedly helping my mother with her investments. My mother was completing the sale of my grandmothers house, because my grandmother was moving to an assisted living facility and the money was to help pay for her medical expenses. The advisor had big plans for the $550,000 made from the sale of the house. That is until I stepped in. The advisor proposed the money be divided between an EIA, high commission mutual funds, and a limited partnership.

Literally days before my mother was to hand the check over to him I called her and we set up another meeting with the advisor. I showed my mother the evidence that I had found and after listening to the advisors sales pitch he either tried to change the subject or could not answer when confronted with the questions raised by what I had researched on your web site. At the end of the meeting his face was red and his eyes showed fear as he envisioned his commission going down the tubes.

In a desperate attempt he tried to appeal directly to my mother and the so called trust they had built. But it was of no use and he knew it, he had been exposed for the charlatan that he was. I think this was the first time he had been called out directly to his face. I also think he had that commission already spent having known he recently moved to a larger house in a north shore suburb of Chicago.

After he left, my mother and I were relieved and she said, "He seemed like such a nice person". And I told her, "That's how they prey on people".

To make a long story short, my wife and I cashed out our VUL's, we didn't put in a lot of money so with the surrender charges we ended up loosing about $2000. Which is fine, we learned our lesson and the money we got back is now in an ETF.

My mother recently moved to be closer to the grand kids and has a nice start on retirement with over $1 million from the sale of her house plus the money that the advisor did not get his hands on.

I still get mail from the advisor even after insulting him to his face.

Greed knows no bounds.

A. Thanks for the story and for the compliment. It means a lot to me that the articles were a help and prevented you and your mother from making a decision you would have regretted!

Let me know if you ever have any questions or if I can be of help...

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