Las Vegas Sins and Scams – Book 9 - Scamming In the Recession Years – Part 2 of 4

Paul Wallace Winquist

Published by Paul Wallace Winquist at Smashwords

Copyright 2014

pwinquist.com

greenfernepublishing@gmail.com

US Phone 503-278-7316

9600 SW 74th Ave, Tigard OR 97223

Distributed Through Smashwords(tm) http:///www.smashwords.com

ISBN 9781311983473

eBooks Version 3.1

(c) 2014 Paul Wallace Winquist

Table of Contents

Chapter 160 Buildings

Chapter 161 - Cultural Evolution

Chapter 162 - Hillsboro and Forest Grove Oregon

Chapter 163 – International Developments

Chapter 164 - Retirement Funds

Chapter 160 Buildings

KOIN Tower - Downtown Portland Oregon

Photo by Paul Winquist 2009

Joe had invited Mel Weinberg from the Portland office/hotel/apartment building project down to the Full Moon Island for a little vacation, and to get him fully indoctrinated into the ways of the Coronado corporations.

Simultaneously Joe invited Armin Grossenbaucher and Bob Billingsley, so they could talk about the Las Vegas project that they were taking over, as well as the planned Portland project, in a comfortable setting.

The first major problem they had was that the city of Portland would not let them close any of the lanes of traffic, on all four sides of the project, during the rush hours, but they would allow the permanent closure of the sidewalks for the duration of the project.

They were also allowed to build the building out under the sidewalks allowing the four underground parking levels to be about 18,000 square feet (1,672 m²) bigger than they had planned on, but they still needed to plant trees in the sidewalk areas.

The bedrock measured about 50 feet (15 m) down, so they expanded their underground parking levels to four from the original three.

The city considered their request to reduce the number of parking spots, based on the theory that the building is part apartments and part offices. They only allowed a 10% reduction, but Joe was advised that parking spots in that area would rent very high anyway. Joe and Sheldon were thinking that some of the space could turn into storage areas after the building is rented-up in a few years.

Joe commissioned a foundry company to copy the antique drinking fountains in downtown Portland, to put on the sidewalk by the main entryway.

Because the economy is so terrible, they decided to not finish 1/3 of the floors, like in the Las Vegas office building, until the situation improves and they get some more solid leases.

Wikipedia Pictures

Now that the Full Moon Island had both golf courses going, many of the executives came this year for the annual holiday season vacation, even Linda, Melissa, and the kids came over. Jeanne was happy that Annette arrived without an accompaniment.

JR and Alisha came to check on the medical situation and have a little fun.

David brought his new girlfriend Robin that he found in Portland while working on the permits for the high-rise. She was one of the first students that they sponsored at UNLV, now she was managing the Coronado hotel and restaurants complex, on the Willamette River in Portland. David was in love and wanted to talk her into moving into his suite in the Las Vegas Coronado.

To Lori’s disappointment Tony brought his little girlfriend from Sicily.

David wanted a meeting of just some of the male executives, so he scheduled a round of golf including Joe, JR, Sheldon, and Tony. Sheldon sensed that he wanted to talk about something important, so he suggested that they take regular golf carts rather than their special ones that might be bugged.

David waited until they were on the third hole before he said, “…I didn’t invite the girls because they have a tendency to look at things from an emotional point of view… I am thinking that the valuations of some of the new properties are way off… I think that some of the people that Sandy and Loraine promoted during their whirlwind tour of the new properties need to be evaluated again…”

Joe replied, “I sort of had the same feeling.”

Sheldon added, “I have already made some changes in the Caribbean resorts…”

Tony added, “Lori has taken a liking to the blond people in Albania; that’s not completely right too…”

David clarified his plan, “…Let’s take some of the male college graduates, that are almost done remodeling the new hotels and restaurants, and send them on an evaluation tour like I started to do when I came back from Harvard.”

Joe said, “Good plan; do it”!

David continued, “I was thinking of two teams consisting of an MBA, an accountant, and two helpers with business degrees…”

Joe said, “Exactly; a perfect plan! Have them report directly to you, so you can relay the information directly to Sheldon, Tony, or me…”

Sheldon thought about mentioning the Illuminati Order to the other partners, but then he figured that the cause would be best promoted without any connection that way.

He talked to Alisha, Sandy, and Lori about stepping up the condom distribution at all the resorts and hotels in the chains, and increasing the quantity of anti-religious books in all the libraries.

They decided to start a small trade school at the Chile resort for the building trades.

The concept of the office building in Costa Rica was way more popular than they had anticipated; the employees from Las Vegas loved working there instead of in Las Vegas, but the Costa Rican government was giving them a hard time about the 90 days limitation that people are allowed to stay in the country. The Costa Rican government is very unfriendly about bringing in employees instead of using the local people. So, they decided to build another much larger office building on the Full Moon Island in Panama.

They called Armin to come down and give them some ideas; he quickly replied, “Being you are making all your villas replicas of Frank Lloyd Wright’s houses, maybe you should use one of his office buildings for a starting effect… I’ll send Tom down there to study the situation and adapt one of the buildings…”

Frank Lloyd Wright

Wikipedia

The next day Tom came down and they all discussed the Panamanian office building for quite a while. They decided that the slick building they wanted to build was way too big, so they decided to make ½ the floors into apartments of various sizes, that could be converted to offices if they wanted to later, or they can be working/apartments if a working mother brings her kids, and so on.

They picked a location that would be somewhat away from the tourists, yet overlook the golf courses and have a good view of the ocean toward north, toward Costa Rica.

Tom pointed out how the glass nowadays was a much better insulator, and that all the building materials was much improved, since the 1930s when the building was originally built. Of course, they would layout the inside completely different, and put in extra conduits so the communications systems can be upgraded over the years easily.

Frank Lloyd Wright building for Johnson Wax -1930s

Wikipedia

Malta

Wikipedia

They decided to try to find some land on Malta to build another small apartment complex on, near one of the hotels, so after the holidays Sandy and Loraine took the companies’ flights over there.

They went straight to the fast talking real estate broker they had used for their other purchases, telling him their desires.

He quickly looked into this computer and spotted three possibilities.

After looking on the map, Sandy said, “Those are all too far from our hotels; I guess we will just drive around the areas we want, and see what is available… see you later; bye…”

The real estate guy responded, “I have one, I have one, I have one near there; near there, very near there, I have ½ of a block that I was going to develop myself, I have a half a block near there, I have a half of a block, I have a half of a block, that will work, but it is expensive, it is expensive, very valuable land, very valuable, I would need €3,000,000; €3,000,000, €3,000,000 would be as low as I could go on that, It took me three years to compile that ½ of a block, three years, over three years, yeah, over three years……………….………”

Sandy said, “Stop talking! Let’s go look at it.”

The guy never did shut his mouth for the duration of the five minute drive to the location, three blocks behind their main hotel with all the tunnels going to it. (In the previous books, they discovered that the bomb shelter under the hotel they purchased had tunnels with rail tracks going to several military places in Malta, and was used by the British army during WW-1 and WW-2).

It was some cheaply built housing, build during WW-1.

After walking around and discovering that a lot of squatters were moved in, even though the power and water were cut off to the buildings, and a big ugly fence was around the properties, Sandy said, “Here is the deal; we will give you €2,500,000 for the parts you have already, and a €20,000 cash commission for any more houses you can get on this block; try to get all 9, for reasonable prices, and you pocket €180,000 more…”

“No, no, that’s too low, no, no, that’s too low, maybe €2,800,000, how about €2,800,000? No, that’s too low………”

Sandy said, “Drop us off at the hotel; call me tomorrow afternoon.”

It was dinnertime, so they went directly to the steakhouse; the manager, Burney, came and started on the normal 50 questions. Loraine said, “…Sit down here and relax”; and then the three of them kicked back with some bottles of wine for the evening.

At one point in the evening, Sandy called the kid architect that was in Albania designing their buildings to look like they were already 2000 years old, inviting him to come over tomorrow to look at their possible new project.

The next afternoon they looked at the land again, and then settled into the office to discuss the possibilities. The first thing the architect said was”…Anything over four floors would look out of place as a 2000 year old building, we could go slightly higher, but it would have to look like less than 200 years old…”

Sandy said, “Sheldon wants whatever we build here to look 2000 years old; so figure four floors above ground and one or two below for parking…”

“Holey shit; digging down would be too expensive; that’s solid rock…”

Sandy said, “Yeah, that would make the place cost too much; figure one floor of parking or a parking building that has the outside facade of the stone construction…”

The real estate guy called and said, “……………..I got the middle 7; but the two corner people think their land is more valuable and should be turned into stores……………”

Sandy replied, “Well it is; a little; figure 20% more… Tell them both that if they don’t sell out they will end up with a ten meter wall on both sides of them for our parking garage; that might get them going…”

They figured to spot the babbling real estate guy three more days, and flew over to the farm/resort at Albania to visit Lori.

Tony was still working on trying to get enough hours for an Italian commercial pilot’s license, so he came over to Malta to give the girls a ride over to Albania, and it was a good excuse to get out of town for a while anyway.

After stopping in Trina to clear customs, they flew to the partially completed landing strip at the farm.

As they were approaching the farm, Sandy noticed that the big barn was about double in size now. Tony said, “They added on to the restaurant/tavern, now that there are more workers here for the construction, and the resort. (The pub started as a corner in a big barn, and then gradually increased until the whole barn was converted into a bar/restaurant) They liked the crude place and didn’t want to build a higher class place…”

Sandy asked as they were touching down, “I hope they put in a better bathroom?”

Tony replied, “That is the one thing that looks out of place in there; they are big and nice; the bricklayers from the overpass project spent two weeks in there…”

As usual, the workers were excited to show them all the progress of all the construction projects. The antique looking overpass over the highway was taking much longer than they had planned on; after two years it was only about ½ finished, but looking good. (They were making it look like a Roman water canal.) The crews had placed a lot of signs and flashing lights in the area, so the cars would slow down; there were no wrecks during this time, so far. (A car going about 130 mph (250 km/h) ran into a farm tractor, triggering the construction of the overpass.)

The last 2000 feet (610 m) of the runway was another problem; they were filling the area to make a dam for the creek, as well as for the airstrip on the top.

Tony suggested, “Why don’t you build a big building under the runway about 40 feet (12 m) high, like they did at the Full Moon Island for the distillery and rum storage area?”

They called Armin Grossenbaucher and Sheldon to discuss the matter, but they decided that in this case the extra 40 feet (12 m) of height for the water would produce a lot more electricity and was worth the wait for the dirt to keep coming.

Two years ago, Sheldon and Lori had given the local people the permission to build a new armory to replace some of the caves they wanted to have them abandon in the resort area. They built a huge basement under what will be a restaurant building in the tourist area. They built it about 180 feet (55 m) by 180 feet (55 m) and over 20 feet (6 m) deep with a secret, high security, door in an equipment room. When they toured the new facility, they were astounded at the amount of weapons that were being stashed there. Sophie said, “…Now that we can’t go into hiding very well during the next war, we will have to fight the aggressors… Plus, a lot of people in the government think that the relics belong to the government; we may have to fight them…”

They toured the security’s control cave/basement under one of the new houses. They had added more of the remote controlled 50 caliber machine guns; 10 instead of six at the entry to the farm from the highway, six along the landing strip, 10 to cover the docks, and 15 around the museum. Some were the pillars that looked like streetlights, as they had planned, but most were hidden on the top of the concrete buildings.

Sandy called Sheldon, “…We better call a meeting of you, Dom, Joe, Lori, Tony, Loraine, and me over on Malta in a few days…”

They spent one more day looking over the developments at the resort area and spending a lot of time in the new bar.

The next day they went back to Malta. Sheldon, Dom, Joe, and Loraine had already arrived.

They held their meeting in the Dungeon Night Club during the day when it was shut down. (They had built a huge nightclub in an underground bomb shelter, under the hillside by a hotel they built.) They decided that there wasn’t much they could do about the armament in Albania, except to keep on friendly terms with the controlling blonde-haired people. They had purchased the place for almost nothing and the profit was already close to break even, so if they lost it later they would still be slightly ahead, and they wouldn’t keep heavy amounts of cash stashed there. They figured there would never be a war in Albania for many years, so the risk was worth it, and as an added benefit, they would do a good job annihilating any potential robbers.

Sandy and Loraine went to talk to the two holdouts on the corners of the block where they wanted to build the apartments on Malta. It turned out they just didn’t trust dealing with Sam.

The young architect showed them pictures of places on Malta that they would emulate into their plans:

They decide to make it two floors of apartments above one floor of parking, similar to the picture below, but adjusted for bigger cars.

Wikipedia

The garage doors would look antique but actually have motor controllers.

As is customary in the Mediterranean, the building goes out to the edges of the property lines, with a big private courtyard in the center of the block.

There will build a mixture of very small studios up to huge four bedroom units.

They wouldn’t use the electric light fixtures pictured in the photographs; rather they would build some that would swing out from the roof as the sun is setting and some that would pop out of walls at sunset.

In light of the bad economy, Joe made some major changes to the resort and biodiesel manufacturing plant he was building in northern Colombia.

They put more emphasis into making the biodiesel and ethanol for shipment to the Caribbean, and the States. Farmers were trucking in the grains from further in Colombia and Venezuela. They bought up more land and expanded the docks to hold two little tanker ships simultaneously.

Lori found a well used Boeing 737 tanker that holds 12,000 gallons (45,500 l) that was used by a company for firefighting in Wyoming. They started making runs of bio-diesel to several locations that have airstrips adjacent to storage tanks, and are a long ways from docks: the tequila farm in Mexico, and the resorts at the Playa Pacifica, Rochester Minnesota, Vancouver Washington, Belize, and Alcester South Dakota.

Joe had Dom come down to the Colombian resort, and they made many changes to the security plans, after the kidnapping situation, and the buildup of weapons at Albania. They decided to hide all the remote controlled guns in the sides of concrete buildings, instead of the streetlight poles that were now common knowledge to a certain extent. They decided to start immediately on the project, and expand the quantity around the freight docks, trying to position them so they couldn’t accidently fire into the storage tanks.

Fortunately, they had buried a 96-fiber-pairs bundle from the dock to the farm, so they could have two control centers with full controls for both locations.

The resort was still in the construction stage, so they upped security level there too.

Lori went back down to Peru to deal with setting up the train system. The piece of land next to the little farm they had purchased to put their rail siding on had a beautiful antique house that Lori managed to purchase for an office building, and a place to stay whenever company people would have to go there.

Photos by Paul Winquist ©2009

ToC

Chapter 161 - Cultural Evolution

The Ecuadorian government had booted the US DEA from their country, but at the same time increased their border security with Colombia.

The border patrol people in Ecuador started using the road/driveway that the company had built along the border, on the Ecuador side, effectively stopping the shipment of farm products across the border on the back roads.

Gomez was forced to start shipping his crops at his port in Tumaco Colombia. The big ship with the passenger capabilities is faster than the other ship, so it now stops in Tumaco Colombia, as well as the company port at the plantation in Ecuador, on each of its two-week runs.

Melissa had constructed a radio studio in one of the rooms of Tony’s unused suite at the Playa Pacifica. This has been the meeting location where Sheldon and Melissa would slip away to lately, for a little afternoon delight, whenever Sheldon is in Costa Rica.

One day Melissa said, “…I want another baby…”

Sheldon said, “…Oh…oh…How are you going to do that: do you have another boyfriend?”

“No; can’t you get your vasectomy reversed for a while?”

“Maybe you should just get inseminated at a fertility clinic?”

“No! I want you to be the father; Brian should have a real brother, not a half brother…”

“I guess I could call Dr. Ralph and see what the options are…”

Sheldon did call Ralph; and he explained a technique of micro epididymal sperm aspiration to get the sperm out of him, and technique of in vitro fertilization to get her pregnant.

Melissa got on the phone and they discussed the timing, and they set an appointment for a week and a half from then up in Las Vegas.

Photo by Paul Winquist

Curtis, the general manager at the Panama resort, called Sheldon one day, “…There is a guy doing a tremendous amount of trading of the gold for various other currencies and coming out ahead of our rakes; he is some kind of super millionaire from New York, staying in one of the best villas, and spending most of every day in the sports book, where we have the display of the world currencies coming up on a monitor 24/7. He has mentioned that he was a big time trader in New York, before the economy turned to shit, and got his tremendous wad out just in time. He also spends a lot of time talking on his cell phone making some kind of stock trades using his laptop computer to get data…” (The company started making the gaming chips with gold imbedded inside each one. These are used in all their casinos outside the US, where it is outlawed, as money on the tables and machines. Every day they would adjust the exchange rate for the various currencies in the morning. The chips were made in twelve denominations of grams of gold from about $2 to $20,000. Each chip has a serial number and a transponder imbedded so the computers can keep track of the individual coins.)

Sheldon asked, “How much is he into us for?”

“Yeah; that’s the weird part; he is up about 2.6 million dollars on the gold trading, but down about 1.1 million on the sports betting; the guy is a fool when it comes to sports bets, but a genius on the day trading and the currency fluctuations.”

Sheldon asked, “So, we are comping him in on the Frank Lloyd Wright’s Pope House looking villa and food?”

“Yes, he made friends with the sports book manager; and from the sports betting point of view he deserves it.”

“Does the guy ever leave the island?”

Curtis answered, “I think he may be sort of hiding here, from some legal problems in the states or enemies.”

“Yeah; a guy like that would have some serious enemies, and probably some legal problems too. What’s his status about relatives with him or girl friends?”

“Oh; he has three guys staying in the villa that are on computers all day and night, but they don’t come over to the casino, or other places very often. They all use the services of the local girls regularly.”

“How about other customers making money on our gold chips?”

“No; he is the only one; they all put down at least one or two bets a day to keep from paying the fees, and I think they all drop enough to cover our costs. It turns out that your theory about stock and currency traders are always also gamblers is true; looks like they get bored with what they are good at, and then walk over to the tables or the sports book and place stupid bets…”

After Sheldon got off the phone with Curtis, he called Sandy, “…Look into the computers and see how we are doing with the currency traders that use our gold?”

Sandy replied, “We don’t have a program set up to show those totals; I’ll have one of the accountants put together a report, and the programmers set up a report that we can always go look at quickly…”

Then Sheldon called Dom, “…It’s time for you and a few of your friends to take a week vacation down on the Panamanian Island Resort… let’s meet up about Wednesday evening…”

Sandy called back the next morning, “…I e-mailed you a report of the major users; I sent the 1000 biggest traders in order according to their total trading volume, showing their fees, their gambling drop, and gambling winnings. There is one customer that has clipped us for 2.6 million on the gold trading, but has only dropped about 1.1 million on the gambling; all the rest are good. That guy is down in Panama…”

“How long did it take the guy to rack up that profit?”

“It looks like he started about 7 months ago, and has made several trades every day…”

Sheldon cut her off, so she wouldn’t mention the guy’s name over the cell phones, “I’m going over to Panama next Wednesday anyway, so I will look into the matter; thanks for the data; I need to deal with this customer here…bye…”

On Wednesday evening, Sheldon and Jeanne flew over to the Panamanian island from Ecuador where they were kicking back.

After they were settled in and had dinner, Sheldon told Jeanne, that he needed to go talk to Dom for a while. Sheldon and Dom rode Sheldon’s trick golf cart up to the top of the hill by the lighthouse tower. (They always built lighthouses on the costal properties to function as a landmark and house communications equipment including a cell site and an FM radio station playing their channel). They walked up to the top of the tower to check out the view because there were people in the spas. It was a tremendous view that balmy night, and they could see way up into Costa Rica and down to Panama City’s lights.

Sheldon explained the situation and said, “…I’ll talk to the mutt to see about recovering some of the losses; most likely this will just turn out to be a real vacation for you and your guys… Go over to my villa about noon and spend the afternoon around the pool and patios just for good luck. Leave your tools in one of the bedrooms… Set up a microphone on the granite patio table in the shade closest to my kitchen door, so you guys can listen to the conversation and respond if it becomes necessary…”

It had been a couple of months since Sheldon had been to the island, so in the morning a little business meeting formed of all the department heads, and main supervisors. Almost the whole meeting no one mentioned the guy making money on the gold trading for currencies. Curtis brought it up, “What are we going to do about Bernie’s excessive gold trading?”

Sheldon was disappointed that he brought up the topic in front of other people so he said, “I had Sandy research this possible problem, and we decided to discuss this policy issue on next Monday’s meeting.”

About 11:00 Sheldon told Dom, “…Go get Bernie; tell him we need to talk about investments over lunch. Let him know that I am a main man with hundreds of millions to invest; that should get him coming. Take my good golf cart for effect.”

Then he told Jeanne, “…I need you to go visit Nadine or something for a few hours.”

She sensed the situation, said, “OH!”, and then quickly departed.

Sheldon had four marble patio tables build on his patio, equipped with power outlets, cat-5 connections, TV cable, several phone lines, and a water faucet on each one. Each one was about eight feet in diameter and on a reinforced concrete pillar that is covered with granite. A one foot square (0.09 m²) box in the middle had all the connections. There was a flower planter on top of each one, where Dom’s crew placed a microphone in the appropriate one.

Dom drove the golf cart right up to the table where Sheldon was drinking coffee. Dom introduced Bernie and Sheldon, and then Bernie asked, “What’s this all about?”

Sheldon replied, “Kick back and we’ll have some lunch.” Sheldon called out for Mia to come get their orders.

Photo by Paul Winquist

Dom walked over about 150 feet (46 m) where there was a table and some chairs on the far end of the yard, past the pools, and joined the other three guards looking like some kind of tourists. He put the earphone into the ear farthest from Sheldon and Bernie.

Bernie was about as Sheldon pictured him to be: a short, bald, chubby, guy with a Hawaiian type colorful shirt; but he had some obvious implanted hair that didn’t quite match his real hair. He ordered a cheeseburger with fries, as if he was in a restaurant. Mia asked what kind of cheese he preferred and then she departed.

Bernie said, “We already looked at your stocks; they aren’t traded enough for us to make any money on them.”

Sheldon said, “No; we are trying to buy up all of our stocks ourselves, so we keep a guy watching for them to become available.”

“So, what’s this all about then?”

“I have a report here on your financial activities here; we like the fact that you have dropped about 1.1 million dollars on the sports and table games, however it also says that you have profited, at our expense, about 2.6 million by trading our gold for various currencies. It all looks legal and proper because you are doing some gambling to get around paying the trading fees on the gold chips.”

“That’s right; I play by your rules.”

“Yes, that’s true; what I want to do is figure out a way for us both to come out ahead though.”

“How are you going to do that?”

“Somehow we need to split the profits on the currency trading. I don’t mind you making money on the stocks using our internet connections, as long as you keep playing the tables and sports with some of your profits. So let me pick your brain a minute and we might figure something out. Just out of curiosity; how much are you making on the stocks, because we have no way of knowing that?”

“That’s basically none of your business; but I will say that we have been lucky since we moved out of the US; maybe around a hundred million a year.”

“So your profits from gold are much less?”

“Oh no, much more.”

“Hum; how does that work; who are the other losers then?”

“Losers; no one looses; its changes in the value of the currencies from day to day, and hour to hour.”

“So, by the same logic you look at day trading profits as not hurting anyone?”

“Yeah, it’s spread out over millions of investors.”

“Wow; this is interesting; how big is your total working pile of assets?”

“About 1.1 billion.”

“How much of that profit is since you sort of moved down here?”

“We had about 900 million then.”

“Good, so we have a basis of everyone becoming happy.”

“What do you mean?”

“I like everyone to be happy. You have three helpers; what are their roles?”

“Two do day-trading and one helps me with the currency.”

“So, the pile is yours, and they are workers; or part owners?”

“It’s my money; I treat them guys good.”

Sheldon paused a while, “Well; let me propose a deal that we can all be happy with: how about for the past you just pay us the 2.6 million we lost, because of your currency and gold trading; you keep all the other profits you made. We’ll forget the $17,000 a week for the villa because you did some gambling to cover that. In the future, you can pay the $17,000 a week for the villa, and the fees on the gold to currency conversions, and we’ll not charge you on the backward currency to gold transactions. That should make everyone happy.”

Mia brought the cheeseburger and the pile of fruit that Sheldon wanted, so he didn’t get a chance to answer. Once Mia walked back into the house, and Bernie was devouring the cheeseburger, Sheldon said, “Excuse me a minute.” He walked into the kitchen and told Mia and the housekeeper to take the rest of the day off.

When Sheldon returned to the table he asked, “So does that sound like a good solution, so that we can all ‘live happily ever after’ on this little paradise island?”

“No; I won that money on the gold playing by your rules, and like you say, I am down a lot on the sports betting.”

“How about the future plan?”

“No; you are changing the rules.”

“That’s true the rules are changing right now, for all the traders, not the tourists.”

“No; you guys can’t do that.”

Sheldon didn’t like the ass hole’s attitude; “We just did!!! Now I am canceling the offer on the future, in your case, and requesting that you be on the 4:30 flight out of here to Costa Rica, where you can transfer to wherever you are going.”

“I can’t go to Costa Rica or the US.”

“Then pick another destination.”

“Okay; I’ll pay you the money.”

“No; that offer was already cancelled.”

“You can’t do this to me, I have dropped a lot of money in your casino.”

“You have ripped off millions of people’s money from their retirement funds with your day-trading; that pisses me off.” Sheldon wanted to shoot the fucker with his .38, but could see golfers out on the fairway that would notice the situation.

Sheldon continued, “There is no way to repay those millions of victims, and I suspect your legal problems in the US are serious; so, I will make another proposal: you donate 1.1 billion dollars to our scholarship fund; I will leave you with a hundred grand to live on in Albania, where I will send you to live in peace… You can work in the little business college we are setting up there.”

“You can’t rob me like that”!!!

“I am doing it; weather you choose to live in Albania, or our beautiful little grave yard over there, after you bequeath the money to the scholarship fund.”

The short fat rabbit took off running toward the golf course where Dom’s guys intercepted him, like he was running with a football, and had him in cuffs in a couple seconds. He was escorted back to the table where Sheldon was still casually sipping on his coffee.

Sheldon said to Dom, “Take his cell phone over to the villa he is staying in, and then bring the other three guys over here… Leave their cell phones there too. Hook this rabbit to the chair over there, so he can’t waddle off…”

Photo by Paul Winquist

Once Dom and the guards drove off, Sheldon asked Bernie, “…So, what criminal charges are you looking at in the states?”

He replied, “Costa Rica; a Ponzi scheme; it never was very big we did a good job on the day trading, except for a stretch when the economy went bad up in the states.”

“Do you have a list of the victims?”

“No; all our computers were taken by the government.”

“Okay, we don’t want to open a can of worms there. Are those police looking for you?”

“I have new ID from here in Panama.”

“How about the other three guys?”

“They have problems in New York, small problems, just little stuff.”

“Do your kids know you are here?”

“Oh, no; we disappeared clean.”

“You disappeared clean with almost a billion dollars?”

“No; investments, not cash.”

“So, it’s all electronic; no paper or cash? How did you get the working money in currencies in the casino?”

“Wire transfers from the various brokerage houses.”

“Oh. So have you decided to go to Albania in a peaceful manner, or are we going to have to put you in our cemetery.”

“This isn’t right. What about the other guys?”

“It will depend on their attitude; we can’t be having them be in a bad mood here or in Albania. The currency trader we may want to keep for our scholarship fund. The day traders will likely end up in our beautiful cemetery; you know we keep three fulltime gardeners keeping the place like a wonderful park you will like it... …How much is the currency-trader worth with his personal assets?”

Photo by Paul Winquist

“Ezra is probably around a couple hundred grand.”

“How about the day-traders?”

“Steve is running from legal problems in New York and didn’t bring more than a few grand. Martin is worth a few million dollars.”

“Martin’s money is from day-trading; or from a worthwhile occupation?”

“Day-trading.”

Dom, the three guards, and the three guys arrived riding one of the golf carts with trailers. The three traders got vocal when they seen Bernie handcuffed to the chair.

Sheldon said, “Ezra, we need to take a walk, the rest of you relax here... I sent Mia home so one of you security guys, go in and make some more coffee.”

Ezra followed Sheldon as he walked toward the golf course green. Once out of range of everyone’s ears he said, “Bernie has retired from the gold and currency trading business. I will make you an offer to come work for our scholarship fund for $100,000 a year, doing gold and currency trading. You can stay on this island or we will set you up with a new identity, and can work in Costa Rica, America, Ecuador, Brazil, Colombia, The Cayman Islands, Belize, Uruguay, Italy, Malta, or Albania; OR, you can be on the flight out of here at 4:30 to wherever you want to go.”

Ezra asked, “You going to kill Bernie?”

“That’s one possibility, or we might send him to Albania to work in a college over there; he is not staying here, and he is not staying in business.”

“So you know my legal problems?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, you are offering to help me stay hidden? Wow, that doesn’t sound right; why would you do that for me?”

“I dislike day-traders, and need someone to do gold manipulations, with the funds Bernie is bequeathing to the scholarship fund.”

“Okay, what do I do?”

“Go back to the villa you are staying in…walking slowly; we’ll contact you in a few hours. Do you have the necessary account and password data, or do we need to extract it from Bernie?”

“I have all the currency trading accounts, but the other guys do the stocks… I have some of the stock accounts, but not all.”

“Good; go relax for a while. Don’t touch any of the computers or phones; is that going to be a problem?”

“I understand the situation. This is good put an extra bullet into Bernie for me.”

Sheldon got to thinking how this is a tremendous amount of money for someone to acquire without anyone knowing about it, or having pissed off a lot of people, or scammed some big investors; so he asked Ezra, “How much of Bernie’s money came from big investors, or sort of a Ponzi scheme?”

“That’s why we had to leave Costa Rica.”

“Do you have a list of the investors; Bernie says it was taken by the government?”

“I know some of them.”

“How much belongs to little old ladies that should be returned?”

“Oh, probably none; he always targeted other investor’s funds; so it could never be sorted out very easily.”

Meanwhile at the table all three guys were pleading for their lives with Dom.

Dom said, “Shut the fuck up; it’s not my decision. Shut up; or I will shut you up now…”

When Sheldon got back to his villa, he went straight into his office, bypassing the group outside, and called Joe using the scrambler. He explained the situation in brief to Joe.

Joe suggested, “Let’s leave the gold trader there and I’ll have Sue send an expert along those lines, to get him set up in the office building there for now. Bring the other three rabbits down to Ecuador where we have more options open. I’ll have Sue, and at least one stock specialist MBA, meet us there to deal with the accounts…”

From his office Sheldon called Dom’s cell phone, “…come over to my office here.”

Once settled into the office Sheldon said, “…Send one guard, and I’ll send some laborers, to move Ezra’s computers into the office building, and his personal stuff into a regular hotel room, so he will have a tendency to stay in the office more… We’ll take the three rabbits to Ecuador this afternoon, where we will meet up with Joe and Sue, because too much money is involved here; we need to think about this situation; these rabbits must have enemies looking for them, or government clowns that may be a problem for us later, if we take over their wad. I’ll spot the group moving Ezra an hour and then we’ll take these rabbits over to pack their stuff up.”

Then Sheldon called Jeanne, “…File a flight plan to the Ecuador resort for in a few hours from now with the Gulfstream…”

Sheldon and Dom walked back out to the patio. Sheldon said, “Cut Bernie loose… …You know Dom’s guys can run much faster than you.”

Dom added, for effect, “I love to shoot rabbits on the run.”

Sheldon said, “I have been thinking about this whole situation; you guys are a real profitable team, so we may want to form some kind of partnership, to be able to keep some aspects of your little company going.”

Steve asked, with a fearful look on his face, “Where is Ezra?”

Sheldon responded, “We hired him away from your group to deal with our gold and currency matters for our main corporation. He was happy to accept our $100,000 a year offer, and is in the process of moving his office into our office building.”

The three guys started simultaneously asking about their future with the company.

Sheldon said, “You guys have been here seven months already; it’s time to side track any investigators that are probably already closing in, the way you have been using the internet and phones so freely. I want our MBAs to study your successful techniques, and we will separate the legitimate ways to make quick money from the scams that hurt people, so we can continue with everyone being happy.”

Bernie said, “That’s my accounts that Ezra is working on.”

Sheldon said, “Well that is sort of true; however we need to have the MBAs that we are going to meet figure out who gets what, to make everyone happy. Therefore, we will go down to Ecuador where we can work on this project, away from any possible investigators, or at least we will set the investigators back a few months. You will like it down there and we can get another generation of ID made so you can travel freely around the world. We can set up the internet system to give the investigators the illusion that you are still here on the island, where we can spot them while you are 800 miles (1,287 km) away in the other resort, banana plantation, or the jungle of Ecuador. We can see trouble coming real good there too, so if there is a problem you can slip up to Colombia, or out in the jungle where no one can find you.”

Dom added, after thinking about his last comment about shooting a rabbit, “We have a plastic surgeon that can make some quick changes in your appearance, before you get photographed for your new IDs; we had a guy that they shrank his huge nose and ears down to normal, and implanted some hair; he is living in Sicily now where he is a new man.”

All three guys started feeling their faces.

Sheldon added, to kill more time, “There is a nice old plantation house where we will set you up temporarily; it has high speed internet and the same TV system as here... We will have the internet route everything through this island, to give the illusion that you are still here. We are setting Ezra up with a connection that will give the illusion that he is down in Brazil, at one of our plantations, way up the Amazon River, where we can see any investigators coming… And, if you think these rent-a-girls are nice, you will love the Ecuadorian girls, they are so friendly, and for fifty bucks will fuck you all afternoon until your dick is sore… The coke is pure; right from across the border in Colombia, if you are into that… Have you all three of you got the ID from Panama and passports?”

Steve spoke up, “We have passports; no other ID; we never did pay for driver’s licenses because it looks like we don’t need them here.”

Sheldon said, “Good; that will make customs easy. How about weapons; you can’t bring weapons into Ecuador, or they will throw you right into their jail.”

Stave answered gain, “No; we came from Costa Rica where there were also no weapons.”

Jeanne called and needed the names of all the passengers, so that killed the necessary fifteen minutes more.

Sheldon said, “…Well; let’s go pack up your stuff, so we can get going, we’ll take this tram; it should all fit in here; right?”

Martin started whining about liking it here and not wanting to move.

Sheldon said, “Your villa would cost $17,000 a week here, and we can put you into a nice plantation house over there that is not being used anyway. You will like it; it was remodeled by a rich drug smuggler with all the trick security measures you will want.”

Photo by Paul Winquist

Dom added, for effect “When José remodeled it, they put in TV cameras, and hidden explosives in the walkways to deal with the DEA fuckers that they figured would show up.”

Sheldon and Dom were surprised that they had acquired six full desktop computer systems in addition to their laptops. Sheldon called in six more laborers to bring some boxes and pack everything up.

Three hours later, they landed the Gulfstream at the Ecuador plantation and resort. Sheldon had called ahead to have two crews of porters and trams. Sheldon announced as they were unloading in Ecuador, “…The plantation house is not cleaned up yet, and its dinner time now; so put all the computer stuff on this tram and take it to José’s plantation house up the road toward Ecuador, and let’s take the suitcases and all the people over to the resort for the night…”

They took the guys to a three bedroom suite, and then over to the bar on the patio to order dinner. The three guys, Dom, and the three guards sat at one table and then Sheldon and Jeanne took off for their villa over by the port to meet Joe, Sue, and the accountants. As soon as they all met up in the lodge’s dining room, Sheldon said, “…The topic we are all here to discuss better wait until the morning,” so, they proceeded to enjoy dinner.

Sheldon, Dom, and Joe walked up the road to the winery discussing the situation as they walked. Sheldon asked, “…This is just too good to be true; what am I looking at wrong here?”

Joe replied, “These mutts have accumulated the wad over years in the States, and then added to it in Costa Rica, and for seven months in Panama… They are so greedy that all four of them have skipped out so clean that not any of their family knows where they are. They can never go back to Costa Rica or the States. We are stealing from the crooks; it doesn’t bother my conscience. Are you sure Ezra shouldn’t disappear too, so this matter is completely forgotten by everyone?”

“Maybe; I’ll have the computer geeks monitor him for a few weeks.”

Dom added, “This is right; you are like Robin Hood; their money is from thieving, and you are giving it to the scholarship fund; it’s good.”

Joe said, “Let’s go for it; but I don’t think we want Sue or the MBAs to know what is going on, as to the final destination of the three mutts.”

Sheldon said, “I was figuring the one that likes coke can be in the headhunter’s bar-b-cue; and the other two can fall out of a plane.

Joe said, “Let’s let Sue in on the password extraction phase, so that we know it all works.”

Sheldon said, “Yeah; we’ll have her give a slideshow to the rabbits, about the benefits of the scholarship fund, and then get the account data online to the MBAs waiting in the lodge, and then once it is all verified we separate Sue from the guys, by sending her back to the lodge before we deal with the fools.”

Sheldon called the accountant that was working with Ezra, “…How did it come out getting the various accounts transferred over to the scholarship fund?”

He replied, “…He doesn’t know some of the passwords, and is thinking that there are accounts that he doesn’t know about, that only Bernie has the information…”

“…Sounds like you’re doing good, Melvin, let him know we are happy with what we have, and have him get going on manipulating the currencies in the scholarship fund’s accounts; his specialty. Make sure you learn from him; we’ll leave you there for a month or so, to study his tactics…”

After that conversation was over, Dom Said, “It probably would be better to give the sales pitch for the scholarship fund by us; maybe Sue shouldn’t know all the details.”

Joe replied, “Yeah; she doesn’t need to know the guys.”

Sheldon called over to the resort manager, Don, and said, “…have the porters take two more desks and some nice chairs from some unrented suites over to José’s plantation house very early in the morning, and then we will retrieve them the next day; it’s just a one day project…”

About 7:00 the next morning, Sheldon called over to the suite that the guys are in and told them, “…Come over to the convention room and we’ll have some breakfast…”

Dom and the three security guards joined them for breakfast. After they were settled in, and had ordered, Sheldon said, “…I’ll show you some pictures of the scholarship fund’s projects that you will be developing funds to support…” He showed them many pictures of the college in Costa Rica, the little developing college in Albania, the schools at all the plantations, and the English classes in Las Vegas.

The computer geeks had set up Sue, and the three accountants from Las Vegas, into a temporary office in the lodge building, and rigged up the fibers, so that the computers that they will be putting into José’s house will be 100% monitored, including their cell phones and portable computers on the Wi-Fi system.

Eventually Sheldon said, “Well; I have the computer geeks scheduled to meet us over there at 9:00 to help you all get set up; so we better get going…”

As soon as the guys looked around José’s place a while, Bernie asked, “Where is the security system you talked about?”

Sheldon faked. “Well; that’s a good question; what’s up Dom?”

“I don’t know; I’ll call over to the security guys and see what they did with the gear.” Dom pretended to talk to the chief of security for the resort and plantation, and scheduled them to reinstall the system as soon as they could get some more monitors and cameras shipped down from the states.

Sheldon asked the guys, “Do you want me to have the kitchen people send workers here, or do you want to use the restaurant? Oh those key cards I gave you work like credit cards in the restaurants and stores; don’t be afraid to buy whatever you want or need…”

They answered that they wanted the cooks like at the villa in Panama, but would use the restaurants sometimes.

It only took a half hour for them to get their stuff into the 200-year-old bedrooms, and all the computers set up and tested. Sheldon thanked the computer geeks, and sent them on their way.

Dom and the three security guards were sitting in lawn chairs out front of the house, and Dom was listening from a regular telephone on the center desk that he had the local security guys route the audio to his cell phone, via a special phone number.

Sheldon said, “It’s time to get started; the first phase is to get all the account information up to the accountants in Las Vegas, so they can analyze what we have to work with.”

Bernie asked, “I thought we were going to be working for you?”

Sheldon answered, “Yes; with your money.”

Bernie was not happy, “No! I thought we would work with your money to expand it.”

Sheldon said, “We are going to group it all together; that’s the best approach; you will have an even bigger pool to work with, to expand the total assets of the scholarship fund.”

Steve said, “That makes sense, Bernie, they want us to combine assets… Hum how will it be split later?”

Bernie said, “They are robbing us here; they are taking my funds.”

Martin asked, “Are we going to be paid $100,000 a year like Ezra?”

Sheldon answered, “Absolutely, and you, Martin, and Bernie get to keep $100,000 grand a year, separate for your retirement fund to start with.”

Martin was pissed, “You are robbing me too?”

“No you are donating the excess to the scholarship fund; just like Bernie.”

Bernie said, “I thought we were coming here to work for you, making up a new partnership.”

Sheldon answered, “That is exactly what we are doing; like we agreed; you keep $100,000 a year, and the rest goes into the scholarship fund.”

Dom sensed that Sheldon could be in physical danger, so the guards all walked into the house and sat in extra comfortable chairs, and the couch.

The guys had scared and pissed looks on their faces.

Sheldon said, “Ok; let’s start with the passwords to all these computers; e-mail them to new9999@coronadoscholorshipfund.com, a special account we set up.”

Martin said, “You don’t need the passwords for us to do the job.”

Sheldon said, “I guess you missed the conversation I had with Bernie about how either you work for us and be happy, or we plant you in our beautiful cemetery, under some freshly planted flowers.”

Steve and Martin both expressed their desire to cooperate.

Sheldon said, “Ok; you two get started. Martin I need you to e-mail Ezra all of your currency and gold account numbers, pass words, and so on, to: Ezracssf@coronadopanama.com.”

Sheldon knew all the passwords were being collected as the guys logged on to their computers by the computer geeks, so he wasn’t surprised when the computer guy called Sheldon, “…Martin entered his password to one computer wrong to the e-mail address…”

“Thanks.”

Sheldon pulled his gun out of his shoulder holster and put a .38 hollow point into the side of Martin’s head faster than he could react. The bullet went through his head and trashed the computer screen, along with debris from his head, and then his head fell onto the keyboard, making a gross bloody mess.

Photos by Paul Winquist

Sheldon said, “He lied about one of his passwords, thus choosing the beautiful cemetery with lots of flowers option… Hum under the yellow flowers by the sidewalk…”

Then Sheldon called the computer guy back, “…Please send a new monitor and a keyboard over to my project…”

The remaining guys were sitting there in complete frozen silence.

Then Sheldon called the head gardener for the resort, “…Please send a gardener with a backhoe and four plats of colorful flowers over to José’s plantation house.”

Dom and his three guards were looking at the mess.

Sheldon said, “Put the rabbit out on the back porch for now, and then clean up the place here; there is cleaning supplies in that room off of the back porch. Does one of you guys know how to run a backhoe?”

One guard quickly said, “Yes.”

Bernie and Steve were still in frozen silence, so Sheldon said, “You can continue now.”

Steve leaned over and puked, while Bernie was watching, still frozen.

Steve said, after a little pause, “I’ll clean it up.” He went for the cleanup tools.

Sheldon walked out front to intercept the guys he knew would be coming.

First, a girl came with a brand new Samsung 28 inch (71 cm), 16X9 aspect ratio, flat screen monitor, still in the box, and keyboard. Sheldon said, “…Just put them on the seat of that cart there…”

Two gardeners showed up, one driving the backhoe, and one with the flowers in a small pickup truck. Sheldon said, “Just park the backhoe over there and ride back with him…”

A few minutes later Sheldon was telling the guard that can run a backhoe, “…Take out that ugly yellow bed of flowers, and dig down about four feet; you know what we need, fertilizer, and then plant those new colorful flowers… Take your time and do a very neat job… We’ll spring for a new suite....”

When Sheldon went back in Steve said, “All the passwords are in…”

“Good; now let’s start sending all the account’s data to the accountants… Bernie, how is it going there?”

“Okay; some of the accounts need to be called from my cellphone, so the caller ID will be recognized.”

“In that case, for those accounts, transfer the currency or gold into some account numbers I will get you… We need to know what country they are in, so we can use the same countries to make things smoother; e-mail a little table to Ezra, so they can let you know the proper accounts.”

About a half hour ago, Sheldon had ordered a late lunch/dinner brought over, so they arrived, walking over the dirt on the sidewalk, with bizarre looks on their faces, and then everyone went into the eating mode. The three guards were out front in their lawn chairs, the two guys were in the dining room, while Dom and Sheldon were sitting on the front porch.

Bernie slipped out the back door and ran into the jungle of banana plants. Dom and Sheldon didn’t realize it until Steve walked out and told them.

Dom’s guys ran out into the jungle, but came back when they realized it was a lost cause.

Banana Plants

Wikipedia

Sheldon called the technician on duty, and had him shut down the phone system for outside calls for a while.

Dom called the local security department to have them on the lookout for Ezra, telling them that he was ducking out on his ship passage payment.

Sheldon called the Chief Headhunter and had him send whatever guys were available instantaneously over to the project.

Dom said, “I have always wanted to go rabbit hunting with a helicopter with a machinegun.”

Sheldon said, “M-16s and the ultralights; let’s go.”

It was a slow process because they had to ride the slow golf cart tram to get the guns out of the storage trailer, and then commandeered a faster cart to get them to the ultralight concession by the resort.

2 Photos by Paul Winquist

By the time they got over the area the sun was setting, so they only had a half hour of dusk to look for the rabbit; they didn’t spot him.

Simultaneously, the headhunters realized it was getting dark, and got six night vision goggles for the hunt. They looked all night and never did spot Bernie.

Joe called Sheldon, “What happened; the flow of data stopped?”

Sheldon said, “Oh; I forgot to call you; we are taking a break for the night; let’s figure around 10 in the morning to resume.”

The three security guys stayed with Steve all night.

Dom and Sheldon returned and stashed the guns in the safe in the lodge’s basement; then went to meet up with the rest of the folks from Las Vegas.

Sheldon realized that he had killed the phone system from outside communications so he called Jason, the head communications guy, “…Can you figure out what the phone numbers are to the three guys that were staying in the Frank Lloyd Wright’s Pope House in Panama up until yesterday, and kill those phones from making or receiving calls… Hum… can you see if one is moving around in Ecuador? Call me back…”

That evening Sheldon, Joe, and Dom discussed the day’s events.

Joe suggested that it might look better to just use the ultralights to spot the guy and let the headhunters deal with him in silence, and then plant him wherever he is found.

Paul Winquist and a Pilot

Paul Winquist

Joe also suggested that if they hose him with the M-16s it might trash the cellphone that might have very important data in it.

At five in the morning Joe, Sheldon, Dom, and Jeanne met for breakfast and discussed the plans as to the sectors they would each cover.

At 5:45, they took off when it was light enough to see.

About a half hour later, Jeanne spotted the guy about 2000 feet (610 m) NNE of the plantation house he had departed from, in the thick banana plants. She called in the coordinates, and within a couple minutes, all four ultralights were circling the rabbit like vultures. The headhunters drove right up within about 50 feet (15 m) of him. He started to run when he seen the headhunters in their full dress costumes, that are now just used to entertain the tourists. The fat guy was no match for the buff headhunters, and they landed a poison dart in his back.

When Sheldon could see the guy was down and they were already knifing his organs out, Sheldon said, yelled down, “Plant him in the ground right there.”

The Chief Headhunter yelled back, “We want his heart, head, and some other organs…”

Sheldon replied, “Not the head; the other internal parts are okay. Send his cell phone over to José’s house.”

They landed the ultralights in the driveway to the lodge and went in to discuss the situation; Sheldon, Dom, and Joe broke away from the group and walked toward the winery. They commandeered the stage coach that was unloading a group of tourists, telling the girl driving it to take them to José’s old house in the jungle. Sheldon said; “…Let’s go see how Steve is doing…”

Joe was thinking about the situation all night, and then as they were rolling along Joe said, “…We can’t just say some guy donated a billion dollars to the scholarship fund, to the junior executives, or to the press.”

Dom said, “Use Sheldon’s Robin hood line. Only mention the two dead guys; saying one committed suicide and the other got caught up pissing off the headhunters trying to buy cocaine from them… The other two guys can fade into history in a few days.”

They all agreed on the concept and refined their stories about how the two guys died and so on.

When they got to José’s old house, they discovered that the headhunters were there to deliver the cell phone, and had discussed the manner in which Bernie had died, and even showed them the box with his organs in it.

The three security guards mentioned to Dom, that they felt Steve was not going to be a problem, and he wanted to earn the hundred grand a year.

Sheldon explained the Robin Hood, suicide, and headhunter theories to Steve, and Steve liked it.

Photo by Paul Winquist

They decide to take Steve and all the computers to the lodge building for the next few days.

Once back at the lodge, they all discussed the stories with Sue, Jeanne, the accountants, and the MBAs.

Because so much money was involved, Joe decided to call a meeting the next day adding David, Sandy, JR, Lori, and Little Sheldon.

The next afternoon Sheldon set up the meeting at the little patio in the rose garden, between the lodge and the ocean, where he knew there would be no extra ears. The actual meeting only consisted of Sheldon, Joe, David, Sandy, JR, Lori, and Little Sheldon. Sheldon explained the complete situation, leaving out the gruesome details.

JR, being the Harvard Lawyer that he is was, worried that the Fed would get involved in an attempt to get the money back to some of the scammed investors; he suggested that they transfer it all out of any American connected accounts, and turn it all into gold in Switzerland, Luxembourg, Monaco, Liechtenstein, and so on.

Sue explained that that was already taking place with the gold and currencies.

They discussed the situation, and decided that, because the world economy is in bad shape, they would transfer some of the day-trading stocks into new accounts in Belize, Cayman, Switzerland, and Trinidad, and purchase any Coronado or Green Inn stocks that become available.

Sue brought up the topic of how the colleges were now cranking out more graduates than they could absorb into the companies. “…It is a spiral situation; you guys build and buy more hotels, and then that causes more kids to go to our colleges than can be absorbed later.”

Sheldon said, “…I think we all knew it would come to that eventually; we will just have to let some drift off into other companies, or take on jobs that don’t require a degree… I think expanding the schools and colleges is good for everyone, even if we can’t absorb all the graduates; I think we should continue the expansion. Maybe we should have some of the kids start totally new and unrelated companies; look how good the Studio-A has come out; look how good modernizing the farms has come out… The packing plant business has been good; shipping is getting good. Let’s turn loose some of the MBAs on whatever they think might work...”

Lori added, “We should pick up some more farmland along the rivers in the flat part of Peru, Ecuador, and Brazil now that we have the trains running... The area around Lago Agno is excellent farmland and very cheap; plus it has a good airport and road system already. The tree farm in Belize has been so profitable that you guys should look into getting more timber land there too…”

Joe said, “Well; send a batch of college graduates down there to research both possibilities. Hum; when I was in Portland Oregon working on the office building, I went driving around the countryside up there. I went to the Tuesday Market in Hillsboro and tasted the good strawberries and cherries; then the next day I went driving around Banks, Cornelius, Forest Grove, and Gaston; it’s beautiful farmland. Hillsboro has a big airport and there are train tracks all over the place…”

Lori said, “We have been looking into getting more land in the Willamette valley; that may be a good site to set up another packing plant; did you notice sites where there is rail and good roads together?”

“Many; as I drove on the good highways I crossed the tracks many times where the farmland could be converted to a packing plant, and water is in abundance there. Highway 47 going south from Forest Grove has the tracks along side of it, and crosses some serious creeks going toward Gaston, and beyond, down the area known as the Tualatin Valley. That terrain probably goes another 50 miles (80 km) south.”

Sheldon changed the topic, “I’m starting to think we have too many eggs in one basket with all the gold in Panama; maybe we should build several other storage facilities for part of it, and have a place to move it to quick, if the political situation in Panama ever gets bad…”

David said, “You should just do it here where you have the airstrip and the dock to work with.”

Sheldon said, “Yeah; and we can always move stuff to Colombia if necessary from here; I think I will build the other one at the plantation in Venezuela where we can move stuff into Colombia or Brazil through the jungle, or on the rivers… or fly…”

Sandy said, “Why not just build it at the chalet in Switzerland; that government is always stable?”

Sheldon answered, “They are starting to bow down to some of the regulatory policing agencies. All the borders are very secure there too.”

ToC

Chapter 162 - Hillsboro and Forest Grove Oregon

Flowers in Hillsboro Oregon

Paul Winquist

Lori changed the topic back to the farmland south of Hillsboro, “If we put a packing plant near Hillsboro, then we should move the passenger flight operations away from that Vancouver Washington site, where we are getting too much flack about the jet noise and low flight path over the freeway.”

Joe asked, “I thought you were going to move it to Troutdale?”

“There are too many problems there too; the wind is terrible sometimes, it ices up a lot, and there isn’t any adjacent land available to purchase; it’s all controlled by the Port Commission. Hillsboro has a nice terminal building we can rent space in. We should be able to drive our trucks right up to the planes there too.”

Sheldon changed the topic again, “Let’s take Steve up to Panama and put him in the same office as Ezra for a couple weeks; we can give them complete freedom there and monitor their actions easily. If we decide to keep them, we should move them over to the computer vault on Malta for a while, and then stick them at the business college in Albania.”

They went into the vacation/party mode for the next three days.

Lori had four recent college graduates in business administration meet her, and then she took two of them up to Belize where she quickly introduced them to Ike.

Then she took two down to the end of the rail line in Peru, and set them up in the antique house there.

It was the Fourth of July weekend, so Lori decided to take on the Hillsboro project herself, because the weather would be perfect there now. She looked on the internet and discovered that there are no antique hotels in the old part of Hillsboro, so she booked into one by the Hillsboro Airport, where she landed her new little Cessna light jet.

Hillsboro Airport

Wikipedia

Meanwhile, Lori noticed that the blues festival was going on at the waterfront in Portland, so she rode the MAX (commuter train) down there so she could drink without having to worry about driving home.

Lori with her normally friendly style, naturally ran into a man that she wanted; it turned out he was a farmer from Forest Grove, a little further out from Portland than Hillsboro.

They had a lot to talk about in common, and she wanted to get laid, so she went home with Andy that night; unfortunately, he didn’t want to sell his nice farm.

In the morning it was Sunday; he wanted to drive into Portland to go to his church and then they would go to the blues festival for the afternoon and evening. Lori loved the architecture of the old church so she took some pictures to pass along to Sheldon, including one of the beautiful stained glass windows.

Prespeerterian Church in Portland

Paul Winquist

Blues Festival – Portland

Paul Winquist

Andy was divorced and had a son and daughter at the local college in Forest Grove, Pacific University. It was chartered in 1849 as Tualatin Academy, as the very first order of business of the newly formed Oregon Territory.

After the four of them discussed the university for a while, Lori and Andy drove over there, so Lori could get some pictures, on their way to looking into available farmland.

Pacific University – Forest Grove Oregon

Paul Winquist ©2009

Original College Building 1863

Paul Winquist

Carnegie Hall (1912) at Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon, USA

Wikipedia

One of Andy’s friends is a real estate broker, so that is where they headed. Lori laid it out precisely, “…We need to buy up some farmland in the area; it must be on a very good road, have flat stretch at least 7000 feet (2,134 m) long so we can build a runway it has to have a solid reliable water supply the area along the main road has to be high enough that it can never flood and adjacent to a rail line would be a solid bonus. It can be several adjacent farms that we can combine…”

South of Forest Grove Oregon

Paul Winquist

Louis, the real estate broker, asked, “What kind of crop duster needs 7000 feet (2,134 m)?”

Lori answered, “We will go slowly on the airstrip construction, so we don’t get political problems; ultimately we would like to be able to land our propjet Kingairs and other larger cargo planes. We have about 2600 restaurants that we supply, and like to take them very fresh crops sometimes; for example the strawberries I have tasted are excellent here, so we would want to fly some down to Las Vegas, Texas, some Caribbean islands, and L.A. every day, each year when they are in season, rather than letting them sit on trucks and boats for a few days.”

Louis said, “Hum; the larger farms are on hilly ground and the flat land might flood… I can plot them all out on Google Maps, but it will take some time…”

Lori cut him off, “We are going to drive around for a few hours, so I can become familiar with some of the areas that our corporate executives have recommended; I will be back around three to see you then…”

Lori and Andy drove down the Highway-47, as Joe had recommended, and spotted two pieces where the farm looked like it was long enough for a runway, and adjacent to the highway and rail line; and then they drove to several of Andy’s friend’s farms, that he thought would want to sell out, but none were long enough for the airstrip, and on a good creek simultaneously. They ate lunch at one farmer’s place that was into growing decorative trees; he wanted to start selling his trees to the companies.

It was 3:00 by the time they got back to Louis’ office he had a pile of printed out pictures from Google Maps, with red lines around all the property boundaries. Lori quickly spotted that one was the place they had driven by along Highway-47 south of Forest Grove.

Louis said, “That one is 2.1 million because it has a lot of equipment, real nice buildings, and a beautiful house… The problem is it is along the Tualatin River that floods most of the land every 20 years or so.”

“How deep does it get?”

“I don’t know; many of those houses have been there over a hundred years, so it can’t get too deep.”

South of Forest Grove Oregon

Paul Winquist

“Okay; lets hammer that guy down to 1.9; then let’s get one or two of those farms on the other side of the highway that are way higher. Also on the other side of the little river is a lake; let’s look into that property; we might want to enlarge the lake and use the fill dirt to make sure the new buildings and driveways never go under water.”

“You mean go contact those folks to get a listing?”

“Yes! Tell them you ran in to a stupid investor that has just inherited a lot of money, and wants to spend it fast on farms.”

Louis said, “That railroad is only about four feet (1.2 m) above the flat land and the highway is only about six feet (1.8 m) above the flat part; I bet water has never stopped the train or the highway; hum; maybe the flood of 1996.”

Lori said, “Let’s research this out on the internet… We can’t have the packing plant flood; farmland is okay once every 20 or 30 years.”

South of Forest Grove Oregon

Paul Winquist

South of Forest Grove Oregon

Paul Winquist

They found data and pictures of flooding in 1996, 2007, and January of 2009. It all basically said that it would be about 1½ feet deep in that part of the farmland all three times.

Louis called the farmer and asked about the flooding, mentioning that a prospective buyer was concerned.

The farmer replied that part of the land indeed did flood, but all the buildings are on high ground. He reduced his asking price to 1.9 million.

Louis said, “You’re dreaming on 1.9; you better come down to 1.5 if you ever want to sell it during these bad economic times.”

The farmer agreed to come down to 1.7 and they ended the conversation.

Lori said, “Go down there tomorrow and write it up for 1.6. Now let’s look at getting the land on both ends of the landing strip, so we don’t have irritated neighbors when we fly noisy planes too low.” She drew a long skinny rectangle where the strip might go; and then she thought about it, and drew a strip on the other side of the property. “Just in case, get the land for both possibilities at least 2000 feet (610 m) in each end. Don’t tell a soul about the airstrip, not even your mother; it will be for little crop dusters for now…”

Orchard south of Forest Grove Oregon

Paul Winquist

He replied, “That would involve six properties.”

Lori replied, “You will make a lot of commission money this week; enough for you to retire on.”

“A week; you want to do this in a week?”

“Let’s get them all committed before the word gets around too much. We can open an escrow account tomorrow that I will have stocked with ten million, so they can all close smoothly.”

Louis said, “I better have my two salesmen approach some of those folks, so it can go faster than...”

It was about 7:30 by the time they drove away from Louis’ office. Lori said, “I’ll spring for dinner, if you know of a nice place.”

After they were settled in a while Andy asked, “…How can you deal with that many real estate transactions simultaneously, and take over each property?”

“It will be a team effort; Loraine, our lawyer, will deal with the paperwork, there will be four or five computer geeks, two girls will come from Lori’s Green Farms to set up the accounts at each place, we will hire all the workers from each farm to remain on the job, most likely we will buy all the equipment at each farm, and the whole group will be in a 737 full of computer gear, communications equipment, and supplies; but the hard part will be to find a manager to coordinate it all into one big operation.”

“How much will that pay; I could see applying for that position myself?”

“$120,000 a year, and you can keep your farm, and even sell your corn and cherries to us if you want; I knew you would be the guy when the first sentence came out of your mouth at the blues festival…”

They talked about the future farm, canning operation, and packing plant for three hours, until they were invited to leave at closing time.

As they were driving to Andy’s house, Lori said, “Let’s get up early and see if we can find one of the nice vineyards, that is close enough to turn into serious bed and breakfast operation, to compliment the whole project.”

Andy replied, “I know where one is, that overlooks the whole project you are putting together…”

Lori was thinking, “This guy is nice; I hope he can function as a boyfriend and employee simultaneously for a long time.”

By Friday night, most of the deals were closed, or set to close, including the little winery/bed & breakfast that they were going to add on to, making it into a large bed & breakfast and tourist stop. They were working on buying more land that would complement the project.

They found an interesting farm where they were growing apple trees trimmed back like grapes and strung on wires, so all the fruit can be picked from ground level.

Farm south of Hillsboro Oregon

Photos by Paul Winquist

Farm Driveway South of Hillsboro Oregon

Paul Winquist

Flowers in Hillsboro Oregon

Paul Winquist

Andy was telling Lori about the bar in Portland that still has a piss-trough in front of the bar, and Lori thought he was bullshitting; so they ended up at Jake’s Crawfish on SW 12th and Stark for dinner that night.

It always was a nice place since 1892; however the recent owners have turned it into a tourist trap, that is still nice, but with somewhat of an attitude problem.

Piss trough at Jakes Crawfish in Portland

Paul Winquist

A few days later, Lori was on the phone with Sheldon about the Hillsboro project; he got excited and called a meeting to add Armin Grossenbaucher the architect, Bob Billingsley their main builder, Joe the chairman of the board, Sue the lady in charge of the scholarship fund’s money, Jim the head pilot, and Al the golf pro, to the group already holed up in the winery/bed & breakfast, that they were purchasing; the place was packed, with part of the people camping out on the patios.

Sheldon immediately got ten workers permanently transferred from the restaurants and hotels in Portland to the new B&B project.

Andy had already started purchasing some new farm equipment, trucks, and 4-wheel drive SUVs to replace some of the older equipment and additional ones to make production more efficient. All of the equipment was diesel so they could use their biodiesel later.

John Deer Tractors for sale Hillsboro Oregon

Paul Winquist

The group from Las Vegas immediately started driving around the farms in a caravan, while Lori simultaneously was taking the group up in a Cessna 172, three at a time to look over the land from the air.

When Lori and Jim, the head pilot, went up, Jim mentioned, “…If you want to turn this into a major airport later, you better get some more land over there for a cross wind strip… …Let’s get a north-south grass strip set immediately in that field, so I can get the registration, and get it on the maps…”

Later that evening, when Jim, Lori, Sue, Joe, and Sheldon were talking, Sheldon said, “…I think we better buy these two farms to the east for a future east west runway… And the one to the west of the straight part so we don’t have noise complainers…”

Sue said, “Now that the scholarship fund is stocked good with money, and we have a good loan set up at our bank, I think you should go even further; this land will turn into city in another 30 years, and be very valuable to the scholarship fund.”

Sheldon added, “I could see gradually expanding the bed & breakfast into a real hotel with a golf course in a while too…”

Andy asked, “If you build an east west runway you will need to cross the river?”

Sheldon responded, “We will have to build a hell of a bridge then, but that might be a few years from now.”

Andy continued, “If you put the major buildings up on that higher ground on the east side of the river, it could never flood, but you might want to build a better bridge than that county one…”

Lori responded, “That bridge is fine to get started with, but when we build the runway bridge, we could build it a little wider for a private road too.”

Sheldon pointed out, “Then you would have to run the rail siding over the river too; we better rethink this…”

The golf pro added, “It would be best not to run the train across wherever you put the golf course.”

Armin added, “It would look best to leave all your industrial looking buildings in a cluster there by the tracks; you are only looking at three feet of fill to the level of the tracks, and your road will be short from the highway, only a few hundred feet to the complex. I think you should put all your big buildings in a row along the tracks parallel to the proposed landing strip. You are allowed to build the farm buildings and some hangers without any political opposition. You can give them the illusion that your little airport will be just that, a little airstrip 1200 feet (366 m) long.”

Lori added, “I was thinking that what we build as a runway now, will be a taxiway later…I’ll talk to the railroad company about them putting in the fill for a siding ending at our driveway, but starting a quarter mile north…”

Bob, the head contractor said, “That all looks practical; it’s a farm, so we don’t need permits for the fill gravel; we can get started on that aspect right away…”

They discussed the bed & breakfast, and the winery, and decided to move slow with the Washington County people on the Bed & breakfast, adding only 18 rooms now, another 18 in a year, and then try for another 36 the next year, and so on.

They would add another processing building for the wine in the tourist area, and then add on to it in another year or so. Armin was making the plans for the gradual expansion to look good up to 400 suites at the B&B, grain elevators, biodiesel storage tank, a 200,000 ft^2 (18,580 m²) warehouse, hangers for ten small planes and three large planes like 737s, and 250,000 square feet (23,226 m²) of food processing area.

They were going to apply for a gambling license for the six Oregon Lottery machines to be in the wine tasting room.

Sheldon wanted to build some kind of a building for a terminal and waiting area for customers. So they decided to build a hanger big enough to hold one Kingair on the opposite side of the north-south runway from the industrial looking buildings that could be remodeled into a pleasant terminal later, but be functional in bad weather from the start.

They decided to start building some housing for workers on the farm that is on the opposite side of the highway from the project, but not under the future flight paths.

Jeanne and Sheldon went and took pictures from 2000 feet (610 m) above the valley and stapled them to a wall, like in all previous projects. They all quickly noticed that a much longer runway could be built, if they purchased one more piece of land up north.

Lori and Andy quickly drove over to the place, and found the guy on his bailing machine out in a field; he was dead set against selling out for no logical reason.

She offered him way over the going price, even in good times, and he was still stubborn.

When they got back to the B&B, Sheldon and Joe were standing in the driveway talking. Lori explained the situation and then Sheldon said, “…Let’s proceed with all construction aspects that can go either way, and not build the N-S runway until we get this matter settled; just build the future piece of taxiway for now, like drawn; it will be necessary either way anyway.”

Al, the golf pro, had been studying the photos on the wall and walking out to the entire area he was thinking about for the golf course. Sheldon and Joe had specified the normal conditions: don’t cut any trees over 60 feet (18 m) high, put the clubhouse on high ground, use lots of flowers, build several lakes that can be used for irrigation water if necessary in dry summers, make a beautiful trail/cart path to the club house, from the B&B, and Sheldon added: we will trash the existing ugly farm buildings, but try to utilize the groves of huge trees and most of the property line huge trees…“

Al replied “…I will make an outline of the outer boundaries of the course, so you can plan only annual crops there… We can make it go around the little cherry orchard…”

Bob, the builder, said, “…We can start excavating out the lakes to get some fill dirt for the building areas…”

Farmland South of Forest Grove Oregon

Paul Winquist

Sheldon finally got a chance to break away from the others and discuss the property up north with Joe. Sheldon sensed that there might be some kind of language communication problem, so he decided to approach the guy the next morning with his perfected Spanish.

He put on his Panama hat, Mexican boots, jeans, and work shirt to make the guy feel more comfortable. Sheldon found the man in the field loading the bundles of hay onto a truck with four Mexican helpers.

Sheldon complimented him on his nice looking hay, in Spanish. Then Sheldon explained how they were going to build an airstrip south of him, so there would be planes flying over his farm, and how the company didn’t like to irritate people, and would like to purchase the land so everyone could be happy.

The guy said, “Airplanes don’t bother me; I don’t want to sell this farm.”

Sheldon said, “We have offered much more than the going rate; so there must be some other problem that I don’t understand?”

“I am a Mexican, and cannot get a loan to buy another place, now that the American banks don’t loan to Mexicans any more, like 30 years ago.”

“Oh; that’s true; that is a problem; you are right. Therefore, we need to approach it differently; our company has its own bank. How much do you owe the bank yet?”

“We had some bad years when it flooded so now I owe about $150,000.”

“Okay, friend; here is what we can do; I can purchase another, bigger, farm on higher ground for you, and then we can trade places later. We can make it so you don’t owe any bank any money; paid off completely. Think about places that you might want to have, that are better than this one; maybe there is one you have been dreaming about…”

“No loan; paid off?”

“Absolutely; you think about it and look at some places; there is no hurry…”

When Sheldon explained about the problem of the Mexicans getting new loans, they realized that was why several farmers were heading back to Mexico, or just investing their money in Mexico, and staying on as supervisors.

Loraine said, “Now that we know that, we can get some of the peripheral farms for a better price than we were thinking…”

While all this was going on, Joe contacted the painting contractor that they use for all their buildings in Portland, Vancouver, and Hood River, to paint all the buildings in their white and shades of green color scheme, as the deals close over the next half a year.

Andy set up a group of four Mexicans to build a paint shop in one of the buildings, to paint all the farm equipment their favorite John Deer green color, and put on some new decals…

The migratory Mexican farm workers eventually realized that this was the same company as the Lorie’s farms in Hood River, Sauvé’s Island, Vancouver Washington, San José California, Mexicali Mexico, and so on. The workers in Forest Grove were happy to be working for the better company, and the other workers were happy to know they could come to Forest grove to pick various seasonal crops.

Lori contacted the rail company and they agreed to build the siding up to where the company would build its warehouses and grain elevators; they were happy to be getting the business of running the rail cars up to the harbor in Longview Washington starting next year. They also gave permission to bore a pipe under the tracks for their future utilities infrastructure (water, power, biodiesel, hydrogen, and communications; 4 feet (122 cm) lower than the fibers that they have buried alongside the tracks.) They would give the fiber company Lori’s phone number, so they could sell the internet connection to the project.

Once they realized that they would eventually get the required property to the north, they changed their plans toward building the 13,000 feet (3,962 m) long runway. One of Bob’s expediters contacted the power company and arranged to pay $30,000 to get the power and other utility lines buried along the county road, from the highway, to where they have to come up to cross the river.

As usual, Sheldon wanted to build some kind of landmark structure on the high point of the ground. They knew that any structure would require a building permit from Washington County, so they decided to try for a water tank up the hill from the B&B, at about 100 feet (30 m) higher elevation, but not the top of the hill, then the structure 200 feet (61 m) tall. The top part would house the communications equipment and antennas, with the water tank next going down. The bottom 100 feet (30 m) would be a hydrogen storage tank for the solar/electric/heating system they would build later.

After the dust settled up in Forest Grove, a few weeks later, Andy called Sheldon, “…The County approved the 18 motel suites at the B&B, 10 little apartments for workers on that farm on the west side of the highway; they don’t care about a little runway – that’s an FAA matter, the farm buildings are not restricted at all, but they don’t want a 200 foot (61 m) high water tank on that scenic hillside… Wow; Billingsley’s guys sure know how to get things done fast.”

Sheldon replied, “They know how to treat government bureaucrats good; with a special little vacation weekend in Las Vegas and so on. Let’s look into getting more land all the way to the top of that hill; otherwise, we will need to pressurize the water tank; damn; that would be expensive, and we need the height for the communications stuff… Shit; let’s get the land on the top of that hill; we’ll put in a huge windmill; that has to be acceptable in the super-green Washington County… …Did they give an indication as to what an acceptable height would be?”

“Less than the height of the trees; maybe 120 feet (37 m) would work.”

“Hum…120 feet at 30 feet diameter…let’s see… that’s 380,000 gallons (1,438,769 litres)… no; that’s too small; let’s go with 40 feet diameter… hum…hum…that comes to 1.1 million gallons (3,786,000 l) that will work to supply the canning facility, all the housing, and the B&B for a whole summer… that will work…we’ll have to add a pressure pump to the B&B for when the tank is low, otherwise it will work… Call Bob’s guy there and tell him to proceed… Tell him to put a maintenance ladder up it, and a winch like he did on the one by Laughlin, so we can put up some antennas later if we need to for good coverage…”

Bombardier Publicity Picture

Once Lori got wind of the airstrip approval she called Andy right away, “…Joe got real excited, and changed the plans, they are going to start building the permanent runway to 3600 feet (1,097 m) long by 75 feet (23 m) wide for the first phase, that way we can land Kingairs and our Bombardier Q-400 passenger turboprop planes and freighters. As soon as that is completed, they will start on the next 3600 feet (1,097 m) section, so we can land the 737s, then the final 3600 feet (1,097 m) for the safety margin, if there is no opposition…

Andy said, “That contractor building the airport and digging the lakes sure brought in some huge equipment… …I can’t believe how they trenched across the highway, laid down the three foot diameter pipe, filled, compacted, and paved it all on one night…”

Trencher

Paul Winquist

Sheldon continued, “Lori and Joe have decided that they want little commuter jets flying tourists from there to Las Vegas almost every day by winter… We already found a used Bombardier little commuter jet for the run and sent it to the paint shop in Alabama… They already started taking reservations for flights using the Hillsboro Airport temporarily. The Washington County people are happy to see another airport developing in their county that is not controlled by the Port of Portland’s political system… That one whole farm will turn into airport expansion over the years.”

A half a year ago, when they started the Portland multiuse tower above Portland State University, in Portland, they had purchased several of the big houses on the four blocks surrounding their project. David had set up a little apartment in one above the main construction office; he would meet his girlfriend, Robin, there almost weekly lately.

Typical Big Houses in Portland

Paul Winquist ©2009

One day he was in the construction office talking to the head contractor, and their head electrical contractor, when a man walked in to the reception area. He asked to see Joe Kass, and the receptionist quickly told Joe that he had a man waiting in the lobby.

Typical Big Houses in Portland

Paul Winquist

Ben said, after the introductions, “…I have read how your company bailed out a resort in Belize, and one on the Cayman Islands several years ago… I have a 2400 unit apartment complex in Beaverton that we can’t get refinanced; now that the banks want 85% loan to value, instead of the 70% loan, that is running out in two months… The greedy bank is dreaming on foreclosing on us…”

David, said, “That was my dad’s projects, but let’s go talk about it over at the restaurant I am heading to, to get some breakfast…”

Ben had his real nice Mercedes parked illegally, so David rode with him down to the Coronado on the Willamette River. As they were driving along, Ben described how he and his partners had most of their life savings invested in the project that cost over 200 hundred million to build and now wasn’t worth that, according to the loan officers at several banks. They would have to put up another fifty million in cash to get a loan at the present time. Ben, and part of his partners, had another apartment complex just below Washington Park, in Portland, but it didn’t have anywhere near that much equity.

They discussed the two apartment complexes, the rental business, and the new tower that David was working on there in Portland over breakfast and for three more hours.

Portland Oregon

Paul Winquist

Washington Park - Portland Oregon

Paul Winquist

Eventually, David said, “…Our companies have a lot of pull at a couple banks…Our scholarship fund might want to take on the project; it isn’t something that could be turned into a hotel or a resort… Let’s set up a meeting in three days; I will invite some people up from Las Vegas to check it out…” David didn’t mention that they have absolute control of those banks. “…I need to go back to Las Vegas this afternoon; my wife, Sandy (David had married Sheldon’s daughter about 15 years ago), our lawyer, Loraine, and some other helpers will come up here to check out the possibilities…”

As soon as David was clear of Ben, he called Sandy to have her, and the crew, come up tomorrow and start the research project.

The research people immediately started researching the two properties, and then Ben, and all the other people involved with both properties, and then the other projects all the people are involved with.

By evening they knew they had about a 99.99% chance of getting the 2400 apartments with some kind of good deal; they wanted the apartments in downtown Portland too, but figured there was only about a 90% chance of pulling that deal off, with a reasonable arrangement.

Six months ago the company had acquired a second Gulfstream jet, when they got the Worldwide Resorts Chain, and kept this one in Las Vegas, for use by the executives there, while Sheldon had sort of claimed the other one.

In the morning Sandy, Loraine, Dom, two security guards, two recently graduated MBAs, an accountant, two computer whizzes, and three book keeping girls, loaded up a lot of computers, communications equipment, and supplies. Almost the whole group settled into the Coronado Hotel on the Willamette River; Sandy and Loraine went to the house that was being used as the construction office for the new tower.

Portland Oregon

Paul Winquist

They still had two days until the meeting, so Sandy and Loraine decided to walk around the area of the smaller apartment complex that is within walking distance from the tower project. They fell in love with the area full of big old houses, nice condominiums, and apartment buildings. They were walking up hill most of the time, and when the saw the sign for the Washington Park Rose Garden, they walked up, and up, and up, until they got there. They were taking pictures of some of the huge houses and the scenery as they were going. When they got to the rose garden, they spent a few hours there relaxing and taking pictures.

As they walked around Washington Park, and then around Portland getting some lunch, then walking some more, and then dinner and drinks in the old part of town, they realized that Portland really is the lesbian capital of the earth; they were happy.

Washington Park - Portland Oregon

Paul Winquist 2009

Sandy, Loraine, Sue, and David went to the first meeting, about the 2400 apartments in Beaverton. Loraine had already prepared new corporation paperwork giving the three original partners 1%, 2%, and 5% interests in the new corporation.

The Coronado Corporation picked up a 20% interest and will be the managing company. The balance of 72% was the scholarship fund; no loan was involved because of the extra money the fund had right now.

They had a letter from the scholarship fund approving the loan as 5.3% fixed interest for 25 years, amortized to pay off in 25 years.

Ben was giving up his 34% interest in the little apartment complex, in return for bailing him out of his problems, and a 5% interest in the new corporation.

All three of the parties were so happy to be rescued that they didn’t try for better terms.

The full group loaded up into a limo and went to the property to fire the current property management firm. Dom, the security guards, computer geeks, and accounting girls were loaded in one more limo and a truck, timed to get there 10 minutes after the first group.

Ben opened the conversation to the stunned workers in the office, “…The company has been sold to a new corporation: “The Coronado Green Apartments of Oregon Corporation” and they are taking over as of Noon today, about five minutes… The new property management company will manage the apartments, so you all need to pack up your personal things... Your company will deal with your final pay checks, or whatever they feel like doing…”

The main woman said, “We still have over a year left on our contract.”

Loraine spoke up, “That corporation was already dissolved today… You are of course allowed to try to sue the new companies; but I know that that is a waste of time because we have good attorneys here. We will need some employees, so you workers are invited to put in applications...”

The main computer geek walked in, “What’s up?”

Sandy said, “The previous management company owns all the office equipment, maybe you guys can help them put everything into the conference room over there… An office supply company will be here fairly soon with new desks, chairs, and so on; go ahead and set up our stuff on the floor where each desk will go…”

The next morning the meeting was scheduled for the owners of the small apartment complex in Portland. Sandy, Sue, Loraine, and David, went to meet Ben and the other three part owners at the apartment complex office.

The three partners had already researched out the Coronado’s companies, and decided to keep their interest in the apartment building unchanged even though Ben had sold out.

Washington Park - Portland Oregon

Paul Winquist 2009

Sandy presented her slideshow that had evolved into a 20-minute movie, about the properties that the Coronado companies have taken over.

She upped the offer that was about 25% higher than the going price, another 20% and one guy went for it, but the other two felt that the economy would recover, and there would be inflation in the future ,so they wanted to keep their interest unchanged.

That would put the company at a 42% interest, not a controlling interest like the one they wanted.

Sue got Sandy aside and said, “…These guys have managed this place extremely good; let’s just leave them to continue. Eventually one will want to drop out, or when they want to refinance later we will be in another good timing position.”

Eventually Sandy said, “…We will be happy to have our 42% interest continue to be managed by your current successful staff. The offers of us buying you out at a premium are canceled, and we may opt to sell our interest later…”

Library and Park, Hillsboro Oregon

Paul Winquist 2009

Lori had been spending a lot of time at Andy’s house the last few months, as they were getting things organized into the packing, canning, and various processing buildings in the Forest Grove farming operations. They could use the cheaper and quicker steel buildings in this location that is not subject to the costal storm damage.

Andy mentioned one day how the huge local sauerkraut and pickle packing company was purchased by one of the huge international companies, and then after a few years they closed the packing plant in Portland, putting hundreds of farmers out of a place to sell their cucumbers and cabbage. For the last few years, the price of cucumbers has been depressed in the SW Washington and NW Oregon area, but they couldn’t see a way to profit from the situation immediately.

Over the last couple years, the Red Roof Restaurants chain had added Studio-A stores at many locations, and the Studio-A stores in the hotels and Sheldon’s Steakhouses was doing good at selling the juices, jellies, and fresh seasonal fruits.

For the last two years, the companies had been trying to purchase land next door to all the restaurants, motels, and hotels to add the Studio-A stores.

They had been doing the expansion by adding on to the existing buildings, so it would look the best. Many of the restaurants got huge refrigerator, freezer, and storage rooms added, so they could deal with the seasonal food items on a bigger level that was going good; the Lori’s Green Farms items were selling good.

Lori talked to the girls doing the scheduling of the food items at the stores and restaurants, and they felt that they could sell some sauerkraut and pickles in nice glass jars made at the plant in Albania that was now making most of their decorative glass bottles and jars, and of course the restaurants buy some pickles and sauerkraut in big cans.

The original Big-S local pickle and sauerkraut plant was in Scappoose Oregon, and moved to Portland after it burned down in the 1960s.

Over the next few days, they looked into locations; they didn’t want to press their luck with more huge buildings at the Forest Grove farm. They looked into several sites in the Portland area but decided that even with the bad economic times, the price was too high wherever there was a rail line. They looked into expanding their presence in Longview Washington, and found that the land next to their little packing plant and docks was owned by a huge oil company.

About three hours of being on hold for about a dozen people, she got a hold of the executive that was in power. He said, “…After all the mergers in the oil business; the company that bought out this company is gradually eliminating this site; you can buy that corner; how about two million for the twenty acres segment by your docks and the rail line…”

Lori and Andy immediately drove up to the site to check it out. There was a dock with pipes and pumping equipment for unloading oil from the ships and loading gas and oil onto rail cars.

The guy said, “…We are required to remove all this stuff and then scrape the dirt where oil has spilled, and then refill the area… We should be able to have it ready in two months…”

Lori said, “Well, leave the docks and the train tracks… How about that crane, can that stay; it might be handy?”

“Okay, do you want us to remove the parking lot and roads?”

“Hum; I think we can plan the site to utilize them…”

The next day Lori and Andy drove up the Columbia Gorge Scenic Highway, built in the 1930s as a WPA project, and took many pictures of the various falls and views:

Columbia River Viewed from Crown Point

Paul Winquist

Horsetail Falls 2009

Paul Winquist

Trail to Horsetail Falls Trail

Paul Winquist

Bridge on Scenic Highway

Paul Winquist

Bridal Vail Falls

Paul Winquist

Columbia Ricer Old Highway 30 built in the 1930s

2009 Paul Winquist

Columbia River Viewed from Crown Point

2009 Paul Winquist

ToC

Chapter 163 – International Developments

NASA’s Famous Blue Marble Picture

Public Domain

Sheldon decided to stay in Ecuador, and start construction on a vault for gold, and other precious items they might need to store. At first, he was thinking of building it under a garage he would add onto his villa; but when he noticed that the winery was getting full of rum, banana wine, and tourists, he decided to add onto the wine cellar, with a subterranean vault deep under the hillside, behind the normal storage area. He would play it off as storage for the very expensive whiskeys that he was going to start collecting, and they would store some of the banana lightning and wine for twenty years to see how it would come out anyway.

They had no way to cut it in like a tunnel, so he had the road construction crews come over and start the massive excavation project.

Once it was started Sheldon decided to add a set of motel rooms four floors high and six large rooms long, with big balconies overlooking the little bay and docks, rather than backfilling the whole project.

After two days of talking to contractors, Sheldon and Jeanne flew down to Brazil, stopping at the plantation by Tefē first.

It turned out that Alēa was there preparing to get married in three more days. She was very pregnant from making many trips down to see Jim, the plantation manager. Jim had kept her in the big house to do kitchen work for many years and taught her how to play the piano at an early age; now she was almost finished with college in Costa Rica. She was going to take the summer off to get married, and have her kid, and then she would return in the fall to get her BA degree in music.

Alēa’s eyes went wide when she saw Jeanne coming out of the plane; they went into a serious hug and then Alēa said, “Meet me in my old bedroom as soon as you get settled in…” Jeanne was Alēa’s first girlfriend four years ago, and was ready for an encore.

It was almost lunchtime, so they settled into the big patio overlooking the Amazon River and the docks for lunch. They talked about the wedding and then plantation business for an hour before Alēa said she was going for a walk and invited Jeanne to come with her; they only made it as far as her old bedroom.

Later, Sheldon said, “Let’s go over to the Venezuelan plantation for two days, and then come back for the wedding.”

Jeanne asked, “…Is it alright if I stay here and help Alēa get set up for the wedding?”

Sheldon said, “She’s that fun, huh?”

“Yes”!

Sheldon flew Jim’s Kingair over to the Venezuelan plantation and had a long talk with Howard, the plantation manager. They were too worried about the Negro River flooding to dig the vault down into the ground near the plantation buildings, and they didn’t want to put it up in the hills.

Jim and Sheldon came up with a hair brain idea of building a pyramid to look like the one on the one dollar bill to be a subtle reminder that the Illuminati Order is alive and well in this remote part of the earth. The top section will be made out of Lexan and painted with the eye and eyebrows. A red light will light up the eye at night on all four sides so it can be seen for many miles on the land and the Negro River. Inside will be a new set of duplicate redundant antennas for all the communications systems.

The next level down will be the surveillance level with tinted Lexan glass, so the guards and TV cameras can see out. This will become the main surveillance room for the two plantations, here in Venezuela, and the smaller one across the river in Colombia.

Below that will be two general storage levels; with some 50 caliber machine gun turrets that are remote controlled, to intimidate any possible aggressors.

The 2nd floor will be the real armory storage area.

The ground floor will be a big garage and shop for working on vehicles.

Brick will be the facade covering the concrete structure.

The gold vault will be a basement that is only accessed by a small elevator with no button for the basement/vault level; the vault door and elevator can only be opened by entering a string of numbers on the floor level buttons, and only Sheldon, JR, and Joe will have the number, or even know that a number will work it.

They would tell everyone the building is for defending the docks and plantation buildings from the rebels and other possible problems, and the basement is a water storage tank.

They will dig down only six feet and build the basement section out of two feet thick reinforced concrete, telling everyone the strength is to hold the water pressure; and then fill the surrounding area to gradually slope up to the intended start of the pyramid and garage door driveway.

Once they started making the more detailed sketches, they realized that the sloping concrete structure would have a serious risk of breaking over on the bottom floors where the spans are so long. Sheldon remembered how some pieces of the Luxor pyramid in Las Vegas fell over during construction. They would use pillars, and actually build each floor up, before building the sloping outer wall, to hold it up and the sideways pressures.

The big Catholic Church in Tefē Brazil had heard about Sheldon’s confrontation with the churches in Belize and Ecuador, and didn’t want to lose their customers, so they kept quiet about the birth control policy there.

Even though the plantation had put in their own schools, many of the people continued to go to the Catholic Church on Sundays.

Sheldon bit his tongue and went to the wedding and huge reception party, an all day, and evening event.

Sheldon and Jeanne went to Costa Rica for a month long vacation and being a family; Linda, Melissa, and the kids were happy.

Eventually, a few weeks later, they went down to Ecuador to deal with the vault construction and other matters.

It was late evening when they pulled up to the main building housing the offices, restaurants, and bars. They could hear the music had a new sound, so they walked through the building, and out onto the patio to discover that the band had expanded by a variety of marimbas, vibraphones, xylophones, thongophones, glockenspiels, mbilas, and timbelas, it sounded good, so Sheldon asked who came up with the new concept.

They answered that the music teacher showed them how to find the plans for the various crude instruments in the internet. They worked with the carpenters to build them, and spent a lot of time getting them in tune. Once they had one crude marimba sounding good they tried the other designs over the last month. They purchased the glockenspiels to get the higher pitches.

After the first marimba, they decided to build many different types with only 2½ octaves of notes on each one, because they have many musicians to play them.

Photos by Paul Winquist

They were in the process of trying to build a two octave base marimba with up to 16 feet long pipes that are bent to go sideways and the longest bar is over four feet long. The huge thing is still in the carpentry shop.

It turned out later, that the huge marimba was a total failure; it was too low in volume to hear it, and it takes too long for each note to start resonating; almost a second to get going, and the average ear needs about another 7/10ths of a second to recognize the pitch. Jason decided to try building a positive feedback microphone and speaker inside each pipe to get it going louder and faster. This totally changed the type of sound into a more pure sine wave without the marimba sound. Eventually Sheldon said, “…Why not just get some good keyboards and use amplifiers for the lowest base notes…”

The rebels in Colombia were continuing to kidnap Americans creating a bad image of the country, thus scaring the Americans, British, and some other countries’ tourists into not coming to Colombia.

Joe had fortified the project he was building and not afraid of them, but the Cali villa was setting in a bad spot.

So far, the plantations were not a problem with the management convincing everyone that Lori’s Farms was good for the poor people, and somehow connected to the company that had killed many of their people in retaliation for other kidnap attempts, and had probably blown up several of their sites.

Over in Sicily, Tony paid the unscrupulous lawyer €25,000 to try to get the customs people to put a crew at his little airport. That was a complete mistake; it woke them up; now they wanted him to be licensed as a charter airline, in Italy to fly passengers to the resort; and they realized that the company was stopping by Palermo Sicily to pick up and drop off international customers three times a week. They had to discontinue all passenger flights to the resort pending the new licensing.

It turns out that the aircraft and airlines industries in Italy are a serious good-old-boy system, with the government subsidizing and protecting their friend’s companies.

After three weeks of attempts, and little pay offs, the unscrupulous lawyer managed to schedule a meeting over dinner at Tony’s Villa, with Tony providing his Kingair for the autocrat’s trips from Rome and back. Lori came for the meeting.

Tony tried the girl for entertainment approach, but the guy figured it would be some kind of trap to screw up his career.

After three hours of drinking wine, with the guy continuously explaining how things work in Italy, he finally admitted that his brother in law needs a facility to work on aircraft on Sicily to compliment his other three locations on mainland Italy.

Once Tony realized what the deal was going to be, he offered to build a 10,000 square meter (100,000 ft2) hanger building including some heated areas for shops and offices.

The next aspect was allowing two Italian feeder commuter airlines access to the airstrip. Then that triggered building a building for their offices and waiting customers, with no rental fees; this turned out to be an addition of the building they had already built to be a small terminal for their operations.

Next was allowing an Italian freight forwarding company access; they could use the opposite end of the runway and would build their own little building, but use Tony’s power and water.

The result of six hours of negotiations, was that they could fly freight and passengers directly to any EU countries’ airport as long as all the passengers were from the EU; all other passengers would have to stop by Palermo Sicily, or another Italian international airport.

Lori got on the phone with the guy that schedules the aircraft maintenance and they agreed to use this new facility for most of the maintenance of their aircraft based in the EU countries. Lori would get a discounted price and expedited service scheduling.

Tony asked the government clown, “…I guess that means we won’t have any problems with the building permits for these buildings, then?”

“No, I will give you my card; call me if there is any static…”

Eventually the government guy said, “…I will direct our government flight department to install an ILS system here, and put in an OMNI station… They will use your GPS approach data to implement official government GPS approach charts…”

Joe was contacted by the sales department of Embraer in Brazil about their less expensive executive aircraft. The company pilots picked up Lori in Albania, Joe in Colombia, Sandy in Las Vegas, and Sheldon in Panama, with their Legacy 500 little jet for a little sales pitch and vacation in São José dos Campos Brazil.

At 19 million a copy, they are less than half the price of their Gulfstreams, but they decided to stick with the Canadian planes because they already have 2 Gulfstreams, 11 Q-200s, and 36 Q-400 already. For large planes, they would always buy Boeing and Bombardier planes in the future, for small ones the Kingair and smaller Hawker/Beechcraft ones. They had already sold all the Cessna jets. For small freight applications thy loved the Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter.

ToC

Chapter 164 - Retirement Funds

Paul Winquist

They were having a small retreat for the managers and management, that had to work when the big retreat was taking place. This retreat was less formal and was in a relaxed mode at the executive villas on the south end of Florianopolis Island Brazil. They were at the Villa they had swindled away from the big drug lord, Señor Don Bolivar, as he was being killed by the US DEA, in his jet crash over Colombia.

After they combined the nine villas into a mini resort, the villa from Don Bolivar became the lobby, meeting rooms, restaurant, and bar for the total little resort.

Between the swimming pool and huge patio up above, and the beach, area they built a large rose garden with a large gazebo in the middle.

Joe and sue were talking to several of the women that came from the Green Inns, and were doing the purchasing. One lady that had moved down to Las Vegas from Denver mentioned that she was very happy with the Coronado’s retirement fund. She said, “…In the old days I was paying in the maximum every payday but the total was going up very slowly and then went way down in 2006. Those guys charge very heavy handling fees every year and the interest rate never did go up, even the years when the economy was real good. Bennaman, Lloyd, and Cornwell (BLC) charges $1800 a year and your company only charges $82 a year for the administrative fee, and they never had the interest go over 6%, whereas your growth has always been over 6% even during the bad years lately.”

Joe got to thinking about how BLC is like the day traders and gold traders; they are making hundreds of millions of dollars a year, off hundreds of thousands of little people’s retirement funds. He was thinking how they would be a bunch of fat little fuckers from New York, like the gold trailers they dealt with in Panama and Ecuador half a year earlier.

Sue mentioned, “…I think that Carlos (Carl) Thomas put some kind of fear into the two bank’s officers before we took them over. They have an absolute policy of no insider trading, and the highest paid executives are limited to $400,000 a year. Ever since we merged the two banks and changed the name to the Green Bank of Chicago, they have been running very efficiently. Most all the employees love the Chicago retirement fund, but a few still keep their accounts at the Credit Union because it is in town.”

Joe said, “This isn’t right, and the Federal people that should be dealing with the matter are ignoring it for some reason. I’m going to talk to Sheldon about the situation in Latin America.”

He got up and walked over the adjacent villa where he knew Sheldon was meeting informally with the Latin American managers of the resorts. As soon as he was settled into the little lounge area with a fresh apricot nectar drink he asked Sheldon, “…What is the rate of return on the various retirement fund accounts in the various countries? I think the past employees of the Green Inns, and all the other companies we took over, were getting ripped off by the retirement fund companies.”

“Well, it varies from country to country; we have been giving everyone stock independent of the local situation. There is no American type system in most countries. Mostly it’s the family supporting the old folks, but we provide housing and the utilities to retired workers that want to remain in their houses or apartments. The resort you are working on in Colombia is typical; no one is complaining; everyone likes our companies…”

All the resort managers at the meeting there thought the company was much more than generous, and everyone is very happy compared to the competitor’s situations.

Eventually Joe said to Sheldon, “…Let’s take a walk to see that new power generator set up…” They had purchased some land across the road and built a building to house the slightly noisy generator and the desalination equipment.

Once inside Joe continued, “…The retirement fund ass holes in New York are making billions of dollars, off the hundreds of millions of retirement fund investors.”

Sheldon replied, “We can’t stop them. We can only provide an alternative for our people… Hum, maybe we should publicize the fact that our fund pays better and has lower fees than all the New York alternatives.”

“Absolutely!!! Let’s call a meeting of our retirement fund managers in Chicago.”

“I agree; maybe we can get them to do more on an international basis too.”

Joe said, “Well, the way they set it up there is one manager over all the banks and one head of the investment department as a whole, and then a guy for the retirement funds reports to him, with many little managers under him.”

Sheldon said, “Let’s just get those top two guys down here…”

Joe called Sue on her cell phone to set up the meeting.

Sue called the head banker and said, “…The big Joe and the big Sheldon would like to invite you, the investment department head, and the main retirement fund manager down here to Brazil for a little vacation, and of course a little meeting…”

“…Right now?”

“You know how those old guys are; when they get a topic on their mind they think it’s the only topic on the face of the earth… I’ll have the head pilot call you with the exact timing… Bring your wives or girlfriends, and kids, for a five day little vacation; the weather is beautiful on Florianopolis Island now…”

The pilots over responded and loaded up the three guys, three women, and two older kids at about 2:00 in the afternoon, so they arrived on Florianopolis about 5:30 in the morning local time and had to wait in the plane for the customs people to open up at 7:00 AM.

The three guys were scared shitless that they were going to be fired for not bringing in enough profit in the retirement fund department. They didn’t get much sleep that night as they talked over all the possible things to say to Joe and Sheldon, but the women and kids slept well on the super comfortable Gulfstream.

Sheldon greeted the group as they got out of the limos and could see the look on the guy’s faces. “…Looks like you guys stayed awake all night or something; we’ll have a real quick meeting so y’all can get some sleep… Let’s head over to the villa that I am staying in for some breakfast…”

Sue and Joe joined the group in the dining room.

Once they were settled in and the kitchen people dissipated to the kitchen, the head banker said, “…Carl told us many years ago that he didn’t want the retirement fund to be a money maker, and had us fire all the guys that were making a lot of money. It would take a while to ramp the profit back up…”

Sheldon cut him off, “Oh; I see the problem; it’s the other way around; we want to expand the system to our employees in Latin America and possibly many more companies around the world. We want the profits to go to the workers, and not worry about corporate profit.”

Joe added, “That’s it for the meeting now; you guys go get some sleep and we’ll have a dinner meeting here at 8:00 tonight.”

Then Sheldon continued “Go tell you women you’re not getting fired, just the opposite, and any more people in Chicago that you may have gotten worried… Now let’s not talk about this topic until tonight. After you get some sleep enjoy the place here…”

Throughout the day, yesterday and today Sheldon, Joe, and Sue talked to other people in the company, so that by evening David, Sandy, Lori, JR, LS, Cristal, and Mike were there.

Joe opened the meeting that was now into a crowding situation, “I guess I got everyone worked up too much over this topic. It looks like we pissed away a hundred grand in jet fuel over this meeting. All I wanted to say was that we should encourage growth in our much more efficient retirement fund, than all the competitors. The other companies are ripping off the workers and we should go out of our way to point this out to them, and the rest of the world. Let’s don’t do anything radical here just make the little changes to help our efficient system grow, and give bad publicity to the crooks in New York.”

Sue added, “The scholarship fund has some money that can go toward purchasing one of the offending companies to straighten it out.”

David said, “Those companies are way over valued, based on the exorbitant profits that they make; it would be wiser to just expand our good company and take a lot of customers away from them over a long period of time.”

Joe said, “Yes; let’s expand. Do you guys need money to buy more computers and hire more workers?”

The head banker, Efrem, answered, “Actually as part of the mergers we built a new data center on the outskirts of Chicago and a backup data storage location in Toronto Canada; we are well prepared for a lot of expansion in any of our divisions. The new computers have cut way down on the need for workers, so we can go for a rapid expansion...”

Sheldon said, “I’ll connect you guys up with the bankers we use in Belize, Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, and Uruguay; you may want to expand south a little…”

Efrem answered, “We already are in talks with the bank you use on Cayman Island.”

Joe said, “That particular bank could be a problem with the IRS because we need to be totally unconnected between the US and the Cayman Island corporations; we’ll talk about that bank on the side later. Let’s end this official meeting right now; let the waitresses in…”

The meeting turned in many small conversations and the people gradually dissipated. Once Joe got Efrem aside a little he said, “Let’s go for a walk outside; I have some slick stuff to show you in our security room.”

As soon as they were out the door, Efrem said, “I can see the problem there in Cayman; I’ll drop that project.”

Joe said, “That’s good, but not the topic; what we want to do is take over the BLC guys, or put them out of business. They are the worst of all the fund managers.”

“Wow, they are big; that’s like the tail wagging the dog.”

“Like Sue says, she has some money to put into the project, and we need to do some devious things in the background to lower their price before we can propose a merger.”

“Well, you guys have a good reputation of arranging mergers, that turn out to be weighted heavily on your side.”

“Call up Zeke and tell him that you would like to discuss the possibility of merging with their much more profitable operation… Give him a little bullshit about how your new super computers can handle a lot more action… Let him know that the scholarship fund has a lot of money for good investments… Give him the illusion that you may want to spin off the retirement fund business because your people aren’t doing very good, etc. etc. etc…”

“Yes; that might work. They will spend a lot of time researching out the Chicago Bank and all the Coronado companies”

“Schedule the meeting for three weeks from today at our resort in Ecuador. We will do some things in the background to screw up their stock value. If they get to wanting the meeting sooner, just tell them that you changed your mind and don’t want their worthless company.”

“Worthless?”

“I didn’t stutttttttter…”

They discussed possible ways to discredit the BLC Company for a while, and then Joe broke loose to call Sid in Colombia, that owns the TV station.

Joe told Sid the whole story and they decided to tell a government official in Colombia that Colombians are being ripped off by this crooked – Corrupt -Scamming possibly criminal American company… The Colombian government was going to start investigating the situation, and contact the SEC in the States for more information about the company.

Then Joe called the reporter for the big Wall Street newspaper and told him to check into the situation of the BLC Company being investigated by the SEC, and possibly the FBI, for defrauding customers in Colombia.

Then he called his old friend that retired many years ago from the FBI, and told him about the company, and that the FBI should beat the SEC to the punch, of nailing the huge swindlers. He was going to call his old friends to get the ball rolling.

A few days later when Efrem finally got on the phone with Zeke, he laughed and said, “…We may buy your retirement fund department but you could never buy us out…” Obviously, no meeting was talked about.

A week later Zeke called Efrem, and Efrem replied, “…Looks like you guys will be holed up with Bernie Madoff for the next 150 years…Wow you guys are all over the news… Good thing we never got a deal going, now we can grab up some of your accounts for nothing… Oh you got John Rigas from Adelphia down there in Butner too; you’ all will become friends…”

“We can make a good deal now.”

“Ha, ha, ha, ha, Carmine Persico of the Colombo Family is there too... Let’s see how it plays out for another week; we may do something… I have people that can disappear you guys if it comes down to that.” BLC was in the news everyday as the reporters discovered many little old ladies’ that were ripped off.

Bernie Madoff: 150 years in prison plus, $170 billion restitution, for a massive Ponzi scheme

Federal Picture

Joe and Efrem had talked strategy on the phone in anticipation of getting the key scammers down to Ecuador so they could deal with them.

On the next phone call from Zeke, Efrem told him, “…Your phone is tapped so we can’t talk business; I’ll have a guy named Dominic contact you… You and your key partners can stay after closing time on Tuesday evening so you can talk to him. Also, keep your main computer geek and a couple helper geeks late too, so we can talk numbers. Don’t tell a soul other than those people about the meeting.”

On Tuesday evening, Dom walked into the lobby at 3:45, and was quickly escorted into Zeke’s huge office with many big new computer screens. Five other men were there, and there were many workers in the offices that they went past.

Dom asked, “What’s quitting time?”

One of the guys said, “Most of them go home in ten minutes, but some stay to deal with international trading all night.”

Dom asked, “Introduce me here.”

Two of the extra guys were partners and major stockholders of the BLC Corporation and the other three were computer guys.

Dom said, “I have four guys waiting in a limo down in the parking garage on level B-2 that we need to invite up here very casually…”

One of the men got on the phone to the security staff, and then there was an uncomfortable silence after Dom announced that the talker was not him.

Ten minutes later Sheldon, Efrem, Bruce the company’s main computer whiz, and a helper computer whiz walked in.

After the introductions Sheldon said, “Okay; we need the computer guys to take a break, but don’t go far, maybe that lobby out there.”

Dom mentioned to Sheldon about the workers staying all night, so Sheldon said, “It would be best if we let the all night workers have the night off tonight.”

There was extensive grumbling by all three executives, but the end result was that one man went out to tell them to go home.

Sheldon said, “…Nice place you guys had here; too bad it has to end this way. What do you guys want to do?”

Zeke answered, “It would be good to do a merger before the legal problems escalate.”

“What’s BLC stock down to now?”

“$2.34.”

“Wow, that low already; I figured it would take an indictment to get it that low.”

“It’s looking bad already; the SEC has ordered us not to destroy any records.”

Sheldon was thinking, “And the FBI is running slow; they always take years to get anything done.”

One of the other partners said, “We were thinking of just turning the entire company over to the Green Bank, and retire off of our other assets in the Bahamas somewhere.”

“Somewhere? You have to go where the FEDs don’t have access.”

The guys had scared looks on their faces, so Sheldon continued, “We have a plantation and resort down in Ecuador where no US ass holes have the balls to go. We can take you down there, and then if you want we can run you up to Panama where we have connections to get you registered as Panamanian citizens with new names; this has worked well for several scoundrels in the past, who are now happy upstanding, legal, citizens.”

The two minor guys were happy with the concept, but Zeke was skeptical, “How can we trust you guys?”

Sheldon answered, “Our bank wants those retirement accounts, and I will take you down there personally in my jet, before the investigator bunnies know what is going on.”

“Now?”

“Absolutely; by morning the news clowns will come alive wondering why your crew didn’t work tonight.”

“How can you do it? What would be the procedure?”

“You will make a statement to our TV camera to be released once we are safely in Ecuador. You will sign a power of attorney to your main computer geek, to deal with the transfer of the computer records, and the disposition of the office equipment. Tomorrow our lawyers will contact your attorneys to deal with the corporate dissolution, and deal with the reporters.”

“TV camera?”

“Yes; think about what you want to say; say you are passing the accounts on to the best company you could find, and will stay out of the US until the legal questions are settled by your attorneys. As soon as you take those two critical steps, you and I will slip out to our gassed up Gulfstream, before the word gets outside; no one will know where you are.”

“The computer guys will work all night?”

Efrem answered, “We have a crew waiting in Chicago to start accepting the data flow; by morning it will be totally finished.”

Sheldon added, “So, call in your head computer guy so we can get started.”

Efrem pulled out the prepared letter of attorney and resignation letters and they all discussed the changes that had to be made, and then printed them up. It took about fifteen minutes to sign and notarize all the documents.

The guys didn’t want to do the TV part, so Sheldon and Efrem had too talk them into it.

Once that was over they called in all the computer people and had them get started.

One of the scammers said, “That sure went fast.”

Sheldon answered, “It’s just starting; about 7:00 tonight, seven semi trucks full of packaging materials will pull into the basement; two will take the main computers with all their data in them over to Chicago, along with all the file cabinets full of documents. There will be 90 union teamsters waiting to go to work at 7:15. Several of the trucks will load up 2/3 of the workers computers, and all those thousands of beautiful Samsung 32 inch (81 cm) monitors, to take to a college in Costa Rica, and several will take 1/3 of the computers, monitors, and office equipment to Albania where we are setting up another college. Your workers will show up in the morning, to be surprised by your computer crew and some excellent public relations people, that will get here early in the morning to handle the reporters.”

Efrem added, “We will notify the SEC first thing in the morning that the records are moved to Chicago, and totally open to their investigation; we are the good guys. Our public relations people will be standing there waiting for the reporters in the morning.”

Sheldon said, “Let’s go; Jeanne has scheduled a nice dinner to be catered to the plane right about now…” They quickly filed out to the waiting limo in the basement parking area.

As they were traveling to the airport, the guys realized that they didn’t have their passports. Dom said, “We can’t be waking everyone up to the fact that you are going; we have a way to slip you into Ecuador; it’s expensive, so you will owe Sheldon big-time for this ride.”

“Sheldon added, “You don’t want to be listed in the Ecuadorian computers anyway.”

Sheldon knew they would be landing at the resort in the middle of the night, so he had paid the customs inspectors a grand to come to their airport, and not notice any extra people that might arrive.

On the flight down, Sheldon had told the three New Yorkers to kick back at the resort, like normal tourists, and be sure not to call up to the states for any reason, because it would blow their hiding spot. He took their cell phones and laptops away from them, and made sure the batteries were removed. He would later smash the phones and turn the laptops over to the computer whizzes, to extract the data that would be there about their personal investments. Dom explained how the laptops can report their GPS position to the FBI to scare them a little more.

Eventually, the guys thought they should somehow let their families know that they are okay.

Dom answered that one; “Tomorrow afternoon you can write letters that we can e-mail to your lawyers to deliver to your families. We will send the e-mails via a connection we have in Uruguay to throw off any investigators.”

About 8:00 AM, the shit hit the fan in New York. The 900 workers showed up to find that all the computers were gone, and the PR experts from Westwood were explaining how the company went out of business last night, and the accounting records were moved to Chicago over night. The only computers to remain were for the payroll records of the employees, so that they could all get their final pay checks………

“…Zeke, Herb, and Ronan are going to travel outside of the US until the lawyers can prove their innocence in these ridicules SEC and FBI investigations…”

The computer whizzes had disconnected the phone switch, so they could ship it to Albania to upgrade that system, but the place still got flocked with reporters over the next half hour.

The PR guys told the employees to take everything of value that was left in the building because the guys were breaking the lease and abandoning everything except the cubicles, anyway, they are going to some office building in Panama...”

One of the reporters asked, “What about the other stockholders in BLC Corporation?”

“They are getting stock in the Coronado Holding Company at the rate of last night’s closing price on the NYSE; I believe it was $2.34.”

The reporters were yelling questions to the PR people, “…What is the company that took over the retirement portfolios?”

“The Green Bank of Chicago, where they only charge about $82 a year in handling fees instead of the $1800 that this company was charging, and their rate of return is the highest in the industry, so all the customers will be very happy. In Chicago, they are printing letters right now to go out to all the account holders and companies.”

Down in Ecuador, Sheldon had booked the three guys into fairly nice suites, so everyone called it a night, and they scheduled a lunch meeting for 2:00 PM.

At that meeting Sheldon told the guys”…Use the room cards to buy some cloths and for meals; we’ll deal with the accounting in a few days… Relax… Enjoy the place…”

Sheldon had to reassure them that they were safe, and to tell people that they are on vacation from New York.

They quickly noticed that they were on CNN and the financial channels big-time. Their running away made everyone assume that they were indeed serious criminals.

Naturally, the politicians got into the news, by saying that the government should be looking into more of the retirement fund management companies…

The news showed pictures of the offices with all the computer gear removed, and the employees rolling chairs down the street with piles of personal stuff on them.

The guys came to Sheldon, scared that someone would recognize them, and rat them out, so Sheldon took them over to José’s former plantation house, to stay out of view until the news mellows out.

Sheldon had the resort staff takeover dealing with the three guys directly, so that he could move on to other projects, including taking a week off at his family home in Costa Rica.

The three scammers went into Esmeraldas and purchased wigs and vacation looking clothing, as well as some local styles of shirts, pants, hats, and shoes. They purchase some black hair die and did a crude job of dying their hair and beards.

They were bored, so they were hanging around the resort’s bars.

After two weeks, they were very comfortable, and wanted to move into suites overlooking the ocean.

One day Zeke called Sheldon’s cell-phone and asked how he could go about dealing with his investments.

Sheldon answered, “…Don’t talk about that kind of shit on the phone; let’s set up a meeting for tomorrow afternoon, at say 2:00, in the little music theater.

Sheldon immediately called Joe, “…We better have a meeting with the rabbits at 2:00 tomorrow afternoon…”

Steve, the day-trader from New York that they had dealt with a half a year ago was in Albania, so Sheldon invited him to the meeting to help sort things out with this new group of rabbits.

So, the meeting consisted of Sheldon, Steve, the three guys, Joe, Dom, the local head of security, and Jeanne functioning as bartender.

Once everyone had their drinks and the meeting was about ready to start, Sheldon told Jeanne, “Take your time and go over to the distillery, and get us a gallon of that banana lightning?”

She replied, “There is some right in the storage room here”

Sheldon had a stern look on his face and said, “Take your time.”

Jeanne got that scared look and said, “OH!”

As soon as the door shut behind Jeanne, Joe said, “You guys think we bought out your company because we are good guys; well, we are good guys, but not to swindling crooks like you three. There is no excuse for ripping off the millions of retired folks with your unreasonable fees that are absolutely a total rip-off.”

Sheldon added, “So, we need, in this meeting, to figure out a way to get about 99% of that money back to the retired folks that you ripped off.”

All three guys started getting vocal, but Zeke was the loudest, “…All retirement funds have the same fees; we earned the money…”

“You know better; you know the fees the Green Bank charges.”

Sheldon said, “Let me introduce you to Steve here; he and a few partners were doing day trading, a Ponzi scam, and gold trading, ripping off millions of people, a little at a time. His friend Martin became fertilizer for those nice flowers you seen along the sidewalk by José’s house where you were staying. His friend Bernie became fertilizer for some bananas after he tried to dash, and the headhunters you seen in the music deal, nailed him with their poison blow-darts.”

Paul Winquist

Joe continued over the loud noise that the three guys were making, “…We are going to leave you guys enough to retire on in very good style, but not billionaires. So, we need to do some evaluating of each of you guy’s financial status.”

Sheldon added, “We already nulled out the stock that you would have acquired in the Coronado Holding Corporation.”

Herb was saying, “You can’t do that; I want to go back to New York and face the police rather than deal with you guys.”

Sheldon nodded to Dom, and then Dom picked up a regular telephone and said, “…Let’s go to plan H-1 right now.”

Sheldon said, to kill some time, “Okay, if that is what you want; we’ll take you to the plane right now.”

Just as he said that, four of the headhunters popped in the big back door with their full dress headhunter costume look, including spears and shields. One guy was carrying the bloody mess of a ceremonial box that they use for the head and organs of their victims.

To everyone’s surprise, including Joe and Sheldon, the four guys extracted four brand new Teasers from the bloody box, and quickly shot all four at the fear-frozen-still Herb.

That un-froze the fat little guy into what looked like a break-dancer on speed. That show lasted about fifteen seconds until he was dead still on the floor. The headhunters extracted the wires and threw the whole mess into the box. Sheldon said, “Better call the paramedics; this guy must have had a heart attack.”

That quieted down the other two guys into total silence, as they waited for the paramedics to roll Herb off on a gurney.

One paramedic asked, “He’s dead already; where should we take him?”

Sheldon answered, “He’s an American; better take him to the medical facilities.”

The headhunters followed the paramedics’ ambulance/golf cart over to the medical building. The nurses confirmed that he was dead so the headhunters wanted to take him to their cremation fire/party, and the nurses didn’t object.

Joe brought the smaller meeting back to order, “…Over the last couple weeks our computer whizzes and accountants have analyzed you guy’s financial picture. Zeke it looks like you have accumulated about 2.6 billion dollars, not counting the BLC stock that dissipated into thin air. Ronan, it looks like you only stashed about 560 million, so being less greedy we are going to allow you to keep about 2 million to retire on. Zeke, you have fucked way too many people, so all but about one million will need to get donated to the scholarship fund or given back to the retirees. I propose that out of your funds we refund the $1,800 fees for the last calendar year to the about 1.3 million accounts, and donate the balance to the scholarship fund. That’s a much better deal than Bernie Madoff got from the Federal bunnies. Instead of penitentiary time you will do community service at one of our colleges until you turn 72; you can pick from Costa Rica, Albania, or one of the new ones we are getting ready to build in Chile, Colombia, or Uruguay. Of course, we will take you to Panama to get a new identity and a little plastic surgery…”

Sheldon joked, “We’ll turn you two into gentiles…ha…ha…ha.”

Steve said, “It’s nice over in Albania. We have a very little business college, and a construction trades school, that we are gradually expanding into a full college.”

Both guys were silent with scared shitless looks on their faces.

Joe continued, “We are going to fly you up to a Panamanian island we have to deal with the accountants and the plastic surgery doctor. Also we’ll get you both some more hair implanted.”

Sheldon added, “We need to get some of Herb’s assets transferred before his heirs come alive… Maybe we can do a predated will, like the Mormon Church did with Howard Hughes’ estate…”

Joe said, “It’s not worth it; most of his assets were in BLC stock, in the banks, and in some real estate in New York.”

At first Ronan and Zeke felt they were being robed, but were in no position to protest.

About a week and a half went by as they dealt with the accounts, plastic surgery, hair implants, dental work, and so on before the news got the story of the 1.3 million refund checks being sent out by the company that took over BLC. The PR people planted stories that made the Green Bank of Chicago look good rather than the perpetrators of the takeover scam. The Green Bank got flooded with people calling to roll-over their accounts to the wonderful Green Bank’s retirement fund. They had to hire several hundred temporary workers to handle the phones.

As time went by Ronan and Zeke realized that the whole world did look at them as criminals, and they were happy to be going to Albania as schoolteachers in the business college.

About a whole month and a half later, a life insurance investigator showed up at the front desk of the resort in Ecuador.

First, he checked into a low budget room, and then came back to the front desk; he showed the desk clerk the three guys pictures, and the desk clerk replied, “…I think I did see them; what are their names; I will look them up……….…No those names are no good.”

Sheldon had never registered them at the front desk, only given them card/keys by tricking the computer system with his laptop computer.

“That’s true; they would have been using fake names. I just need to verify that they are not dead, so the company can refuse to pay their heirs’ claims.”

“Oh!!! One is dead.”

“Which one?”

“That one; he had a heart attack,” as she pointed to the picture.

“Oh, in that case I need to talk to the paramedics or coroner that dealt with him.”

“They are over in the yellow building back out toward the highway; it says medical center on the sign.”

The investigator went to the medical building and introduced himself. The receptionist called in the paramedics, and the nurses, to talk to the insurance investigator.

“…He was already dead when he arrived over here…”

“Where is his body?”

“Oh; the headhunters loaded him onto their pickup truck and drove him off; I assume they cremated him… They always have a big party after they cremate a body, so they were happy to take him.”

“Headhunters?”

“Yes, they are descendents of the original black plantation slaves; these guys can show you how to get to their compound…”

Ten minutes later, the introductions were over and the chief headhunter said, “…We cooked and ate him…”

“Aaaaahhhh…you ate him?”

“Yes.”

“Oh shit! Did you save any parts that I can get a genetic sample from?”

“Yes; his head is over there on that pole.”

They walked over to where the head was still on display, with thousands of flies flying around it, and maggots crawling all over it.

The insurance guy puked right there on their new sidewalk, and then faded down to a sitting position near the pile of puke.

Once he recovered and stud up he said, “…Ah, ah, ah, ah; I need to take a picture and get some of his hair.”

One guy pulled out some hair, flicked off the maggots, and then handed it to the investigator, and then both the chief and his assistant stood beside the head on a pole, like they were posing for the tourists; they were so close that it was interrupting the orbit of the flies.

He got the picture with his cell phone camera.

The investigator drove his golf cart back to the resort and disappeared for a few hours. He showed back up at the front desk, and asked the girl, “…Where did the other two go?”

“I don’t know, because I don’t know what names they used…”

“I better talk to the security people.”

“I’ll call them for you.”

After the girl described the situation over the phone, the head security officer came over to talk to the investigator. He was at the meeting when Herb died, so he was tight lipped about the matter. “…All I know is that he was in some kind of meeting, and the paramedics were called, they drug him to the medical building; I would assume…”

“Who was at the meeting?”

“I have no way of knowing; we respect peoples’ privacy here, both private and business meetings.”

“Is there any surveillance video of him dying?”

“Wow, if that were the case, I would know about that; the guards would have told me about that kind of event.”

The Action Continues

ToC