Opinion & Comment
Finding Investors in the Brooklyn Bridge

This column does not generally take a stance or make recommendations on business investments of one kind or another, but to every rule there is an exception and in the following lines we will talk about an investment that appears very safe, although this recommendation does not constitute accepting responsibility for the investment.

Behind this investment opportunity lies an amazing story known to very few, all of whom are Jews.

In Hungary, between Budapest and Mishkolc (pronounced MEESH- KOLTZ), are several tiny villages containing about 1,200 families living under primitive conditions. If you go to one of these homes with a bundle of $10,000 and ask to buy the house, chances are that within an hour the family will have its suitcases packed and will sign any bill of sale you lay in front of them and will add a thousand thanks, since the above amount will turn them from penniless to prosperous.

And this is just what a certain Jew has been doing for the last two months. He goes from one house to the next with a briefcase full of money (and two bodyguards accompanying him) buying one house after another and all he confronts are the praises showered upon him by the sellers. So far he has already purchased 200 houses!

What will this Jew do with so many houses, worth perhaps half what he paid for them? Here lies the clincher:

The Hungarian government is about to build a major government complex between Budapest and Mishkolc. Slated to become a real city, it will concentrate various government ministries in a central location. The only problem is that right smack in the middle of where this city will be built lie all of these tiny villages that have to be removed as well as residents who have to be compensated.

Does this explain matters?

There's still more to tell. Before construction begins, the government issued a tender to find a company to handle clearing the villages and compensating the homeowners. Only a handful of companies bid and the lowest bid was made by the Jew mentioned above--a total of $120 million . . . in other words, the government is willing to give $100,000 for every family cleared out.

Now our enterprising Jew is buying up the houses for $10,000 and will soon be earning $90,000 on each house.

But the first 200 cost him $20 million and now his credit has run dry and he is in a bind. On the one hand he cannot publicize the matter, because as soon as the homeowners find out what is taking place they will suddenly change their tune to ashrei yoshvei beisecho. On the other hand he is in dire need of funds to complete the purchases.

This is where the rest of us come into the picture. He is asking Jews around the world to put up $35,000 and is offering to pay them the remaining $65,000 in clear profits as soon as the deal goes through--five months at the most.

Many Jews have leaped at the opportunity and purchased five or ten houses, and now a total of 500 houses have already been bought up.

There are only 700 houses left. When I received this information I decided to depart from tradition and report this to my readers during these trying times when everybody is looking for a way to marry off their children.

But the information could leak any day and our Jewish friend in Hungary predicts the local press will get wind of what's happening within a week and people will begin to up their asking prices. Therefore interested investors should contact me today and transfer payment by Friday.

Before you rush to the bank or the loose tile under the bed or the gemachim, stop for a second.

The whole story you have been reading is fiction. It is much worse than my own stories because this one did not contain even the slightest trace of truth. I'm sorry for having to do this to you. But stay put. Take a deep breath and let's keep going.

For the time has come "once and for all," to address the topic of fictitious investments, many of which are far from view and far from reality. Those that guarantee quick profits and all you are left with in the end is a nice story. Except the ending is not what you expected. The ending is very sad.

In an ordered world a man purchases land, hires workers and donkeys, builds a building and earns a profit. Yet some people have found an interesting new route. Why sweat? Buy, hire, build? All they have to do is convince somebody else to put up his money. And to convince him all they need is to invent a story.

They sit down one afternoon and strain their brain to come up with an imaginative story set in a faraway location that ends with money flowing freely. They take this story to the little dream in every person's heart to win the lottery or get rich quick. They build their imaginary building and mention the clincher in passing-- just $20,000 or $30,000 compared to a sure and quick profit of tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars.

I hear several such stories recurrently. One person told me about an old man who became senile and was selling land worth $180,000 per dunam for a mere $60,000 and you don't even have to come up with the whole $60,000, just $10,000 to receive a purchase option. In the meantime look for a buyer at $180,000 and earn yourself $120,000 in a week's time. Not bad, eh?

And in another case, probably familiar to many readers, parcels of land in the Negev were being offered "right away, before the rezoning." A $25,000 parcel that within one year would turn into . . . take a breath: $325,000! It's hard to describe the frantic rush as people pushed and shoved for the right to pay for four or five parcels, particularly when a well-known personality recommended it; eventually she, too, was snared by the swindler.

And there are business proposals for real estate abroad and there are various patents, like a new parking gauge that will soon be sold around the world and for just $25,000 you can become a shareholder. Or a new hearing aid. What they all have in common is a story about a quick and easy way to get rich or a worthwhile long- term investment. There is one other thing all these stories share and that is the heartbreak when the story bursts like a bubble.

When people come to me with such proposals, my reply is always the same: "My dear sir, stories is how I make my living--not how you should be making yours." Then I send the nice inventor to try his luck somewhere else.

*

And lest you think someone is immune to these stories I will make an embarrassing admission: yours truly once fell for one of these stories and the outcome was as can be expected.

Have you ever heard of Paradise Mombasa? A few years ago we purchased one of those units, although at a more modest price, after hearing one of these stories. We received a lovely document certifying that we were the owners of an apartment unit, and later it turned out this was all we had gained from our investment. Never did any of the investors receive a single shekel and most of them despaired of ever seeing any returns.

Recently there was a terrorist attack in Mombasa that destroyed an entire building. Those who fabricated the story continue to demand that the owners of the unit provide another $2,000 to cover legal expenses and people are paying and paying because once again they are being sold a story about compensation payments and getting rich.

Losing money is unpleasant and admitting it is even worse, but sometimes it is worth paying a certain amount for the school of life.

And in fact, when someone recently tried to tell me some "investment story" I told him I had already invested my money in a school that had been destroyed in the attack in Mombasa. He said, "That was a hotel, right? The Paradise Mombasa."

"For you it may have been a hotel," I told him, "but for me it was a school."

The school of life.

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