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Broken trust: A Ponzi scheme victim bounces back
Carol Lovil fell victim to Alan Stanford's ponzi scheme. After losing nearly everything, she's finding a way forward.
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When Allen Stanford was arrested for defrauding investors to the tune of more than $7 billion in a Bernie Madoff-esque Ponzi scheme, he left some 30,000 victims in his wake. He had promised investors safety, security and a high rate of return on their money, but many of those he defrauded (a large percentage of are eldery women living off retirement savings) now find themselves living very different lives than they’d anticipated.
Carol Lovil, 69, was one of Stanford’s victims. Her husband John had worked his entire life for Nestle, retiring in 1999 with enough saved for a comfortable life together. In 2005, when their broker moved from Merrill Lynch to Stanford Financial Group, they transferred their savings with him. John died of cancer in 2006, and by 2009, when federal prosecutors arrested Stanford for wire fraud and tax evasion, Lovil found out almost all of her life savings was gone.
“I’ve lost a lot more than money is this,” Lovil told New York Times Wealth Matters columnist Paul Sullivan in a recent interview. “I’ve lost trust. I don’t trust anybody. It’s very sad. You can’t put a dollar amount on trust.”
Lovil’s attorney told her to sell her house and get a job in the wake of the uncovering of Stanford’s ponzi scheme, and that’s just what she did, downsizing her life and getting a job at a local library. With John’s Social Security check and the small amount she makes at the library, Lovil’s making it, though the financial security she thought she had is gone.
“She’s got a wonderful attitude,” Sullivan tells Tess Vigeland. “She says that even if she got the money back, she probably wouldn’t go back to her old lifestyle. She’d probably just save it and give it to her grand kids, and help put them through college.”
I realy feel for Mrs. Carol Lovil, 69, who apparently was one of Stanford’s victims in the scandal of Allen Stanford, defrauding investors to the tune of more than $7 billion in a Bernie Madoff-esque Ponzi scheme, he left some 30,000 victims in his wake.
Sometimes it is difficult to imagine how some people deliberately cheat people; just good and ordinary people - of hard earned money.
They live in a bobble of lies and dreams of their own and face not the reality of life. “if we do this and this we can do that and that” while working people must get up in the morning and feed the children, share the morning with the family and go of to work.
Just think about it in the wintertime for most people, not just in US but all over the world or living in hurricane areas and face the environment unmerciful dealing with homes and surroundings.
Many years of labour and peoples safe and loving homes are destroyed in moments and there they are, left with nothing?
But when this is said I must also say that banking and investments are risky. Business and companies could not run without investments, risks and “gambling” but …. there is a but.
Greed, scrupulous behaviour or just this thought that one must see for himself first and “newer mind the others”.
That is bad policy. A society cannot stay safe on these conditions. We all must take responsibility and that is; taking care of each other, looking after each other and “for the best of our neighbour”.
My success is also your success and your success is also my success. Your loss is my problem - just as a family.
So, we must start to take control of our feelings, emotions and thoughts. How can we successful do this?
Well, I will give you an example.
Years ago, “Park Avenue in Manhattan and Park Avenue in the South Bronx being separated by a small stretch of water and several billion dollars in income – sounded quite promising.
“A clever and unusual look at inequality through the lives of families living a few miles apart.
“Only we seldom heard from those living in the Bronx, as nearly all the focus was on those living in Manhattan.
“Specifically, 740 Park Avenue, the highest concentration of billionaires in the US.
Citation ended.
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Well, well but from the bottom to the top. How? The American dream is a reality and it is all about people. Why does someone stay on the bottom while others end upon the top? That is the question.
In America New York 1930 a young man came from California to live with his brothers in New York.
His name was Jackson Pollock. From the warmth and sunny California to the very hot in summertime and as cold in the winter, he could not have picked a worse time in America history.
The crack on Wall Street.
But, life must go on and so did he. But, time made him the man he became. To day we look at his most expensive paintings and wonder how it could be.
Yes, from the bottom to the top and he paid for every single moment. To day we look at his paintings and wonder and the time in which he lived and worked comes to us like a cannonball.
His most famous painting I like to show you. In the museum: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUE9i-mHdPM
Close up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StVY9ljydxw
and to the public: http://web.artprice.com/artist/23185/jackson-pollock
To all of you: Merry Christmas.
IMHO: Its less about "trust" and more about honing your ability to predict the motives of those who offer (beg) to control your financial well being.
Those of us in the ~ 95% economic niche need to be, and have always needed to be 100% responsible for managing our own fiances. That includes living within or preferably below "our means" (i.e., spending less than we earn) and plodding through the painful process of learning about and controlling our own financial investments.
While the Romney crowd can afford to turn the financial flow over to a team of wealth managers while they 'dance with horses,' the rest of us need to stay sharp, involved and on our feet.
