Platinum Equities?

[jdmakkord]

Has anyone on here dealt with Platinum Equities, or know someone that has? I've tried searching around and cannot find any feedback that is not an article from a magazine or newspaper. Are they legit?

[sputnik]

Completely legitimate. They invest in commercial properties.

However you are going to need $100,000 minimum to invest with them.

[jdmakkord]

Originally posted by sputnik
Completely legitimate. They invest in commercial properties.

However you are going to need $100,000 minimum to invest with them.

There is that option, and also the mortgage pool route. I was wondering if anyone had any views on either...

[Celica TVS3]

What are your goals from this investment / how does it fit within your overall investment strategy. Obvously i have no idea of your financial situation but if your looking to build a well balanced portfolio this probably isn't the place to start.

[rage2]

bump, class action lawsuit.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/stor...-equities.html

A group of investors from across the country hope to pursue a multimillion-dollar class-action lawsuit.

They put $160 million into Platinum Equities Inc., a Calgary-based company that promised a safe investment.

Many of them say they've now lost their entire life savings.

At 74, Simon Okkerse says he has had to go back to work after losing money in what he thought was a safe investment.

"$200,000 — that was my retirement fund that I collected through the years,” said Okkerse.

'Too good to be true'

Okkerse put his money into Platinum Equities Inc., which he says promised safe and secure investments in office buildings.

"We were getting only five or six per cent return on investment on these buildings — that is not astronomical 'too good to be true' type of investments,” said Okkerse.

Other investors put millions of dollars into about a dozen office buildings in Calgary.

In return they thought they were getting an ownership stake, but some buildings fell into foreclosure, others were sold and investors say they've been left with nothing.

"Then all of a sudden we heard there was no money left in the kitty to pay us and we never got any of that money,” said Okkerse.

Economy affected

Company officials with Platinum Equities Inc. were contacted for this story but calls were not returned.

Calgary-based lawyer Kevin McGuigan’s firm is advancing the lawsuit.

"This is something hurting the economy, hurting integrity of the investment system. People thought by investing in property it was going to be safer and less risky than investment in the stock. That's how it was marketed [and] turned out not to be the case,” said McGuigan.

Platinum Equities investor Jeffrey Exconde said the loss has wiped him out. He’s joining the lawsuit.

"I feel stress, right? It's hard-earned money, right? I didn't get this money from stealing from others, doing some bad stuff, I work hard for it,” said Exconde.

Investors gathered for a meeting Monday at 7 p.m. MT at Southside Victory Church in Calgary to talk about the class-action lawsuit.

What I don't get is, what did they do wrong to get sued? They claimed safe investments, but hey, so does everyone else. No investment is truly safe.

[G]

Originally posted by rage2
bump, class action lawsuit.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/stor...-equities.html


What I don't get is, what did they do wrong to get sued? They claimed safe investments, but hey, so does everyone else. No investment is truly safe.

I think they overpaid for buildings just like Concrete Equities. Our company tried to bid for a few of these buildings but they always outbid us by double digit percents. There is no way they can turn a profit paying what they paid for the buildings. They would pay x for the building pull the money out to buy another and so on but this only works if property values keep going up but this wasn't the case.

True there is no safe investment but to lose money because of what basically was a pyramid scheme is not right.

[chibwack]

Originally posted by rage2
bump, class action lawsuit.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/stor...-equities.html


What I don't get is, what did they do wrong to get sued? They claimed safe investments, but hey, so does everyone else. No investment is truly safe.

They do have a case if they can prove lack of due diligence or inappropriate investments (ie overpaying, investing outside of the risk profile, etc)

[BananaFob]

I've been keeping a close eye on this one as it involves two former clients of the brokerage I work for.

It's way deeper than overpaying for the buildings. The class action lawsuit is alleging collusion between the Strategic Group and Platinum whereby Strategic was putting really harsh 2nd mortgages and right of first refusal clauses unbeknownst to all the investors. The gist of it is that that the principals of Platinum and Strategic allegedly were working together to screw the little guys and transfer ownership of the buildings to Strategic for pennies on the dollar.

[G]

Strategic did the same with the CE properties until the investors stopped it. Real estate is really shaddy in Calgary a lot of fly by night syndications. Another one that seems fishy to me is CBI Group started by the Cadman brothers

http://albertasecurities.com/Enforce...94533%20v3.pdf

[BananaFob]

Originally posted by G
Strategic did the same with the CE properties until the investors stopped it. Real estate is really shaddy in Calgary a lot of fly by night syndications.

Yup.

Link to the statement of claim: http://www.mnllp.ca/page164.htm

Makes for some nice light reading.

[Maxt]

On top of that, the buildings they bought are mechanical lemons/nightmares.. Probably some of the worst commercial buildings in town in terms of needed repairs and in need of retrofitting. So these buildings needed large cash infusions to bring them up to modern standards, buildings like that with bad mechanical tend to have high tenant turnover.
I worked in many of those buildings a lot, even before they were in this portfolio, full of old CFC equipment, half gutted pneumatic controls, some had first generation archaic automation that was largely inoperative or half functional. The buildings were probably cheap buys because they needed huge capital cost outlay. Most of the investment was probably actually land value...A wrecking ball would do some of those properties a service.

[Redlyne_mr2]

Funny the individual responsible for platinum isn't listed in the article. I can't believe he can sleep at night after what he's done to so many people. I'm not going to mention his name but it's easy to find. He makes Sean Banerjee look like a saint.

[l/l/rX]

My parent's are part of the lawsuit, although they didn't lose hundreds of thousands, they still put in a significant amount but they wanted to test the waters with this type of investment as they had never done it before and see what the returns would be like.

[max_boost]

Has these real estate deals worked out for anyone??? Just curious.

So many of them promise to double your money in <5 years.

[BananaFob]

Originally posted by Redlyne_mr2
Funny the individual responsible for platinum isn't listed in the article. I can't believe he can sleep at night after what he's done to so many people. I'm not going to mention his name but it's easy to find. He makes Sean Banerjee look like a saint.

The guy on the other side that he is alleged with colluding with is even worse.

[jdmakkord]

Originally posted by l/l/rX
My parent's are part of the lawsuit, although they didn't lose hundreds of thousands, they still put in a significant amount but they wanted to test the waters with this type of investment as they had never done it before and see what the returns would be like.

Mine too unfortunately.

[G]

It's the same bunch of azzhats that set up a company...milk it...fold it up...rinse and repeat.

CE
Platinum
Teluric
Holzbren
Gatehouse
WealthStreet

Dave H. is involved with all these.

http://albertaventure.com/2012/08/al...avid-humeniuk/

The problem is that the consequences are not severe enough. A monetary fine and BAN for David Jones really?

[Masked Bandit]

I looked into these guys back in 2006ish and they gave me the "slimeball" vibe. I'm glad I kept my money in my pocket.

[askcleo]

wow sounds like these guys just makes these other guys look like boy scouts in the ponzi industry

http://www.grantthornton.ca/resource...%202012%20.pdf

http://www.grantthornton.ca/resource...-LucidComm.pdf

http://www.reviewstalk.com/complaint...ies-l7921.html

[Maxt]

Just googling names from the class action is hours of entertainment...