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One common charge is that by lying on mortgage applications, Serin violated state and federal fraud laws. Serin uses the term "my mortgage fraud." He also admits: "I overstated my income, misrepresented owner occupancy intent and concealed the cash-back from the lenders."
That frank admission has led to calls to "Send Casey Serin To Prison"--a petition to the FBI has appeared--as well as a similar call targeting his wife.
"Casey and Galina Serin's story isn't one of 'Young couple tries to make it in the cold, cruel world,'" one critic wrote. "These two are f****g Bonnie and Clyde. What they're doing is bank robbery, without the gun."
Stephen Kodak, an FBI spokesman in Washington, said he could not comment on any individual case. "Yes, it is a crime," he said. "It's a crime to misrepresent your salary. It's a crime to misrepresent whether or not you're going to live in the house."
In March, the FBI announced a crackdown on mortgage scammers and said it has more than 1,000 current investigations. But Kodak said the FBI tends to focus on financial insiders and not people who lie on loans: "We go after, normally, the fraud for profit, because even though it doesn't make up the majority of the numbers out there, it certainly makes up the largest financial losses."
Marital drama, debt addiction
One wildcard in the Casey Serin saga is his wife, Galina, who met him through church social groups and married him when she was 20 years old. Both are Baptists and Slavic immigrants (Galina immigrated to the U.S. in 1990, and her husband in 1994) and are part of Sacramento's growing Russian-speaking population.
In a conversation at her sister's townhouse Thursday, where the young couple rents two rooms for about $600 a month, Galina said she was becoming frustrated with her husband's spending and had met with her pastor that afternoon for counseling. But according to her own religious views, Galina said, "there are only two reasons for a divorce: adultery and physical abuse."
Running up $170,000 in unsecured debt, in other words, does not qualify--nor does lying about his plans regarding a recent vacation in Lake Tahoe, Calif., nor buying a $600 video camera on credit to document life experiences for his blog.
For his part, Serin confirms that his wife hates his blog. "Many times she's like: I want you to shut it down and go quietly into the night," he said.
The so-called haters have similar sore points, including that Serin refuses to get a job and instead pays for living expenses by simply borrowing more money. He defends himself by insisting that he's making far more valuable connections through his blog.
One example he gave is that he learned, through his blog, of a $1.5 billion Las Vegas casino for sale. If he can find a buyer, Serin says, he'd get a 1 percent commission ($15 million) for his trouble. "Doesn't that make more sense than a W-2 job?" he said.
Serin also recently paid $16,000 to Arizona's Nouveau Riche University, a kind of real-estate seminar company that includes classes with names like Fix & Flip and Creative Financing. Its marketing literature says that Nouveau Riche "hand delivers properties on a silver platter."
Nouveau Riche, which is not accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools (the regional group recognized by the U.S. Department of Education), claims not to be a multilevel marketing scheme. It has some elements of one, however. Serin said he has found two people to pay $18,000 to Nouveau Riche, and if he finds any more, he'll get a $9,000 commission for each one, as well as additional commissions if the people he recruited then sign up additional customers.
In an e-mail message over the weekend, Serin added: "The 16K gives me two years of quality (real estate investment) education--gives you college credits--access to cash-flow properties around the nation, local community of investors, etc."
Not all these details have appeared on his blog yet, but Serin seems to enjoy spacing them out in a way that will vex his readers the most. "What happens is I feed off of it," he said. "I know the buttons to press to get those guys going. After awhile, you learn what topics you can mention if you want to get extra comments on your post."
Serin already does that by stressing his penchant for afternoon naps that take place precisely when his readers are reading his blog in their cubicles and silently fuming. He claims to have bought more than $4,000 in penny stocks last month, which have since slid in value. And he delights in posting about his excursions to a nearby Jamba Juice, which became notorious when he bought a $4.90 drink there with an ATM card but was charged an extra $33 overdraft fee because his bank account was empty.
During a visit to the same Jamba Juice on Thursday, Serin asked the cashier whether any jobs were available. But, thinking of how much time he spends every day working on his blog, he added: "Can I keep my laptop back there while I'm at work?"
He left without taking an application.
CNET News.com's Anne Broache contributed to this report
See more CNET content tagged:
blogger, debt, blog, bank, photograph
sue others of his kind out of existence.
I apologize for the numerous asterisks you had to use in purging some of the language I used toward the dynamic dumba*ses. But know that the Casey Serin Haterz truly appreciate the depths to which you went to uncover the nefarious activities of these two.
$1.5 billion casino, my left arm.....let's all hold our breath until that happens!
Galina, you married your slickster, and now you have to clean houses instead of walking around the upscale stores looking cute. Good.
No form of debasement is enough for her type.
Just cause some idiot run up a load of dept doing it doesn't mean it's not profitble for everyone.
It's hard enough for the government to go after people who commit "regular" crimes, like this blogger who's a fraud and a liar, just imagine what would happen if there was an "anti-flipping" law. There are already any number of disincentives for this sort of behavior - mostly having to pay income tax on sale profits if you live somewhere less than three years. I bet you tax is one of the reasons what killed the deals for this dude.
Anyways, flipping only seems profitable when an area is overheated and in bubble mode. These people are punished enough when the bubble bursts. So there's no need to make it illegal...just more houses for auction later on.
"Money and America go hand in hand." How true. Why did we Americans ever invent money in the first place? Humanity got along just fine without money before we invented it!
"Try paying 6-8 dollars a liter!" No thanks. If you would like to, however, I'll be glad to open a service station near you!
So many easy nitpicks (not to mention spelling and grammar errors, but I guess you need that damn MONEY to learn how to spell and write), so little time...
http://www.realmeme.com/roller/page/realmeme/?entry=an_anti_meme_casey_serin
Fortunately his track record shows he will probably just blow anything he makes away, still it seems to me that the best move would be to simply ignore people like this.
Can't say as I hate the guy myself, his so called crimes aren't all that significant when you compare them to Tyco or Enron - the true gods of destroying peoples lives.
Finally you can't go to prison for being in debt. You can go to prison if you committed fraud to get yourself into debt, such as lying on a mortgage application about your income, but otherwise the worst that can happen is you'll end up with bad credit, no home and have your wages garnished to pay back creditors.
Can't say I feel sorry for though, probably deserves everything he's getting.
My success in Real Estate and Olympic Pin Sales have brought me untold riches and it is me who should be held up by the press as a role model.
Just today I was sitting in my expansive garden. I gazed into the 28,000 gallon pond with koi (which are fish)in it and I said to myself, "Nigel, you have everything anyone could want. You have a BMW, you have 12 blogs, you have a POOL... IN YOUR HOUSE; What more could you really want in life?"
Later, when I was sitting in my professionally designed kitchen, I leaned against the high grade counter top and the answer came to me... I want to be just like Casey Serin. Even the love of the entire Jamaican Bobsled Team cannot fill the void in my heart.
I have seen many things in my life. I have met Ziggy Marley, for Christ sake. I have worn the finest leatherette and doused my body in the fancy body spray. I have deleted many comments and I am stickier than any of you will ever know- but I have never had the love of the media.
WHAT ABOUT ME?
estate on someone elses money the first thing they need is a
willing lender to participate in the scheme.
I spent four very successful years in the mortgage business in
the 1990's being ethical, but there were tons of people will to do
just about anything to "do a loan". About once a week I got
someone coming through trying to do what Casey Serin was
doing. Stated income, buyer paying the closing, owner
occupied...you name it. All you had to do was check the credit
to know what they and he was doing.
Casey looks like he had a lot of (or just one) mortgage brokers
helping him do stupid and very illegal things. Time for Casey
and the sleazy brokers to go get real jobs.
Like, going back to Enron, there wasn't any voice in AmeriKa would believe it wasn't the greatest thing since sliced bread. And why?
Because the Wall St. shills on down [not to mention Ken Lay's personal buddy he advised, George Dumbyah!] told the truth. Any decent bookkeeper could have taken a look and said, Where's the product, where's the expense, where's the profit? But no, our financial masters advised thousands to leap into this sure thing. And all were surprised, and no one said "Same, shame, you gits!"
So, yeah, Lay et al got busted. Lay had a convenient heard attack and quick cremation -- so is he in Paraguay now? or is it Uruguay. The experts cannot quite get that one straight ...
I was totally unfamiliar with the specific individual of this article, though following the housing-bubble story for months. And the conclusion for me is inescapable: is it the greedy, such as this case, or the slime who work the system to suck fools into it, who are really responsible?
I remember this apocryphal story of a woman who gets to school late, just in time to hear her son's speech " ... yeah, and my dad's a drug dealer."
Mom drags him out by the elbow and demands to know how he could tell such a lie.
"Well," the son said. "I'd already told them you were a hooker."
"WHAT?!!!"
"Yeah, well, mom ... I didn't want to confess you were a real estate agent and dad was a hedge fund broker."
I wanted to respond to some questions about Casey and my article:
* The links to his site, iamfacingforeclosure.com, didn't work because he was transitioning servers to one hosted by godaddy.com and was having some problems with the move. Unfortunately he chose to do this on a Monday morning instead of over the weekend, when having the site up wasn't as vital.
* The article was edited a bit for space and some of the last section was abbreviated. To elaborate: Galina told me that she initially had agreed with Casey that he should go to Tahoe but then rescinded her permission after considering the cost. She was suspicious when Casey packed his toothbrush and laptop for what was supposed to be a brief drive to go bike riding, and her suspicions turned out to be accurate.
* She forced Casey to return the $600 video camera even with a 15 percent restocking fee.
* Casey said his business credit has a relative as a guarantor, I believe his mother.
* As for "Nouveau Riche University," Casey told me that he has paid them $16,000 but has not made any commissions by signing up the first two people. The first two generated no commissions. Future signups will generate commissions.
* More photos are here:
http://mccullagh.org/theme/casey-serin-iamfacingforeclosure.html
* Our podcast talking about Casey is here (http://news.com.com/2324-11424_3-6183605.html). We asked him to join us but he said he didn't get the message in time. We may have him on our podcast on Wednesday if our schedules coincide.
* Yes, he showed me the murse. Very fashion-forward.
-Declan
Much like the attention Casey receives, this article tends to just look at the surface (maybe a little under it with the Haterz analysis). Exurban Nation is the hub of the group of folks that have followed this trainwreck for a long time. I don't think anyone there hates Casey, they just know two things.
Initially, people were very receptive and tried to offer much help and great advice in the beginning of this saga. But what unfolded kept people around. Turns out Casey isn't really an entrepreneur as he likes to portray himself, but jsut a low-level scammer who's tried many times to "get rich quick" without actually doing anything. Whether it's actual fraud or other pyramid schemes Casey Serin has a history of trying to play the system only to meet with failure.
Many of these exploits can be found on the other Serin Satellite sites like Foreclosure Avoiders Changed My Life, Twelve Years Of Being Annoyed By Chloe Sevigny, Blog about a blog about a blog about a blog, What Casey Means..." and many more.
I don't think any of us hate Casey, I personally think he should shut down and give up his dreams of striking it rich without working. I think most of the Haterz just want to make sure that a once and future get rich quick artist should be shown for what he is, not just the shallow "victim" that has been portrayed in most articles.
He's dug him self a hole that is going to take a long, long time for him to dig out of.
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=199602025
"... Wipro and Satyam note that H-1B workers make up most of their U.S. staffs."
These are H-1b dependent companies, are making no effort to hire U.S. citizens into these U.S. jobs. Satyam, Wipro, and Tata openly discriminate against U.S. citizens for U.S. jobs.
A company with more than 15% of their employees on an h-1b (and these companies are well above that), has to make a good faith effort to hire a U.S. citizen. These Indian It outsourcing companies are not doing that.
Clearly they are breaking U.S. law. The George Bush Department of Labor is doing nothing about this.
In open testimony before Congress, a job applicant made a phone call to a recruiting agency for a U.S. job. She was told they would not interview her, despite her excellent qualifications, simply because she could not be sponsored for an h-1b Visa. This incident was witnessed by dozens of congressional personnel. The George Bush Department of Labor did nothing about this.
Senators Dick Durbin and Chuck Grassley are merely asked for information regarding the hiring and firing practices of these outsourcing companies. And as a result the Indian Commerce Minister is threatening trade sanctions against the United States, for merely asking for such information.
This is a huge cover-up of discrimination againt U.S. workers because of their national origin, on the part of companies operating in the United States. It is so big, that whole governments are motivated to cover it up, that is why India is threatening trade sanctions against the U.S. for even asking questions. And the George-Bush Department of Labor is doing nothing (absolutely nothing) to stop it.
It is time to shine a light onto the biggest case of open discrimination based upon national origin, EVER, in the United States.
Federal Laws against discrimination are being broken. And the United States is being threatened with trade sanctions for asking questions about it, talking about, thinking about it.
http://www.myebid.com/cgi-bin/auction/view?cmd=view&listingID=4046
?iamfacingforeclosure.com is now for sale, the Feds are getting too close and I am fleeing back to Uzbekistan, it was fun why it lasted. Thanks everyone!?
- selling his blog?
- by mikenyc2001 June 23, 2007 1:45 PM PDT
- http://iamfacingforeclosure.com/249/sell-my-foreclosure-blog-for-100000
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
(36 Comments)why buy it for 100K or more
when the better option would be
iamfacingbankruptcy.com being auctioned
https://www.tdnam.com/trpItemListing.aspx?&miid=7623644