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In light of A1's last post (#628), it appears Mr. Brunner is not another inheritor of the estimable Mr. Ponzi's strategy for dealing with subscribers. It looks like what may become known as the tropical tree scheme. Keep the rich and growing proceeds from your older investors whether or not you get fresh payments from your new investors.
My gut tells me that the only proceeds will come from us cutting, milling and shipping our own trees out of the TATF empire when they have become much older and the market returns.
However poor the present market for teak may be his believers have helped Steve Brunner become a wealthy man who has an offshore business plan like no other. And now comes great opportunities in palm oil.
belmontx
jusfcrall -- You sum up this situation well. Your words are on the mark. We need to find a way to make it likely that anyone who browses teak investment opportunities on the web will find this site high on the google hit list (along with TATF, of course). After all, like Fox, we need to offer potential investors fair and balanced reporting.
Any ideas from our browsing-savvy members?
belmontx
You say, "The great mystery is why the Brunners do not simply write off the pre-20 year thinnings and recalculate their projections for new and existing customers on a rational basis. There is probably some chance that the math wouldn't look all that bad (and perhaps quite a bit better than, say 30-year bonds). Their failure to take this simple step is the source of a great deal of justified foreboding.
To present investors this "simple step" would certainly make sense, but to not deceptively project earlier returns would effectively end new investment in TATF. We would not have sent them our money had we not believed we would see a portion of our returns within a generation. We were naive, but TATF was hopelessly optimistic. The mendacity here has arisen only since the company has learned the truth about the market for young teak and not changed their sales pitch. Like A1, I believe the operation began with what the owner believed would develop for his investors, but to keep the money coming in has since morphed into this unwholesome sales scheme based on discredited estimates of the market. Mr. Brunner is stuck between being honest with his present investors or keeping chances alive for continuing new purchases of his seedlings and clones. It is obvious which he has chosen to do. I don't think many of his prospective investors have any idea of what the experience of past investors has been. To read his website pages about comments of present tree owners, and for prospects to get emails from him mentioning such things as the demand by current tree owners for IRS Form 1099's to report earnings, an entirely different and false picture is drawn.
belmontx
Thought you might find this email from Steve Brunner interesting. It is a form letter directed to prospective investors, so it obviously was done only to encourage the credibility of TATF.
Dear All,
We thank you for your heartwarming response to our Oil Trees announcement below.
A number of you have asked whether we send 1099’s reporting the distributions. As a Costa Rican corporation we are not required to report in the U.S. or any other country and so we do not send 1099’s. We do include a cover note to you, the tree owner, saying what the distribution is for.
Some of you have also asked about the possibility of holding your trees in your own Costa Rican corporation to enjoy anonymity and reinforce the privacy of your holdings. Our attorneys here have replied that it is completely possible and quite straightforward. If you would like to know more, we would be glad to pass along their information.
Thank you all again for your warm response.
Warmly,
Steve
back to belmontx ---Since our forum has been unable to turn up a single credible investor who has received anything from TATF during the 16 years in which investments have been made we can only admire the superb, if morally-challenged, sales skills of the owner..... Also, there seems to be a great deal of "warmth" emanating from this man.
belmontx
A1 Yours is a reasoned and objective response to a situation which arouses high emotions in those of us who trusted our money to the incompetent leadership of TATF. It is indeed likely that no intent to defraud was present. However, as the years have passed and the misleading material is continued to be presented on the company's website (albeit in increasingly modified form, thanks to this forum) Mr. Brunner clearly is revealing himself to have put his own gains far above those of his investors.
As with any investment confidence in one's judgement only comes when the first likely returns are received. When,without explanation, this doesn't happen, nor for the second or third returns, the investor realizes that there is a good chance that no returns will ever be paid. Add to that the lack of any explantions from the company, the disappearing "Tree Owners News" and the impossibility of any communication with Mr. Brunner, himself. I would guess that the odds of any of us ever receiving a dollar from TATF are at best even.
If this were simply a bungled operation by the company we might well accept an explantion followed by an honest reappraisal of our investments. This hasn't happened and our only appraisals are coming from the analyses you and a few others have done on this board. Because of this we all have genuine reason to suspect the character of the man who owns and runs TATF.
belmontx
A1 -- You seem to have some degree of renewed confidence in TATF the past couple of months. Since the forum has repeatedly called for owners of '93 teak (or any year's, for that matter) who have received payment to let us know, and we have heard from none, but we have heard from many who haven't, what leads you to believe that some of them are getting paid?
Also, please explain what you meant in post 601 when you said,
"if non-Brunner family members own teak from a specific year, they will get paid before Brunner family members who own teak from the same year, but the Brunner family members will get paid before owners of teak from the next year."
I agree that it is possible that the Brunners have simply misestimated the market from inception to present, rather than have purposely set out to defraud their investors. However, there is no doubt that they choose to conceal this from others while continuing their deceptive sales statements on their website.
The more new investor-members who make comments on this forum the more compelling the evidence seems that TATF has not, and is not, processing and selling any investor's trees. If you have new reasons to be sanquine about the future fo past investors in this sorry operation please let us know why.
belmontx
I think the assumption A1 was making was that all the 1M payouts were from the '92 teak and that one-third of that money might have gone to non-Brunner sources. Correct me if I'm wrong, A1, but I don't think you were indicating that any of the '93 teak and later thinning proceeds have been paid to anyone.
belmontx
matty05 -- You speak as if TATF is paying some of the people who own 1993 teak. That may be what they infer in their email to you but, if there is one thing this board has established it is that there is no evidence that any investor who owns any year teak, or any other tree, has ever been paid anything by this company. Who are you going to believe, what TATF tells you or what every other investor tells you? We have asked over and over for any tree owner who has been paid to let us know. Only fjonas (aka: sbrunner, complete with his extravagant praise for and detail about his company) has signed on to say that he has been rewarded.
So, viper432, we are all in the same boat you have found yourself to be in. We can only hope that our collective efforts may lead to some sort of payout sometime.
belmontx
Not to rain on your parade, dnabrice, but if you read the posts on this forum from existing tree owners you will realize that it is possible that in the year 2022 you will still be watching and wondering when you are going to hear from TATF about your first thinning proceeds. Going into 2009 none of the legitimate owners of the oldest plantings (1992-93) have reported receiving payments nor information about payments.
Investors should know that it is advisable that they be very young and prone to risk-taking when they make their purchases. Best case scenario: a payoff 25-30 years down the line -- and that assumes that the land under your trees is in stable ownership under a stable governing system.
For me, the take you offer on this person and his business nails it; and it pretty much confirms our doom. Your psychological profiling of the owner, and now your interpretation of the jam he has gotten himself into -- having to choose between truth-telling and keeping his business growing -- seems to me to be the best estimates yet as to the source of massive investor disappointment. It leaves little doubt that there is no happy ending, at the very least within the next three decades, to this story.
Early on, one member of my family (our primary investor) did visit the farms, saw our trees and met Steve himself. He turned out to appear exactly as you described, friendly, charming, and utterly confident of others’ approval. This was seven years ago, several years after making our initial investments.
Our dawning realization that we were being exploited only came in later years when we received neither communication from him nor expected distributions and he seemed to cease his newsletters, and, finally, from our joining this forum and finding that no one has yet received anything. Thanks to the research of A1, fawtsc, and the actual specific TATF experiences of justfrall, we realized that his projections were nowhere near realistic nor honest. Thence came the theories as to why we may have seen the last of our money.
Between our guesses as to whether we are victims of Brunner being a poor businessman who simply has a serious cash flow problem, or that he is a greedy businessman who has made a considered decision to indefinitely not pay his investors and hope that decades from now their emails will die off, your appraisal seems the middle ground likelihood. The problem, as with Narcissus, is that in admiring his own image mirrored from the water of the pond, his success has become the whole story, and we investors are expected to simply be appreciative bystanders whose outcomes are irrelevant. In retrospect, this is completely consistent with the earlier emails and phone calls we exchanged witg him and with the arguments he presents on this forum while in his various disguises. During the early months of this forum, almost a year ago, Steve Brunner actually used his true name and signed on with thorough explanations in answer to every investor complaint post. When re-reading those one is astonished by the continued and unrelenting cheery justifications he gave for every suggestion of false or questionable statements he had made in his newsletters and on his website. Many of those arguments, particularly from A1, were supported with significant facts. This made no matter to SB; he simply repeated over and over, in various forms, his own discredited earlier statements.
Particularly telling is the narcissism revealed throughout his TATF website when he gives the personal story of his earlier successes and of his devotion to higher callings as to why he established TATF; then, most significantly, with the recent addition of his “personal testimony” so that we can see his life the way a fond biographer would. With himself as the only significant player here, the investments the little people have made in his enterprise are of little consequence to him.
belmontx
Mountainecho -- Thanks for your post, and your insights. Your best case scenario, a severe cash flow problem, is the last best hope that any of us have for ever seeing any of our money again. Its liklihood, however, is virtually zero when the subterfuges and deceptions of TATF and it owner, Steve Brunner, are reviewed. Your good judgement in 2001 is to be admired.
The worst case scenario is that we have been victimized by an entrepreneur who is truly venal; one who poses as an investor and takes the name of fjonas (and earlier, the Ohio lawyer, the Happy Tree Owner, and the Happiest Tree Owners), who for some unknown reason seems to have detailed inside information on the workings of the company. He then tells the forum what a upstandingl man is the owner and infers what a blessing for all his company is; then he tells us about favorable outcomes he has already experienced from his investments, and others will experience if they are simply more patient.
I asked five office acquaintances, who know nothing of this company nor of my investment, to do an internet search for possible investments in teak. After doing that, I asked if they would then search for anything they could find on Tropical American Tree Farms. In both situations I asked them to look for information as prospective investors would.
It turned out that none of them discovered this forum, which happens to be the only place where likely fraud would be discovered. All of them found many hits for the TATF promotional webpage as well as a few positive articles in publications. They were impressed by the opportunity for investment gains offered by this company.
Steve Brunner has never wavered in keeping his now discredited projections on his webpage. I am not sure that any present investors would have sent him money without these projections. Although he also offered us his credibility and integrity by making frequent references to his family and his religious principles. Now, 16 years after collecting his first funds he continues to use virtually the same projections that turned out to be false for every genuine investor who has posted here. The search results I tested explain why. Few of his potential "newbies" know anything about this company's almost certainly fraudulent practices. So he continues to suck people in. In the event that a few potential investors may have found us before sending him their money this would slow up the incoming funds he needs to maintain his vast holdings. Thus a possible explanation for the cash flow theory. But to compensate for that he throws out these new promising environmentally friendly investment opportunities in oil seed-bearing trees. Prospective investors in this new scheme would find no search hits for palm oil investments which would flag this operator's nefarious reputation.
It is hard for any of us to give up on 6-figure (or any-figure) investments but the future does not look very good. We can be told after 15 years, as we are now, and after 25 years, and after 40 years, that returns will be coming sometime soon. And who will be able to prove TATF wrong? Sometime soon doesn't say when. It is becoming increasingly likely that, in Steve Brunner, we are dealing either with a predatory entrepreneur or an incompetent one, one who deceives and promotes so long as he can make money at it. Either through class action legal effort, pressure on the Costa Rican government or appealing to our government trade offices eventually we will need to join together to find a way to obtain some form of justice. I feel that it is likely that there any many more existing deceived investors who, to their dismay, have discovered and are reading this forum but haven't brought themselves to sign on and add their stories. Doing so is not a happy enterprise for any of us.
belmontx
dnabrice --What is your source for the information in your second paragraph? How do you know what order tatf is supposedly paying people. It would be nice to know if anybody has been paid. We haven't heard from them, if they exist, and we've heard from many who haven't.
belmontx
Have you gotten any information from TATF regarding your trees or the expected distributions from them? No credible source has received them, whatever the age of their trees.
Regarding your question about investor attempts at refunds, see post 525 and the subsequent reactions of board members relative to what that signifies regarding the value of purchased teak trees after being owned and grown for nearly a decade. Compare the farm owner's estimated value (zero) with what had been paid for them as either seedlings or younger trees.
belmontx
Regarding the investment we have all made, the line between duplicity and incompetence here is a fine one.
If an investor is okay with the fact that TATF does thin and stack his trees at roughly the time promised, but then to get any benefits he would have to claim the wood himself and find a way to process, sell and ship it, so be it. If he asks the company to do this as they say they would, good luck, it apparently hasn't happened yet (except for that undefined 2k mass45's friend found a way to extract.)
The continued projection of 7,10,13,etc. year-returns by TATF on its website is worse than incompetence.
Add to this the fact that this company refuses to refund the original purchase price on teak trees eight to fourteen years older than when bought, yet would turn around and on its website try to sell similarly aged trees for five times as much as it would refuse to pay.
Under this modus operandi how likely is it that investors will gain anything but a huge stack of wood in Costa Rica after 18,20 or 25 years?
With TATF's utter lack of communication, information and explanation to its existing owners since their purchases, and to this day, and the many concerns they have, How many years does it take for this "incompetence" to become "intent to deceive"?
belmontx
Searching for a "green" investment on the internet in 1998, TATF came up pretty quickly. The website pitch was credible and the owner and his wife seemed unimpeachable. My family agreed that TATF's already-planted teak was the place to put a sizable chunk of our savings because of the good effect on the environment and our returns would start early and appeared reliable. We had no idea those returns would not happen.
I encourage your effort and hope that you will provide an email address and the beginnings of efforts toward a class action lawsuit. Many of us have given up hope of ever getting our money back.
TATF is an incompetent and misleading organization at best, and has seriously damaged investors.
Regarding the earliest of possible returns, nobody apparently has gotten them. In Post 485 Jeffrey asked,
“ok, so does anyone else here have 93 teak? or 92?”
This was his compilation, with he and one additional forum member added.
FAWTSC has 93-01 teak and has not gotten anything yet
JEFFFREY has 93 teak and has not received anything yet.
1BL has 93 teak and has not received anything yet.
MASS45 has 93 teak and has not received anything yet.
FJONAS has 92/93 and claims he has gotten paid for the 7 yr thinnings, but his persona
is in question.
There have been no additional responses from investors.
No one else has come forward to report receiving any kind of payments for any
Specific year’s plantings. That has been true since this forum began
Just=At last we have an accurate limitation of the value of our trees as they grow. We have previously learned here on this forum that TATF’s website projections have no basis in fact. But, thanks to Just’s posting of his refund attempts we now know the maximum value that the owner of the Tree Farms, The Franchise, Steve Brunner, places on the trees we are having him grow for us. That value, we have discovered, is between zero and what we paid for them. Because it comes from the ultimate expert, the tree farm owner himself, we can be confident of its accuracy.
We know this because of Just’s report that his concerted four-year attempt to get his ORIGINAL purchase price back for trees he has owned now for eight years is failing. Brunner does not value them as worth the money Just paid for them in 2001-2002, eight years ago. The owner of TATF has been contacted and responded to over 100 emails from Just, Just has traveled multiple times to the tree farms, and these efforts have not resulted in his trees being repurchased by the company even though his price is what the trees were when they were almost a decade younger. What does this say about their value? --either that the original price was vastly over stated, or that their appreciation as they grow is negligible. Some of those trees were planted in 1994 and 1995, many were planted in 1997, yet by 2008 TATF regards them as having neither gained nor even retained their value.
Using the rule of 72, as Matt pointed out, when used with an investment of 14 years ago and yielding 0% annual return would give us a rate of return of 0%; likewise with 25,20,18, 11 and 8 year investments. Future customers of TATF who see its projections should know the truth.
belmontx
Matt – Your faith is admirable and your patience unlimited. However, thinking that there is going to be
any kind of pot at the end of this rainbow is fanciful.
Many, many investors read this forum; multiple times as many as have posted. Don’t you think any of them who are authentic investors (discounting Fjonas, Ohio Lawyer, Happiest Tree Owner, and Happy Tree Owner, all of whom are the identies of one obvious insider) would by now have put in a good word in the face of all these questions about non-existent proceeds? Further, I personally know of investors who are afraid to post their anxieties and anger for fear of further endangering their fragile investments, thinking Brunner could identify them. It is clear that Mr. Brunner follows this forum daily since its beginning. He periodically returns to participate under the various noms de plume mentioned above. The complete lack of accountability on his part concerning communication with investors, notice of distributions, the fate of their various tree species , what his current uses for and marketing of lumber are and explaining his abject misrepresentation in his continuing projections for returns on investments
The idea that this marketing scheme is eventually going to morph into a responsive organization which rewards its investors in their old age after decades of faith, during which they got no useful information nor payments from thinnings, is optimism in the extreme.
belmontx
The ad for TATF is indeed now gone from the owner's personal testimony on the website. Thanks for pointing that out matty.
While he was revising entries it is too bad Steve didn't remove the false 7,10 and 13 year projections. Not counting "fjonas", and we have good reasons not to, we don't know of a single investor who has received proceeds from them.
belmontx
Are you still in contact with this forum? Let me know if you have received any word from TATF since your last post (#190) whereby you said you hadn't gotten any returns on your 93 and earlier teak. We are collecting documentation of non-payment for thinning proceeds from 13-year and older teak trees.
belmontx
matt - Congratulations on the 500th post; it was a doozy for its stress on sunny optimism and trust in your fellow man.
How, after reading the 499 posts from this year, can you be "still happy with the purchase"? If truly so, I have some fast-appreciating South Florida real estate I'd like to show you.
Belmontx
Steve, In your analogy of TATF with dentistry as both being service providers, you ignore the fundamental fact that your customers are, in fact, investors in the trees you are growing for them, and the service you perform is paid for in advance and will turn out to be done, if at all, at a much later date than you had indicated to them when they sent you their hard-earned money. And, do you know any dentists who continue, in marketing their services, to project the completion of segments of their services by using schedules which have been proven repeatedly to have been grossly unrealistic and false to the point where the time estimates shift to 2,3,and 4 times what they were when the payments were accepted? One thinks those dentists' patients would begin to suspect that those services might never be completed.
As part of "the few", as you describe us, who are putting your families at risk by being critical of TATF, I might point out that this exaggeration could only apply to the financial security of the owner of the company. There is no conceivable way that accurate assessments of your operation is going to affect the growth of investors trees; they more likely will affect the volume of new investment coming in to TATF. I think that would be beneficial for the families of those who thought better of their notion to send you funds for clones or seedlings. To present investors your statement reads like a threat to them that you might not continue on with farming the trees if you keep getting criticism.
Regarding your assurance of every investor's returns being what you had told them if they will just wait for Raleo,
A1's posting on this board on 3/8/2008 bears being quoted here because I think you have forgotten about it. He wrote;
A brief history of Raleo.
Steve Brunner has made much of the role that Raleo will play in providing TATF's projected returns to purchasers of his trees. I thought it might be useful to give a brief history of Raleo. This information is drawn from TATF's Tree Owners News, and Steve Brunner's posts on this board.
Summer 1999 - "... we are starting a new arm of our company, Raleo Design™..." (quoted from Summer 1999 Tree Owners News).
Summer 2001 - "...our plans for Raleo Design™ near fruition" (quoted from Summer 2001 Tree Owners News).
Spring 2002 - "Our Raleo™ production facility in San José is up and running. ... We have received enthusiastic compliments from private early viewings and are very excited to enter the market in late June or early July." (quoted from Spring 2002 Tree Owners News)
Summer 2003 - "Raleo has begun its production and sales of beautiful furniture and art..."
Summer 2004 "Raleo ... is moving strongly forward." (quoted from Summer 2004 Tree Owners News).
Summer 2007 "Raleo's beautiful products are now in luxury homes, condominiums, yachts, and commercial and hospitality installations throughout the world..." (quoted from Summer 2007 Tree Owners News)
Spring 2008 Almost nine years after Raleo was first mentioned, Steve Brunner states (in post 118 on this board)
"in fact in the last 3-1/2 years, starting from zero in mid 2004, Raleo has purchased 338,000 board feet" He explains the apparent contradiction between this statement and his statement in the Summer 2003 Tree Owners News as follows (post 136) "Raleo had begun production and sales in 2003, just as we wrote in our Summer 2003 Tree Owners News, but in retrospect we now realize that it was in a minimal way compared to later." A less charitable explanation might be that Steve Brunner bends the truth to suit his purpose.
So, it's taken 9 years from the date Raleo was first announced for them to purchase only a small fraction of TATF's wood. Many tree owners have waited many years past the date when they were projected to receive distributions from TATF, and they have still received nothing.
In his summer 2007 Tree Owners News, and post 165, Steve Brunner mentions working with a high volume retailer/catalog seller. No details or dates are given. The question is, given the past record of Raleo and TATF, how much faith and hope should you put in Steve Brunner's latest announcement?
A1 3/8/08
Back to belmontx here. You still haven't told the forum why you continue to use the discredited projections on your website. I think the heat from the forum may be why you "haven't found time" to put out any more Tree Owner's News. You know now that any statements you make will be remembered and you will be expected to live up to them.
belmontx
Well, Steve, if it is just your being too busy to write another newsletter (first in 18 months) to tree owners, maybe you could borrow the time from the time you have spent crafting these long and extensive posts that you have been putting on this forum extolling the goodness of TATF and refuting the experiences of the many investors who have written.
The writing style and the content of the posts of the only people posting on the forum who have had, not only sanguine, but profitable experiences with TATF -- the Happy Tree Owner, the Happiest Tree Owner, the Ohio Lawyer and now fjonas -- are uncannily similar. If I'm wrong you seem to be close enough to him and his operation that I am sure you will help him with the newsletter. All the members here have been asking is that you announce the specific distributions you have made and the planned schedule you have for the near future, including for the non-teak trees, and attach it to your website as you have the historical Tree Owner's News.
Thanks,
belmontx
Even though they won't respond to your questions about communications (Steve Brunner reads this forum on a daily basis) I'll suggest that TATF hasn't put out a Tree Owner's News in 18 months, and before that since 2004, because they don't want prospective buyers to learn the facts of the discrepancy between their published projections and what they have delivered. Their whole website, which includes archival Tree Owner's News, is for prospective buyers, not for existing owners. There is nothing anywhere on their extensive website which provides information about current distributions. It will stay that way because their prospective customers are people who have not discovered this forum (which is the only place they could learn of real results from TATF investments). There would be no further purchases of trees if prospects knew what the present record and plans for distributions are. Sales are made because of the projections for 7, 10, and 13 year distributions. Do you think a single person would send money to TATF if they knew what the actual record on (absense of) distributions were; that their only hope is a vague statement that sometime after 16 or 20 years the market will absorb some of their trees? To have the owner put this on a Tree Owner's News would mean the jig was up. The reason he keeps these absurd projections on his sales pages is because he knows this.
Your information is vital as part of continuing board members' efforts to reveal the reckless disregard of the truth that TATF has shown in merchandising its teak trees. Your on the site, measurement of tree growth trumps any and all statements coming from company promotions.
As a follow-up to my expression of appreciation to fjonas’s news claiming that he is getting actual specific distributions from this company – late as they were they are the first to detail such on this board -- his other comments need response. Anyone who reads all of the posts from the past year on this forum could hardly believe that these investors have been unfairly criticizing TATF and Steve Brunner. As justfrall demonstrates in his recent posts, trusting people have been victimized by exaggerations, false claims and false advertising. – many in the form of qualifications on the company's website using caveats, and devices similar to asterisks and fine print meant to provide legal cover for completely unrealistic projections. Truth is a slippery concept here. There apparently is a separate reality inhabited by the owner of this company.
A verification is needed here. Do your comments mean that you received, after 15 and 16 years, TATF's projected 7-year amount for each 100 trees of $1615?
Quoting you, "We received both our 1992 and 1993 first thinning distributions, but not yet the others, and the amounts of each of the distributions we have received have been consistent with the projections."
Or are you saying that you actually didn't receive the distributions or you sent the money back because you are waiting for Raleo to buy your trees for a higher price?
Quoting you, "Because the projected returns from the first thinnings are negligible in relation to the whole return, when Steve and Sherri came up with the idea of Raleo, we opted to wait for Raleo, as I think have most other tree owners."
The answer to this is most important to those of us who purchased 1992 and 1993 trees as you did. Does this mean, Steve, that the check is in the mail for the rest of us? At the very minimum, from this, a check should be arriving any day now from TATF for $32300 for my 2000 trees. Even though it will be seven years late this is great news. I don't know why I haven't heard from the company about this.
If you can verify the truth of this, I speak for all of us when I express appreciation for this most gratifying of news. I plan to take the check rather than wait for Raleo.
belmontx
When a foreign investment opportunity is an armadillo:
It is impossible to accept that TATF's new projections have any significance whatsoever when their old ones have been so completely meaningless. In over four hundred posts on this forum from many TATF investors if there is one fact that has been demonstrated to be unequivocal it is that NO ONE HAS EVER REPORTED RECEIVING ANY PLANTING YEAR'S DISTRIBUTION FROM TATF no matter when their trees were planted. This, even though several forum members own the earliest trees TATF sold to investors.
The mere fact that the TATF website continues year after year to present virtually the same false marketing dollar projections to investors, projections which misled all of us and caused us to invest our money years ago, gives ample proof that this is a game that cannot be won. In spite of Leo's detailed explanation, Buyer Beware!
mattyO5 ....in western Costa Rica that is called stickin' eye shadow on an armadillo.
Read the entries from the beginning. For all the dozens of entries by disappointed investors no one has checked in who has been paid for a named year's plantings. Where that 1 million dollars Mr. Brunner and TATF claims has been paid out went, nobody knows. Logic would say that anybody who has been paid would post and say what year's planting and type trees he was paid for. The forum has been up for almost a year and it hasn't happened. Purchases of trees as old as 15 years are represented in these postings.
The owner continues to advertise teak using the same projections he has always used. He has never said for what trees his distributions are being paid. The conclusion is that they are not, or that they are for a select group of friends and family who are sworn to secrecy. None of us on the forum have any idea whether and when we will ever get back any of our investment.
belmontx
The "special opportunity" offer for purchases of 14-yr elite teak trees still exists but it has been relabeled and continues to be offered to investors. The offer has been moved from a separate “opportunity” section to the “What’s New” section; no time deadlines are attached. So the offer is not “finally over” and it is still way too early to think you might get your wish that your trees would be sold any time soon. TATF is still trying to peddle them. Good luck on hoping a Tree Owners News is going to appear this year or next.
I suspect most forum members regularly check the TATF website. If so, we saw the serious message posted as the first tab on its website under “Personal Testimony”.
Carefully reading Steve Brunner's testimonial about his experiencing a miracle faith healing of his metastasized cancer I have several reactions. Before writing this I thought long and hard about the journey each of us makes through life and the setbacks we have and the ways we try to deal with them. I do not wish to denigrate anyone’s journey from fatal diagnosis to full recovery.
After being impressed on first reading by the recovery made in just five months from his drastic diagnosis I went back and reread it slowly, parsing as much fact from faith as I could. When finished, I realized that I may have experienced virtually the same medical sequence five years ago with remarkably less drama. While having a routine colonoscopy my gastroenterologist discovered several cancerous polyps; one was larger than the others and could have been called a cancerous tumor, especially if I was writing about it a year later and to a readership of unhappy people who had invested in my good name and company. Fortunately, my doctor was using an instrument which allowed him to remove them at the same time. Biopsies confirmed that they had been cancerous and, as they advise in all such cases, I was told to schedule another colonoscopy the next year.
A CAT scan done for another reason two weeks later showed that I had numerous "lesions" or cysts on my liver, kidneys and other intestinal areas. Ultrasounds discovered the same indeterminate but usually benign spots. My doctor told me he didn't think they were serious but he would re-scan in the future. When a year later they were evident in the same size and frequency as before it was confirmed that they were harmless but somewhat large cysts/lesions.
My family considered the colonoscopy which removed the polyps an "operation", as Steve recounts his. As far as "metastasis" as an interpretation of the occurance of the "lesions" and the "tumor" I think I would have needed a faith-based healer from Central America who is confident of spiritual recovery to have scared me with the dreaded word "metastasis". Unlike Steve, I was pronounced cured the day of the routine removal of the polyps, and, in case I was still in doubt, the static condition of my "lesions" when scanned later, removed that doubt.
Before writing this I scrutinized Steve Brunner's description carefully. I realize that his Costa Rican and religious doctors may have been very conservative in the way they diagnosed and treated him and assigned the stage four rating. But, like so much of his wordings on his website describing his special opportunities, to a discerning reader it was quite ambiguous. The power of belief is impressive, especially when our health and mortality are at stake. I do not question his faith nor his earnest belief in its role in curing him. I certainly allow for the fact that for Steve this may have made the difference for his survival, but I was struck by the note in fine print at the bottom of the last page of his poignant and powerful personal message of a miracle caused by faith and prayer which said:
"Please call or e-mail us with any questions or to reserve your own tropical hardwood trees. "Tropical American Tree Farms", "growing precious tropical hardwoods for you!", TATF, and Supra Mixture are all exclusive trademarks of T.A.T.F., S.A.. Raleo® is a registered trademark of Raleo Design S.A. All materials and content copyrighted 1991 - 2008. All rights are reserved worldwide.”
In sincerely wishing Steve a continued and permanent recovery, I would hope that his devout faith would include temporal practices of openness and fairness towards those who put trust in him.
belmontx
Matt -- You are one good sport; If you really did invest any appreciable amount of money and, like the rest of us, you believed in the projections presented (and those still being stated on the TATF website), then have since read the actual experiences of other investors on this forum, your unflagging optimism and generosity of spirit is impressive.
belmontx
A1 -- I agree; I have been assuming the worst, but for good reason; my assumption is based on TATF continuing to advertise, and project, detailed returns at 6,10,13 years for investors. These are the same "special opportunities" that I responded to years ago and none of those three returns have been paid and no explanations have been provided to tree-owners. When we investors get neither payments nor communications from the company, and the trees we bought grow older, why would we think that at 17 or 20 or 25 years we will be paid?
The fact that the company's come-on has not changed one bit in spite of the fact that of the many investors who have contributed to this forum, no one has reported a single specific payment for any trees, including those as old as 15 years tells me that the deception is purposeful. Your own earlier posts show how Mr. Brunner has repeatedly used misleading and contradictory numbers and statements in his previous "tree owners' news" (now apparently suspended) and his earlier posts on this forum.
I do not intend to let this matter rest.
belmontx
Just -- You have given us invaluable first-hand knowledge of the economics of Central American teak planting. You must have made your investments with this company years before your own farming. Your’s and A1’s analysis of TATF economics are quite credible I think. From your own experience it appears that the profit from TATF sales is even greater than any of us realize.
However, A1 implies a lesser degree of deception by this company than is probable. Even after 25 years why would Mr. Brunner ever want to complete processing other people’s trees (he has vast hectareage of his own trees) when his proceeds would be only 6%, and then only at the end of the trees' lives? This would be a Ponzi scheme if any of the proceeds from sales were paid out, but it is worse than that because apparently none of them have been. He continues to suck up new money from unsuspecting investors and keeps it all. He at one time may have planned to pay out distributions but he seems to have abandoned that in favor of solely promoting his sales.
I know from my own earlier visits to his tree farms in Costa Rica that the thinnings are being done and the piles of them grow higher and higher. They are not being processed into lumber. TATF communication with existing owners has ceased while his speedy, lengthy and completely misleading responses to inquiring potential new investors continue.
Without any evidence of payments to his investors we can only conclude that his website which appears so reputable and credible is a masterpiece of deception – combining faith, family, forestry and ecological responsibility (we all fell for it). Whether the owner started out with a cynical business plan, or he slowly morphed to it when he found his estimation of the international market for young teak was mistaken, we may never know. Mr. Brunner stopped defending his practices on this forum when the weight of the facts from so many disappointed investors became too great.
My experience from my investment on trees from his early plantings is driving my continuing investigation of his operation through my contacts in Costa Rica and my trips there. I am interested in his relationship with the government, with the national business community, and with how trade agreements between The U.S. and Costa Rica might include protection of American investors from fraud.
belmontx_________________________________________________________________________
Ninth extension by Steve Brunner on the TATF website "special offer": "We will make the limited quantity of these 2008 14-Year Final Harvest Elite Teak Clone trees available until September 5 or until they are all spoken for, whichever occurs first." The "whichever occurs first" is obviously a blatant lie, now repeated now eight times. Look for another change, and another lie, on 9/06.
I propose we collect ideas for this possible new website. It would include highlights from the informative contributions made on this forum, as well as updated information on the international market for teak, and the real costs of processing, shipping and selling or storing lumber from our trees ourselves should it come to that. In other words, this could be an invaluable adjunct to Steve Brunner's tatf website and could serve all present owners of trees on his farms as well as his prospective customers out here in cyberland. It would be a sort of a counter "Tree Owners News." We might call it, tatftruthtotreeowners.com or tatfttrickedtreeowners.com. Or tatfnobullprojections.com. Teaktatfinvestors.com is another possibility if we think more hits would come from persons googleing “teak investments” than “tatf”.
Central to its formation is this forum’s discovery that no tree owner has ever been able to find out what and how much, if any, has been paid out from thinnings, by year. Nobody has been able to find out if any investor has ever been paid whatever year's plantings he purchased. Since this forum is almost two years old, and many investors have participated, not one has reported, and identified, with the year-plantings, for a single payment from thinned trees no matter what their age. It is clear that no investor has received any returns despite taft’s projections.
We could consider this website as helping Mr. Brunner out with an opportunity for his investors to communicate with each other. (For some reason he has never included this service on his website.) Our forum, ably moderated by A1, has been a consolation and a revelation for those of us who discovered it, but a separate website would probably attract much more attention. We might even get Mr. Brunner to participate in it as he once did on this forum.
belmontx
Yet another, a sixth, extender on the deadline for the teak clone promotion. Mr. Brunner has moved the time limit once again. Now it is August 15th for this very special opportunity to invest in his trees.
The many deceptions committed by Tropical American Tree Farms are found and documented by the entries on this board, especially those of last winter and spring. As the discussion recently has moved to smaller issues it might be time to look at the big picture again. A summary for newcomers as well as for recent members is in order.
First, and foremost, of all the various contributors to this forum no one, not one person, has reported receiving a distribution for a specific year’s plantings of teak, or any other tree. This company has been selling teak trees which were planted from 1992 forward, yet 16 years later there is no evidence that any of the projected payments have been made.
When a potential tree buyer goes to the expansive website of TATF he first reads the generous special and time dated offer (which, unbeknownst to him, and as mentioned by fawtc and A1 on this board, turns out to be perpetual, with an ever-moving deadline) given for purchases of cloned teak trees, then the buyer turns to the projections for returns on an investment at the various intervals given (false, as seen in many tree owner posts on this forum), and then when he tabs to the “tree owners” sections he is told that there are many who have already received more back from the farms than their initial investment. He is also able to read a Tree Owners News (2007, the only one for the past four years) which describes the promising developments for owners including Raleo’s expected growth (shown to be questionable by the citations A1 has made here) and the international market. In another section the hopeful buyer reads the happy comments of “tree owners” with no names nor identifiers of specifics concerning the year trees associated with their returns.
Nowhere to be found on TATF’s website are the facts of their distributions -- which years, which teak, how much. In fact, there is no statement there of any kind which reports specific distributions actually made, only the statement that 850k has been paid out (a figure which if true, would be a woeful underpayment to the investors as A1 has shown in an earlier post). Only if a prospective buyer were to google, using just the right search words, and find this board during a search would he learn the actual results of investments and find that no known investor has received anything in spite of owning trees as old as 1992. He would find that people who have posted here have gotten nothing in expected distributions from specific years’ plantings; in many cases already years after TATF projected those returns.
Only if he stumbles on this site, Investors Hub – timber – tatf , would he he learn the fate that would befall him should he send this company his money. For those who have just discovered this forum it would be worthwhile to go back and read the facts and analysis presented in the posts from January forward.
belmontx
A1 has taken the basic claims made by TATF for distributions to investors and shown them to be contradicted by other TATF claims and by his research into the growing and marketing of teak; it doesn't seem to me that cherry picking was done. You might want to read carefully - not speed-read - the posts. We all hoped then, like you do now, to find that all was well. If your investment was limited to one summer's earnings count yourself much luckier than most of the others on this forum.
mattyo5,
If you are going to help moderate this discussion then a little more work researching it would be in order. It seems you have yet to review the carefully gathered facts and calculations provided by A1 on this forum several months ago, and then those provided by fawtc, as well as the wealth of information presented by other unhappy investors. These challenged and contradicted the outcomes being promoted by TATF on its website and in the newsletters. For most of these the only response by TATF's spokesperson was to ask for proof, whereas the proof was already there in the comparison of these calculations with the assumptions and claims being made by the company.
As for you saying pointed questions are needed; they have been asked throughout the life of this forum, my friend. The answers were invariably ambiguous. Reread the entries beginning in Dec. of 2006.
belmontx
The point is that TATF has not come through with what it projected for investors when they sent their money (nor anything so far as we know), and it continues to perpetuate those untruths on its current promotions and website. The more facts about this company forum members obtain and post here, the better for all. This is a cautionary tale for all those who would invest overseas however ecologically and spiritually appealing the bait.
belmontx
Tropical American Tree Farms a costly mistake for its investors: Recent reports from Costa Rica.
Lest the “happiest tree owner”, the “Ohio lawyer” or Steve Brunner think the reports from present investors on this forum are ever going to go away the following is added to earlier discussions.
The marketing of TATF trees to prospective customers continues unabated even though its figures for projections have been completely discredited by information provided here on this forum (see postings by A1, fawtsc, justcfrall, lbl, belmontx, carpet, and others). TATF’s website, dated as recently as last week, proclaims the same teak returns after 7, 10 and 13 years that it always has -- $1615, $4419 and $9352 per 100 trees. He states that an accumulated $13771 will be paid for each 100 trees originally purchased for $4992 by the 13th year. These are absurd figures since there has been shown to be no evidence that he has ever paid for any of these thinnings; as a result its 17 and 21 year projections should be taken with grains of salt. Mr. Brunner knows he is pitching to uninformed prospects. What he doesn’t report on his effusive web pages, aside from his record of non-payments, are the facts reported below.
Based upon recent eye-witness, on-the-scene, appraisals in Costa Rica of the growing unkempt stockpiles of cut and damp logs under canvas at the company farms, coupled with a local report of the slow pace of hardwood utilization at the Raleo operation, the deception of the owner is evident. When these first-hand reports are considered, along with the actual prices for non-Asian teak on international markets, prospects for any eventual returns to investors are doubtful.
Steve Brunner, who is responsible for the projections on the TATF website keeps the 7, 10, and 13 year dollar-return numbers on his projections because he knows full well that without these predictions of returns for these time periods very few, if any, investors would buy trees from him. He cares not that existing investors see these blatant deceptions because that is not where his anticipated money will be coming from, and he regards himself as immune to judicial action. As a consequence, mentioned in an earlier post, when investors who have sent his company money for trees, then see the age of their trees begin to pass those first projections without any return from TATF, they become very anxious for the safety of their investment. As we have seen on this forum it is then that they begin to have doubts that they are ever going to see any of their money again.
belmontx