It sounds good but it's hard for me to believe. I could believe many things here, but it's hard for me to believe them at the same time. If Steve has so much money in real estate, why doesn't he sell some and solve some of his own problems the easy way? Especially if somebody could force him to by taking him to court.
I've already discussed the idea that this is a scam to some extent and at that time people agreed that it seemed unlikely. But for the sake of argument:
Scenario 1: This is a scam and Steve is taking all of our money and converting it into real estate to make a killing.
Questions:
If so, why hasn't he cashed out? I can't believe there's much new investment money coming in. People are suspicious, the government has been involved to some extent already about the Social Security stuff and is likely to get involved more deeply soon. A scam would be getting much riskier at this point. If the real estate is so valuable today, he had better sell it and get out. There are many Spanish-speaking countries where extradition would be tricky at best.
Scenario 2: Steve is an honest but inadequate businessman who can't meet his obligations to us because he sunk all his money into investment real estate that he's just sitting on.
Questions:
Does that sound honest or even likely to you? If Steve is really trying to make a go at TATF, if this real estate is so liquid it would seem that he could just sell a chunk and finance his operations. If, as you say, he has as much in non-planted real estate as all of our original investments, then where is the problem? It's hard for me to believe he would work himself to a frazzle, let his operations stall, not hire enough people to care for his own trees or even to answer e-mails and keep the company running because he doesn't feel like selling one of his chunks of property.
Another question: Would Steve be so stupid as to put his investment real estate and his inadequate business skills into the same bucket of money? I don't know Costa Rican law, but in the US, he could probably spin TATF and his investment real estate into separate companies, and make both separate from his own finances. We could sue TATF and get nothing because TATF is a shell containing only the tree operations, while his real estate portfolio might be worth those millions but be untouchable, and we would have no recourse against Steve himself because they are incorporated.
I would like to believe that it was as simple as turning Steve upside-down and shaking our money out of his pockets, but it's hard for me to believe. Maybe my view of business and law is too cynical, but I just don't see a win for everybody down that path. Maybe for a few, as I said.
