Disregard TATF sales representatives who pose as normal investors on this forum. Actual investors' experiences are noted below.
I have been in contact with many TATF tree-owners. Everyone has a slightly different story to report but all are common in that they bought trees, sent money, and have not been getting responses from the company. After months of receiving emails (jstanton5@gmail.com) from dozens of people who bought TATF trees during the past 18 years the following summarizes what I have learned:
1- None of them have obtained a return of any kind. They have lost hope that they will ever receive any of the periodic returns that were projected by Mr. Brunner so confidently on his TATF website (and still are), or that they will receive any further tangible communications from him in response to their inquiries.
2- They realize that the chances of them ever seeing any return whatsoever from their tree purchases are small.
3- They have become aware that their ownership of their trees is tenuous, at best, is extra-legal, and is outside their control. Since these trees reside on someone else's land (Brunner's for now, who knows who else later?), and the certificates were written in a language (English)not recognized for contracts by Costa Rican courts, they realize they have no claim for them. They have learned from posts on the Hub forum that other tree-owners' requests to remove their trees at their own expense have been refused by Brunner.
4- They have become aware that attempts to visit and view their trees are now failing since the TATF owner's representative has told them the tree farms are presently closed to tree-owners.
5- Their last thin hope for return of the money they sent to this company is that if they do nothing now, raise no complaint, join in no joint action, the company will revive on its own, begin collecting money again from new tree-buyers, and resume maintenance of existing trees. This ponzi-like hope, fanciful as it is, is all they have left and explains why the thousands who never posted on the Hub during its heyday stayed silent. It will be decades, of course, before any investor would know for sure that he has been cheated out of all of his investment.
6- None who contacted me have any idea what Steve and Sherry Brunner did with the millions of dollars they were sent other than buy more Costa Rican real estate. Those who were able to visit their trees prior this "not permitted" ruling found them small for their age, often stunted, and not trimmed properly nor the brush cleared in many cases.
7- All seem to be astonished that TATF continues to post its grossly deceptive website, complete with most all of the original implied periodic returns to its tree-buyers, and that who for some time now has stopped answering inquiries from his thousands of tree-buyers. They don't understand how this could come from an owner who portrays himself as a wholesome tree farmer and man of faith.
belmontx
