2457 FBF: Harvey Silverglate – How the Feds Target the Innocent with Author of ' Three Felonies A Day'

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Welcome to the Creating Wealth Show. This is your host, Jason Hartman. This is episode number 472, and our guest today will be Harvey Silverglate. He is an attorney who wrote a book entitled Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent. And even though this is not super on topic about real estate,. I think it is a very, very important topic and I wanted to bring it to you. But for the intro portion of the show today, I've got our investment counselor Sarah here with me. And Sarah, you are talking to people right now in 164 countries, so no pressure. How are you?

I'm great, thanks for having me.

Good, good. Well, it's good to have you. And I, uh, I always have to twist your arm to get you on the show. You're so busy out there helping clients and handling investment counseling. Boy, last month you had not a record month but almost a record month, huh? Business is good.

Yeah, it was pretty busy. You know, we had our Meet the Masters event, um, we had a lot of clients excited after the event and, um, really working on strengthening their investment portfolios. So, you know, I've had some clients email me this week saying, where's your inventory? You know, the website looks quiet. So, um, you know, not to worry, there's a lot of inventory. It's just sometimes that, you know, we get properties and they may sell the same, same week. So definitely contact us. We can really help you fine-tune your search and send you individual listings that, you know, may have not hit the website yet, or maybe they're, they're hidden and you just don't see them.

So Sarah, one of the things I mentioned on the last episode, on Monday's episode when we had Jim Norman, who's the author of The Oil Card, I don't know about the listeners, but I sure thought that guy was pretty fascinating. And, uh, I don't know where the price of oil is going to go, but that's a whole nother discussion that you can hear on the last episode. One of the things I said is I said that it did look like some better news in Atlanta. We've had a real inventory shortage there for quite a while. One of the things we really haven't talked about, but I did mention this because I'm doing a 1031 exchange right now, South Chicago. I mean I, you know, I've been kind of reluctant to do that market for, for years. I've been pitched on it. You're having some clients buy there, right? And a lot of interest in that market.

Yeah, we're definitely having some clients. Actually, I have a client out there today looking at properties, which is pretty exciting. I would love to do a tour there when it, when it warms up a little bit because I'd like to see the market myself. But yeah, you know, when you hear Chicago, you know, you think of, you know, some of the high crime rates and the inner cities, but you forget Chicago is a big metro area. There's a lot of suburbs. That's like San Well, I don't want to invest in LA because, you know, there's so many gangs in LA. Well, technically, I guess I live in a suburb of LA in a really nice, you know, area. So, there are pockets within some of these bigger metro areas, you know, that pop up every once in a while. So, I'm pretty excited about this one. We've got a couple providers in that market. One of them does an awesome guarantee on their renovation work that they do and also their tenant placement. They do a 1-year guarantee on both of those items. And so it's just, it's just really exciting to have somebody that goes in and completely guts the property and then guarantees that work.

It's kind of rare, by the way, you know, I've always said that I think about maybe 3 to 5% of our clients actually visit markets before they buy properties there. But you've actually got someone out there now doing a tour in Chicago area, right? That's kind of surprising.

Yeah. Well, you know, every once in a while a client will say, gosh, it's just an hour drive, or, you know, I can and get there and back in a day. And so, they'll squeeze it in and make the trip. And, you know, I always encourage investors, especially if they're brand new to investing out of state, if this is like their first property, I would encourage them to go out and look at the market. And then, I think once they get, you know, one or two properties through us and they start to realize that a lot of the markets are, you know, similar, and there's also ways to, look at the different areas by price and to explain to investors, you know, okay, we've got an A area, B area, C area. Depending on your risk tolerance and if you're new, you may want to go, you know, with an A area. So they might want to go out and see, well, what is an A area? And then they can kind of gauge the rest of their portfolio and research on that, you know, one market that they visited.

That's a good idea. And so once the investor develops a comfort level with us and our offerings, they'll usually be more than happy to just invest remotely Yeah, I think that's a great idea. You know, we encourage people to go and visit markets, and that's why we have property tours. And we're kind of working on our next property tour now and deciding where we want to do that tour. So look for more announcements about that on an upcoming episode. One of the other things that I wanted to address real quickly is we talked, uh, we had our members call. And by the way, I— that was a little late in getting it posted. That is either up now or it'll be up in just a day or two, I'm pretty sure. We talked a lot about property management and some of the different options there and so forth of how you could manage properties, how you could work your deal with your property manager and so forth. And so members look for that in the Jason Hartman University section. If you weren't able to attend the call live, of course we always have the recordings in the archive. And I also wanted to mention to, uh, listeners, a lot of people asked since I announced it, and I've not even talked about this on the show at all, about the mastermind group that we're starting. It's called the Venture Alliance, and we very tentatively— a few people have approached me and said they're really interested. We don't have a lot of details on this yet, okay? We don't have a website up for it yet or anything like that. We did plan a tentative date for the first retreat, so, uh, if you want to just pencil this in, as the saying goes, pencil it in That'll be the weekend of June 13th, June 13th, and it'll be somewhere on the West Coast or in the western United States. So keep that in mind, and more information to follow on that. Sarah, any other information that you want to share with investors before we get to our guest today about markets, about best practices, uh, or just, you know, general sentiment out there, whatever it is?

You know, just a reminder on due diligence. You know, be sure to cross-check your rents. If you need some contacts in terms of property managers in the market, you know, we may be recommending a property with a specific property manager attached, but that doesn't mean that you can't call a couple others, and we can give you some contacts, or you can look up your own. But we're heavy on due diligence. We want you to, you know, interview other property managers, cross-check the rent, cross-check the property taxes. You know, call and get your own insurance quote. And if you have any questions on, you know, things you should be doing as part of your due diligence, you know, you can contact us and we're glad to help you with that. But I guess as far as best practices, do your homework.

Welcome to this week's edition of Flashback Friday, your opportunity to get some good review by listening to episodes from the past that Jason Hartman has handpicked to help you today in the present. And propel you into the future. Enjoy.

Yeah, well, good. You know, that reminds me, Sarah, of an old commercial, and you're probably too young to remember this. I think it was for Holiday Inn, the hotel chain, and I think their motto was, the best surprise is no surprise. So that definitely implies to, to investors and, and investing in income properties and building your portfolio nationwide. So The best surprise is no surprise. And how can you avoid being surprised? And that is to become educated, do your due diligence, and, you know, a couple of simple things that you can do definitely within our network and outside of our network so you can get independent opinions as well. So, you know, we can give you a little guidance on that. Talk to Sarah and our other investment counselors about that, and we'll be happy to help you. And thank you so much for listening today. Sarah, thanks for coming on for the intro portion with me. And now let's go to our guest. Harvey Silverglate. It's my pleasure to welcome Harvey Silverglate to the show. He is co-founder and chairman of the board of directors of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, otherwise known as FIRE, and he's author of Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent. I had heard about Harvey's work and his book Three Felonies a Day from a few of my other show guests And I really want to dive into this concept more because, as you know, I had John Stossel on the show recently. He did a great exposé on how there are so many laws, nobody can possibly know all of the laws. I, as I've mentioned before, was brought up hearing my mother say, Jason Hartman, ignorance of the law is no excuse. But what it seems that the government has done is they've made so many laws that especially if you're in business nowadays, you're constantly breaking laws that you don't even know exist. So it's a great opportunity to have Harvey talk to us today. Harvey, welcome. How are you?

I think I'm okay. As long as we're not under indictment, I suppose we have to say we're okay.

There you go, there you go. Well, tell us about Three Felonies a Day and how you came to write it.

Okay, first of all, I want to just clarify the concept of Three Felonies a Day. John Stossel, I know, talks a lot about the proliferation of laws and regulations so that no human being can possibly know everything that can get you into a felony. But what I've written about goes a step beyond the mere proliferation of laws, statutes, and regulations. It goes into the vagueness of so many federal statutes. So that no human being can possibly know— even if you know of the existence of that law, you do not know what conduct it prohibits and what conduct it allows. You know, for example, mail fraud. It means using the mails in order to engage in fraudulent conduct, but there is no way of determining what conduct would be considered fraudulent until you're charged. And that's the phenomenon that I have focused on in Three Felonies a Day.

That's really interesting because I recently did a show and forgive me, I can't remember what this concept or this law is called, but I had an expert on and maybe they mentioned your book. I can't remember. And they were talking about how there's this new, I think it's a Federal Trade Commission that enforces it or the consumer CF, something like that. You'll know what it is probably, but it basically says if they can't find an area of the law that you're actually violating, they can basically just say they don't like what you're doing and throw you in jail.

Well, that's because they have general catch-all anti-fraud statutes and regulations so that if there isn't anything specifically describing your conduct, they then get you under the general, and that is a violation really of ancient, very old English common law doctrines that were transferred to the American colonies and then to the American justice system, except not the federal system. Our states generally are what we call common law jurisdictions. They, uh, they adhere to the old English concept of in order to be a criminal, in order to be convicted of a crime, you have to have two elements. You have to know that you did the act And crucially, you have to know that the act was against some law that is illegal. And that is what is missing in the federal system, this latter concept that the law has to be sufficiently clear so that you are on notice if you are going to be charged with a crime and convicted and put in prison. At least you have to know that you did something illegal, and that means the law has to be clear enough so that you do know it.

I mean, it's good that the law wants to protect consumers, but it's awfully scary when laws are so vague that you get some bureaucrat, some prosecutor, or a bureaucrat with some agency somewhere, you know, there's so many agencies nowadays, you don't know what the heck to think, that might just want to further their career or get some publicity for themselves, or maybe they just don't like the way you comb your hair.

I'll tell you something which, which I mentioned in Three Felonies a Day, and it's probably to me the most shocking example of how this came about. There were hearings in the House of Representatives, hearings about making illegal insider trading as a form of stock fraud, and there was a debate over whether they, uh, this, the House bill should try to define defined insider trading. And I think it was Representative Emanuel Zeller of New York said, well, wait a minute, we don't really want to have this too clearly defined because it means that a lot of stock fraud— what I would consider stock fraud— won't be prosecutable because it will not have been specifically set out in the statute. He actually said that. In other words, translated what Representative Zeller said was that if we make the law too clear and people know what it is that's a crime, they're liable not to do that but do something else which we would consider to be bad, but we can't get them. In other words, the law becomes a trap rather than a legitimate statement of society's expectations.

Yeah, very, very interesting and scary at the same time. So, "Three Felonies a Day," are there a specific three felonies a day that you were thinking of when you wrote that? I mean, what are we really all guilty of every single day of our lives?

Well, what I— the title is slightly facetious, but actually more accurate than you would think. Here's an example. Federal mail fraud and wire fraud statutes. This makes it a federal felony to use the facilities of interstate commerce or communication— telephone, email, for example, or the U.S. mails— uh, in order to commit a fraud. But fraud is not defined. And so you've got a statute that basically defines the means of transmitting the fraudulent information or statement or whatever, but it doesn't define what it is that's fraud. And so if you think about it, you, you think about all of the phone calls you engage in in the course of a typical day, especially if you're a busy business person, and all the emails you send, you think of the number of times that you don't disclose absolutely everything, or that you, you, you put things more broadly than, or vaguely, than you otherwise might, because you don't want to say everything that's on your mind. Quite human, um, quite human undertaking. Every day we speak and email with people that we don't want to tell absolutely everything. Well, arguably, a federal prosecutor who focuses on you rather than on any particular activity that he suspects is a fraud. Focuses on you, wants to get you for some reason, can go over your email in the course of that day, your phone conversations if they've been recorded, and can find something that's, quote, misleading or incomplete. Of course an email is incomplete. We would be at an email all day long, 24 hours a day, if we had to put everything in it. We naturally select what we're going to say to somebody. So if you're engaging in a business deal, you put in what you think you have to, but not more than you think you have to. Some fed can look at that and say, ah, you didn't disclose some detail that I, the fed, thinks is material or important. And what I'm saying to you is that the feds are able to look at the daily activity of any citizen and can find something arguably misleading incomplete, not, not specific enough, and can go after you.

Now, does that mean you have to be in your own business, or could you be a corporate employee of some other company?

You could be a corporate employee. You can be a husband or wife who is involved in a divorce dispute, uh, in which, uh, the Fed can say that you misled the court or you misled your, your spouse with regard to how much you have in terms of assets. Any, any area of life or business or commerce can be the subject of the Fed looking at what you've done that day. And what I'm telling you is that Fed can come up with 3 arguable felonies if they really want to get you. Now mind you, typically they're looking at the person rather than the act. That is, they decide there's somebody who's a bad actor They want to get them, and they then do a very thorough study of what you have done, your communications, what contracts you've entered into. And if they go over your daily affairs closely enough, they will find something that they can base an indictment on. With every human being in this country, they're able to find something in that category. That is a comment on the federal law rather than the honesty of the American people.

Yeah, and that is really, really very scary. But my question is though, Harvey, how would they find this? Say you're just living your daily life, you're not in a courtroom, you're not going through divorce or litigation of any type. Would they be using the NSA's wiretapping? I'm kind of wondering if, if and when— and I know it's a matter of when, not if, unfortunately— when suddenly the NSA's anti-terrorism activities are gonna be used for little crimes, you know, or any kind of crime that's non-terrorist related, you know, when they're gonna start using that for other things, and basically we're all being tapped 100% of the time. It's not really for national security, it's to stop you from, you know, robbin' a liquor store, ostensibly, of course, or buyin' a bag of pie.

Well, the ways in which an FBI agent or a prosecutor can use the Federal Criminal Code. Really, it starts out with— you come to the authority, to the attention of the authorities for some reason. It could be any reason. It could be that you have expressed a view that they don't like. It could be that you have criticized something the federal government has done. It could be that you're running for office and you're threatening the status quo. Uh, in my case, I have been publicly critical of the FBI and Department of Justice for my just about entire career. I understand, I know, I know for a fact that I have been investigated on several occasions. They haven't tried anything with me because they understand that it's going to be a very hard court case if they go after me, and they better have something pretty good. And I make sure that I'm, you know, a little paranoia goes a long way. I to make sure that whatever I do, I dot my i's and I cross my t's, because I know that I'm looked at. But you don't have to be.

How do you know that though? How do you know that?

Well, I happen to know it, uh, because on 3 occasions I have been tipped off that I had been investigated as a result of highly controversial cases that I've taken that have gotten the government quite upset. So I actually know in 3 instances. I know that in at least one instance, the FBI sent a wired informant into my office hoping that I was going to, uh, draft a false affidavit or an arguably false affidavit for a witness where I didn't have any idea that the— what the witness was saying is false because the government sent the witness into my office. Wired, hoping that he could convince me to let him sign an affidavit. So we drafted the affidavit, and at the very end, as he had his pen in his hand, he says, by the way, you know that this is not true. And at that point, I realized he was wired, and I threw him out of my office. I found out years later that in fact it was the FBI, and they did wire him. Well, I have been targeted Now, there is no reason in a free country that a citizen should be targeted for these kinds of prosecutions because he engages in a profession or an activity that the government doesn't like or is threatened by and doesn't approve of.

Or even worse, because he's a member of the Tea Party.

Right, well, exactly. And I'm not a member of the Tea Party, but it doesn't matter. I was a lawyer—

But that's another Lois Lerner case. I just thought I'd throw it in.

Yeah, but what I'm saying to you is, because the federal laws are so vague, so broad, that you can be targeted even when you, you were not involved in something you would consider to be a high-risk activity. I consider it high risk when I'm bringing somebody into my office to execute an affidavit in a criminal case. That's something that you know they're going to be watching. But a lot of things are not high risk. A lot of things you do every day where you don't give the full story to somebody, you know, you rarely give the full story to anybody. And, you know, sometimes I suppose you give the full story to your spouse or to your psychiatrist, but other than that, by and large, people don't tell the whole story, even in a commercial transaction. Well, the feds can make an argument that by leaving out some important detail, you have misled, you've engaged in fraud. Because again, the definition of fraud is so vague and so broad that you probably commit several frauds a day if you're a busy professional.

Okay, so let me ask you about fraud for a moment. I have felt that I've been defrauded in business deals, and I go whining to my attorney and I say, hey, you know, sue this guy for fraud, and he says, oh, you've got to plead fraud very specifically. You can't just generally walk into court and say some guy's defrauded you. Is it different in, in criminal proceedings? And I mean, is it really easy for them to plead that? Because it's not easy in a civil case, from what I understand.

Correct. That's the irony. The irony is that theoretically it should be harder to convict somebody of fraud than it is to sue them civilly for fraud. But when you sued— when you sued— when you're suing somebody civilly, you actually have to plead much more specifically and concretely than a federal prosecutor has to plead in a, in a criminal case. It is completely backwards.

So, so it's much easier for the government to take advantage of the citizens and exploit the citizens than it is for a citizen to assert fraud against another citizen.

Correct.

Now, isn't that interesting? Because if it was truly a consumer protection law to keep consumers from getting defrauded, they should let the system, the consumers out there on a level playing field, handle a lot of this for them. Instead, the government wants to have more power than a consumer can have in a civil case, where the stakes are not as high for the person being accused. It's just money versus loss of freedom.

Right. The system of federal laws more and more has been oriented toward government control of the citizen, and that's why it is so dangerous for liberty.

Very interesting. Very interesting and very disconcerting, for sure. Okay. What else can you tell us about the 3 felonies a day? I mean, any other examples of things that people are just all doing? And then most importantly, what action steps can concerned citizens take? Because this is the kind of thing, Harvey, that nobody really cares much about until it happens to them.

Until they get indicted. And then when you're indicted, and I've had clients— I mean, this is my business— I have clients who say, what? I've been charged with doing that. How can that be a crime? And I have to sit down and explain that ordinary people would not assume that what they've done is a crime. But given the vagueness of federal law, some prosecutor has been able to get you indicted because he's interpreted what you've done in a nefarious manner. And this happens all the time. Uh, the, uh, there are ways to cure it, and there are many of us out there who are fighting for legislation to cure it. I can give you an example of one of the most important pieces of legislation that we're trying to get enacted. We're trying to get enacted a what's called a mens rea provision in all federal criminal statutes. Mens rea is an ancient common law doctrine that started in England and which most states follow, but the federal government generally does not unless it is specifically inserted into a statute. And mens rea means that in order to get convicted You have to have— be shown beyond a reasonable doubt, you have to be shown to have intended the act that you admittedly committed, intended it to violate a known legal obligation. And, uh, in, in most states, you can't be convicted unless the jury is convinced beyond a reasonable doubt of that.

So the government's gonna say Well, that's just too high a standard. We'll never get— catch anybody.

Yep. And the Department of Justice in fact resists this kind of legislation all the time, routinely. And Congress just has to have the guts to enact mens rea— mens rea provision in every federal criminal statute and regulation. And unless they do that, even they are going to be vulnerable. You know, you have, you have a lot of members of Congress who were indicted. Not all of them have engaged in actions that most of us would consider truly corrupt. And this is a very dangerous country to be in right now, and even for everybody, unless you happen to be the prosecutor. You know, you're the one who, who pulls the trigger.

Or if you're part of the coalition of companies and people who have basically bought the government through their lobbyists and PR firms and the rest of their infrastructure, and that's the too big to fail group. You know, this group, this group, it's amazing that we had this financial crisis a few years back that almost wiped out the entire global economy, right? And nobody went to jail. I can't believe it. It's shocking.

Well, it shouldn't be too shocking. They're, they're— after all, they're the ones who have financed the people who are making the laws. They're pretty well protected, but most of us are not well protected.

Any advice we can do to protect ourselves? Okay, so, so there's the mens rea thing. So what do we do? What's the action step?

Well, I think that, um, I don't— I'm not trying to get your, uh, your listeners to be too paranoid, but I do think that when you're engaged in a transaction The best thing to do is to disclose as much as you can, and then you've got to go to a lawyer and you've got to say that you're concerned that this transaction not be, uh, later interpreted, um, as misleading, and you want to have a lawyer look at it, and you specifically want to make sure that that lawyer understands that, you know, that a little paranoia can be a good thing. And you want the lawyer to bless it and do so in writing so you can at least argue if you get in trouble that you sought in good faith, you sought legal advice. Now I know this sounds like a kind of a full employment program for lawyers, and in many ways it is. I think it's very unfortunate in this society that so much of what you do has to be blessed by a lawyer. But that, that happens to be the case. The other thing that you also can do is when you are discussing some kind of a business deal with somebody, you might want to have a discussion. You might want to record it, but record it with the knowledge of the other side, just so that you have evidence of what it is the other side what I understood the deal to be and what you understood the deal to be. Now, this is, this is, uh, something which is useful for commercial transactions, but of course in ordinary day-to-day life, it doesn't occur to you to record things. And besides, it would be a terrible society to be where everything had to be recorded.

Yeah, well, welcome to the Soviet Union here.

Yeah, that's what the Soviet Union was. So, uh, in fact, there really is not much you can do, uh, to protect yourself. And that's why legal reform is so important. If you want to have a normal life in a free society, you've got to have laws that are not traps for the unwary.

It seems like that's what's going on, you know. It's like the government always has its thumb on everybody now. Where if they want to get you for something, they can. It's really easy for them to do something. Like you say, a little paranoia goes a long way. I know that may sound paranoid, but you hear the stories. And if you want to mention any specifics, any specific people this has happened to, just real quickly as we wrap up here.

Well, you know, there's a— there was a case, there was a case a year or two ago in which the, uh, the, the president of the Gibson Guitar Company was—

oh, I remember that one.

Remember that? It was, uh, it was, uh, I wrote something about it in the Wall Street Journal, and quite a few people wrote about this case. It was a case in which Gibson Guitar used, for a particular small part of the guitar— I think it might have been the bridge of the guitar— wood that was on a list of endangered species in the company. I think it was Indonesia where that particular tree was grown.. And the United States had a statute that you couldn't import wood from endangered species. But in order to know the species was endangered, you actually would have had to know the regulations of the country in which it was grown. I think it was Indonesia. Well, that meant that you could be indicted in the United States under a federal statute, uh, environmental statute You could be indicted for not having followed a regulation of Indo— in Indonesia. How many of us would have known? Not even a lawyer would have known.

And certainly, Harvey, that's a good reason to send the feds in there with machine guns and cause a PR nightmare for your company, right?

So Gibson ultimately decided to plead guilty under a plea bargain in order to avoid having the company completely destroyed. The truth of the matter is that Gibson Guitar was no more guilty of environmental crime than you or I. But they had to plead guilty in order to save the company. And you want to know the coup de grâce of the whole thing? In the plea bargain, I read the plea bargain agreement. In the plea bargain, it said that the president of Gibson Guitar agreed that he would not in public say anything that contradicted the statement of facts stated in the plea agreement. And the reason, of course, they had to do that was because this plea agreement was not true. He had not engaged in fraud. He did not know that this wood was protected in the country that it was grown in. He couldn't have, because no human being would— wouldn't— what— no human being would know all the American regulations, much less the Indonesian regulations. But in order to get the plea bargain and not have the company destroyed, he had to agree that he would not tell the truth in public. And for that, my position is that the prosecutors who presented him with that plea bargain and the judge who approved it, they should be indicted, not the president of Gibson Guitars.

And these prosecutors, they, they pretty much have immunity, don't they?

They sure do. And they have immunity for a lot of reasons. One of which is they're the ones who decide who's charged.

They can selectively enforce a law, just like you were saying, you know, we're all breaking a bunch of environmental laws, I'm sure, and that's why the environmental movement scares the heck out of me, because there's just these zillions of new laws, is all they are.

Everybody is arguably breaking the law, and that's the point. The feds can make a case for the fact that you're breaking a law every day, 3 times a day, hence the title of my book. And if they finally focus on you, as they did the president of Gibson Guitar— he didn't do anything to bring attention on himself, but these guys were looking for something to do. You know, we have so many bureaucrats now, they really need something to do. They have to justify their existence, and one of the ways they justify their existence is by finding people to charge and making it look like they are upholding law and order. Wow.

How did we get to this point, Harvey?

That's a very good question. Um, and I'm not quite sure how we got there. I only know that we have gotten there. Uh, I, I believe that the, the trend really accelerated in the mid-1980s, uh, but I don't know exactly how and why the country got to that point.

Yeah, really something. Give out your website if you would, tell people where they can learn more.

Harveysilverglade.com, and you can find, uh, you can find just about everything I've written, and you could know about some of my cases. And I try to give people an idea of what it is I do in the course of, of a day, other than break the law 3 times.

Exactly. And in 1 week you did 21 times.

So even on Sunday, as they say.

There you go. Exactly. I just want to clarify for the listeners That's Harvey Silverglade, not to be confused with gate. It's glade, G-L-A-D-E, harveysilverglade.com. And Harvey, thank you so much. Any closing thought you have?

Be careful.

Good advice. Thanks so much for joining us.

Righto.

I've never really thought of Jason as subversive, but I just found out that's what Wall Street considers him to be.

Now, how is that possible at all?

Simple. Wall Street believes that real estate investors are dangerous to their schemes because the dirty truth about income property is that it actually works in real life.

I know. I mean, how many people do you know, not including insiders, who created wealth with stocks, bonds, and mutual funds? Those options are for people who only want to pretend they're getting ahead.

Stocks and other non-direct traded assets are a losing game for most people. The typical scenario is you make a little, you lose a little, and spin your wheels for decades.

That's because the corporate crooks running the stock and bond investing game will always see to it that they win. This means unless you're one of them, you will not win.

And unluckily for Wall Street, Jason Hartman has a unique ability to make the everyday person understand investing the way it should be. He shows them a world where anything less than a 26% annual return is disappointing.

Yep, and that's why Jason Hartman offers a 1-book set on creating wealth that comes with 20 digital download audios. He shows us how we can be excited about these scary times and exploit the incredible opportunities this present economy has afforded us.

We can pick local markets untouched by the economic downturn, exploit packaged commodities investing, and achieve exceptional returns safely and securely.

I like how he teaches you how to protect the equity in your home before it disappears and how to outsource your debt obligations to the government.

And this set of advanced strategies for wealth creation is being offered for only $197.

To get your Creating Wealth Encyclopedia Book 1, complete with over 20 hours of audio, go to JasonHartman.com/store.

If you want to be able to sit back and collect checks every month Just Like a Banker, Jason's Creating Wealth Encyclopedia series is for you. This show is produced by the Hartman Media Company, all rights reserved. For distribution or publication rights and media interviews, please visit www.hartmanmedia.com or email media@hartmanmedia.com. Nothing on this show should be considered specific personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own, and the host is acting on behalf of HartmanMedia.com exclusively.