ROUND TABLE—Deals That Make You Go Ugh! Dealing With Fraudulent Buyers

Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the land geek with your favorite niche real estate website, www.thelandgeek.com. and on today's roundtable podcast, we've got Aaron Bearland Williams. Barryland Williams. How are you, Barryland Aaron?

I'm doing great. It's great to be back.

We've got the always unflappable Eric. No nickname Peterson. Eric, how are things?

I'm doing good.

Every time I watch American Idol with my kids, I think of you because like there's always that person from Tennessee or Nashville and they're talking about like Elvis and like, I wonder if Eric knows those people.

I swear everybody is a musician here, so, you know, and, and they're all super talented, so it's kind of, it's crazy.

As Mike Zana would say, play the guitar.

Yeah, I'm not one of those super talented.

I'm sure you are. Probably just being novice.

No.

And then of course there's the better get it done Tate, the big papa Litchfield. Tate, how are you?

Happy to be here. Happy to be here.

Be happy with your one on one coaching clients.

Yeah, I mean, just got a phone with a couple of them and they're, you know, doing 6,000amonth in passive. So hard to be, you know, how to be hard to beat that. I mean that's pretty awesome. For five, six months in, they're executing. Yeah, I mean that's, that's just it. They're. They're not afraid to do what it takes to move the needle.

Yeah. Yeah. So speaking of execution in real time, that leads us to our Sherpa of flight school, Scott Todd from scotttodd.net landmodo.com and of course you're not automating your Craigslist and your Facebook postings. Posting domination.com Landy Scott Todd, how are you?

Mark? I'm great. How are you?

I am psyched for next week because.

This week.

This week.

This week. Yeah. So you're listening to this. It'll be this week boot camp. The Vegas Boot camp, or as Jeff Dettmer likes to refer to it as tikcon. So we were kind of talking before the podcast. How do you prepare for boot camp and what should our attendees expect? So Bear Lynn, Aaron, what are your thoughts?

Preparation for boot camp is, you know, just bring yourself and a huge willingness to learn and an open mind to absorb all these things that you will be learning and then expectations, you know, expect to meet some great people that you'll form relationships in this business with for a Long, long time. And you, you'll sit in class and you will learn a lot of things that are going to make what was in the toolkit make a whole lot of sense, you know, filling in those gaps. We've talked about that a lot, but it's going to be a whole lot of knowledge and you're going to kind of sit there with your jaw dropped. So take good notes and that sort of thing and just enjoy the experience thoroughly because it's a thoroughly enjoyable experience.

Awesome. Awesome. Eric Peterson, what are your thoughts? How to prepare, what to expect?

Yeah, first thing I would say is make sure you come fully rested. Boot camp is intense. You know, it goes from first thing in the morning till, you know, five, six at night. And you're going to be exhausted from learning all that information and taking it in and keeping up with everything. So it's very fast paced and, you know, I want you to come prepared, I guess. Secondly, take advantage of your time there to get to know the other land investors that are there. They are the community that we interact with on a regular basis. So if you get the chance to put a, you know, the physical person to the face, you see maybe in the Facebook group or what have you, you know, take full advantage of that and get to know those people because ultimately in the future, you'll be able to reach out to them, talk to them, ask them questions, you know, work together on deals, different things like that.

So. All right. Fantastic. Fantastic. Big papa.

Yeah. I would kind of second what Eric had say about come and rested. I mean, it is Vegas. Don't let Vegas get the best of you. You guys come rested, be in class on time. Every single day. We start on time. We don't wait, you know, and there's just so much content. We've got bonus sessions. It is intense. But, yeah, meet people, network, and just genuinely come and get those batteries recharged because this business can be a little lonesome. And so it's good to come to boot camp every couple months and have a weekend where you meet other people who are as obsessed as you are with buying land in the middle of nowhere. Right. I mean, it's a nice way to recharge and get motivated for the upcoming, you know, quarter or next 12 week year. So I love it.

All right, awesome, awesome. Scott, Todd, how about you.

Don'T go out and party, right? Like, do yourself a favor. Like, don't, like Tate said, don't go out and, like, you know, go crazy. It is Vegas after all. And, you know, I think that I think that boot camp is always a place. I always felt like boot camp was a place that would reenergize me, but also allow me to kind of refocus on my business. You know, Mark, one of the. One of the things I really. One of the people I admire a lot in this business is Mimi Schmidt. And Mimi would come to boot camp, and literally, it was her retreat to, you know, retreat time to work on her business. And so I would just say, you know, just. Just come here. Have an open mind. If this is your first boot camp, have an open mind. There's a lot to learn, and it can literally transform your life. It did for me.

Yeah. I think. I think my advice, you know, based on. Because we do surveys at the end, and it is. They are long days, right? And some people, physically and mentally, especially, like afternoon, start getting tired. And if you can have snacks, because we do have snacks in the morning, but then afternoon after lunch, we don't have snacks. And I don't think we have coffee either. So be prepared for that as well and just kind of monitor yourself physically because it is a very long, very intense days. Something else I would say is don't be shy with the coaches, right? Like, when you meet Eric Peterson for the first time or Bear Land, Aaron or Tate, especially Scott, you might be a little starstruck, right? And you might think, oh, would it be great if they would come to me and just introduce themselves and start talking to me? Sometimes they will. Sometimes, you know, they're tired. It's a long day for them especially. Well, and I would say be proactive, especially during, say, a break or lunch or the. Certainly during, you know, on Friday night during the networking session as well. Go to them and just introduce yourself and, you know, just let them know, hey, I listen to podcast. I think you're great. You're not as great as Mark, obviously, but you're still great. And I was just kidding there. But, yeah, but, you know, but don't be shy. And I think the expectation is, oh, wouldn't it be nice if the coaches sort of made the rounds and answered questions and introduced themselves. These guys are tired. They're tired. It's, you know, I know for Tate and Scott and I, we're up at like, 5 and we're having breakfast. We're discussing the day, and we're going up until about nine at night. So Friday is sort of like the best day to talk to the coaches. Saturday, we are completely fried.

You are making everybody say, like, don't.

I can't.

Talk to the coaches on Saturday.

No, you can talk to them, but don't expect them to be proactive.

It's hard. It really is hard.

It is hard.

So we're nice guys. That's what Mark's getting at. We're nice guys.

They're really nice guys.

But we don't bite that hard. Right. I mean, come say hello to us. We want to get to know you. We're thankful that you came to boot camp, and if you ever have questions, we're here to help.

Yeah. And we. We create an environment where the networking of our community is so positive. Everybody's willing to share, and it's really something special. So even if you're kind of shy, don't worry about it because you still be able to network, and it's going to be tremendous. You're going to make lifelong friendships and connections at boot camp. And it's really exciting to see, especially, you know, from the beginning and Friday all the way to Sunday, how that room forms is really kind of magical when it. When it all kind of comes together. And as I like to say, all the land investing clouds in your head are going to dissipate, and everything by Sunday will be completely clear. So I love boot camp. Scott, are you still loving boot camp or are you like, oh, man, another boot camp.

Mark, I do love boot camp. The challenge that I have is that, believe it or not, and my wife would tell you that she doesn't believe it, but I am an introvert. Right? Like, and so, you know, like, I don't mind public speaking. I get. I really get energized from it. I don't mind, like, teaching. I get energized from it, but it's hard for me to. It's draining at the same time. Right. And so it's really funny because I like boot camp. I enjoy it. I like interacting with everybody. And then at the same time, at the end of the day, I just want to curl up in my room and, like, hide so I can re energize for the day, for the next day.

Yeah, I know. It's so funny. I feel the same way. And that's why I love putting Eric Peterson on the spot so much at bootcamp because I know, like, he's uncomfortable speaking publicly, and then when he does it, it's great, and, like, it gives us all kind of a break. And, Eric, are you over kind of that whole. That whole thing about public speaking?

No, I don't know that I'm over it. But, you know, it gets easier all the time, I guess.

Yeah.

It's just not in my personality to kind of stand in front of a group and talk. But it's always easier when you feel like, you know, the subject matter. Well, that always makes things go a little smoother.

Yeah. I'm excited for Bearland Aaron to get into that VIP room and really grill Scott and Tate or vice versa. Actually. I know what goes on in that VIP room.

There will be tears.

Aaron's gonna be like, man, this is, this is like, this is VIP room. I mean, he's been too elite, Mark.

Yeah. He won't be so impressive with vip. Still be. It'll be a nice refresher.

He's hard to, you know, Bear land is hard to kind of like please, I guess is what I'm gonna say.

Oh, why would you say that? I'm an easy pleaser.

You know, he might be like another coach in there helping the others. Yeah, like a, you know, a grizzled vet put his arm around somebody, say, look, it's okay. When I was, when I was starting out, I was just like you, you know, bright eyed and bushy tailed.

I'll make sure that I bring the kinder, gentler bear.

Exactly.

I'll be the teddy bear. How's that?

Is the whole family gonna be there?

No, I'm batching it this time.

Oh, good times.

Just be.

Yeah.

Very, very fun. So is there any other final advice for the community to kind of prepare and what do you expect for boot camp?

No.

All right, well, let's move on to Scott Todd. He had a very interesting story that we could all learn from Scott.

Oh, man. So I had this cheap little property and it was, we sold it for I think it was like $1,200.

Right.

At $1,200. And we accepted payment on a credit card and we transferred the deed. Probably about a month later, I get an email that says, hey, this guy has disputed this charge that it was fraudulent. And I'm like, what? I break out the mini bat, I call the guy and I'm like, hey.

Dude.

You bought a property from me, right? He's like, yeah, yeah. And I'm like, okay, well the credit card company said that it was fraud. So like, we got a problem. And he's like, well, I didn't report his fraud. And I'm like, okay, well then that means that the credit card that you used someone else reported as fraud. If you didn't do it, somebody reported this thing as fraud and we got to get to the bottom of it. Because we're going to have a problem. He's like, well, I don't have a problem because I haven't disputed it as fraud. And I'm like, okay, listen, so here's the way it's gonna work. Do you have this credit card? Is it in your possession? He's like, yeah. And I'm like, okay, I need to see it. He's like, I'm not gonna give it to you. I said, okay, listen, here's what we're gonna do. I'm gonna call the police. And the reason I'm gonna call the police is because you bought a piece of property and you report this transaction as fraud, even though you signed all the paperwork, everything. So there's some element of fraud going on here. I will have to report that to the. To your local police. And he's like, I'm like. And then I'm going to file a notice in the county records that says that this deed in particular is being questioned because of this. It's going to be an affidavit and a notary. It's going to kind of a memo. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to cloud the title on this thing until we get this thing all sorted out. I'm like, that's a lot of work. I don't really understand what happened. He's like, why didn't do that? And, you know, you can call the police if you want, and. And I'll just. I'll just give that. You back the property. I'm like, look, I don't really want to do this. Like, I don't want to call the police. I want you to have the property. But it. Someone has reported this thing as fraud. So either either you did it or the. The rightful cardholder did, and there's actually fraud going on here. And he's like, no, no, no, no, no. Let me talk to my wife. I'll get back to you. So about 25 minutes later, the guy calls me. He's like, okay, I got to the bottom of it. My wife didn't recognize the name of the company, and she disputed it. She already told the credit card company to waive the dispute. And I'm like, okay, well, I need to talk to them, so let's get them on the phone. So we get him on the phone. He actually connected me to American Express. American Express basically said, okay, we've removed the dispute. We have. We have told the credit card processor to reissue the funds. It will take place in about five days. And they did it right. But we had to get a little aggressive because obviously it was reported as fraud. I mean, I hated to be breaking out the mini bat and going after the guy. But that said, that's one of the cool things about this business is even though, you know, you do have first time 600 transactions, first time ever had this happen, it's still great because essentially, I mean, I had the law on my side at this point because the guy signed the contract. I could have also forwarded a copy of the contract, everything to my credit card processor. All would have been good. But we were able to resolve very quickly, especially with the law getting involved.

Yeah, that's a great story. There's a lot to take away from that bear line. Aaron, what's your takeaway?

I don't know. I hope, I hope I don't have to deal with something like that.

Has anyone ever tried to commit any type of fraud on with you on? Yeah.

No, not so much. You know, I've had people flake out and that sort of thing, but no one's been like willfully fraudulent.

All right, how about you, Eric?

Well, I think the biggest takeaway for me there is just that, you know, to take a credit card payment for a property as a whole. I mean it is a little bit concerning from the standpoint of someone could dispute that charge. But knowing that ultimately you've got a purchase agreement if you did that, and you've also got the recorded deeds showing that the transaction happened. So you really have everything you need to be able to prove that, you know, those funds were deserved and they weren't fraudulent and all that kind of stuff. So I think that's, you know, some important pieces to keep in mind there. If you're selling kind of lower dollar properties on a one time credit card payment.

Yeah, I mean, take it. Has this ever happened to you? Do you any experience with this?

You know, I've never had any issues with this, but it's really interesting to see how Scott handled it. I love the fact that he said to the guy, well, you're gonna need to get American Express on the phone while I'm here. Let's, let's do a three way call. And I loved it. That's, that's a genius right there. So I've never had this problem. I think it goes to show you two things. Number one, majority of our buyers are good people.

Right.

If you think about the collective here on this group, thousands and thousands of deals have been done and you know, maybe I think, Mark, you've had one instance of fraud, But I've had one instance of fraud.

And I learned the hard way how to handle that because, you know, really, she sounded very nice. She said, hey, I went out to the property. I didn't love it. Can you refund me? Oh, by the way, I changed credit cards. Can you just send me a check?

Right.

It turns out she had a stolen credit card and just took the money there. So from now on, I. Only when I do a refund, it's got to go back on that original card. So I learned that really, really early on. And then I did have one lady embezzle funds in Nevada. She is like a famous story, but she stole, I want to say, $7 million and spent, like, 50 grand with us. And in raw land, we kept that money. She did go to jail, but I just remember getting sort of a notice from the county, but that they were going to be taking back the property from her, but we kept those funds. It was really interesting. But other than that, in all this time, you know, since 2001, only kind of, you know, one instance of fraud. So it's really, really rare.

I mean, it goes to show you that, you know, it's. There's. Most of the people who are buying our properties are pretty good people, and we don't have to deal with a lot of the issues that other, you know, businesses might when it comes to fraud and those kind of things.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, it's. It's really interesting. And then there's very few transactions that really make you go, ugh. I think for Scott, this was like, one of them. Right. It's like, oh, this is a headache.

Yeah. I mean, this one kind of gives you. Gave me the reason to, like, come on. But, Mark, I was. I mean, this is going to sound crazy. I was only into this property for less than $200.

Okay.

So my worst case scenario was I lost $200. Like, I don't like losing money at all. But that literally, it's like, okay, all right, how much. I mean, part of you even thinks, like, do you even want to dispute. Dispute it, you know, like, isn't my time worth more than the 200 I invested?

No, it's not. You know, that's the funny thing. Like, you know, and the time was he'd lost money on that deal.

Yeah.

But, you know, that really puts things in perspective. So if, let's say, you know, you're listening to this and you're a house, you know, landlord. Right. You've got so many different ugg phone calls, right? The, the plumbing, right, is out, the roof needs repair. You know, people steal the appliances when they, they move out. I mean, there's so many different nightmare stories when you actually own a physical asset as opposed to raw land. Like, oh gee, we had somebody, you know, try to commit fraud on a credit card that they were gonna lose. I mean, wah, wah. I mean, the only other headache we have is someone stops paying on their note and then we just expand our ROI more on that note and resell it and get another down payment and another note person. I think this is the most headache free way of investing in real estate. Is there anything that even comes close? I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't know. But you know, I saw like we had a down payment for $1,000 today and the guy just immediately emailed and said, hey, I want a refund. I had, you know, some kind of financial issue, like, okay, like, all right. Like that was like, you know, a little like, oh, that's disappointing. We'll resell it again for another thousand dollar zone. Like, okay, no problem. Like, better to know, you know, that day than 60 days later or something. So kind of a, you know, it's all mindset, it's all perspective. So I know that Eric's got to run. And that leads us to the tip of the week. A website, a resource, a book book. Something actionable for the passive income listeners to go right now, improve their businesses, improve their lives. Eric, what do you got?

So I have today listly IO L I S T L Y dot IO I'll put it in the chat here for you guys. Basically it's a Chrome plugin and it allows you to take a web page and turn it into an Excel document. So you know, it's gonna take all the data and, and you know, grab links, grab tables, whatever, and put in an Excel sheet. So you know, you could definitely use it on a county website to pull content to, to work with your mailing list or, you know, a number of other uses like that on top of just, you know, scraping website content from somewhere you want to grab some information from. So thought it was kind of handy.

Wow, the price is really good. 10 pages are free. 200 pages is 2 bucks a month. 1000 pages is $10 a month. This might be the most affordable web scraper I've seen. Holy mother. Where'd you find.

That's the secret of having the tip of the week, right? You know where to find this stuff? Talk to Scott about.

I'm gonna be grilling you this weekend at bootcamp. This is a great tip. Finally, finally the evolution from Johnnottpro all the way to Listly IO. Congratulations, Eric. You have a new nickname.

Every now and then I get an okay one. So it'll only last a couple weeks and then we'll go back to nothing. But it's all right.

Tip Master Peterson. I mean, this is great. Eric Listly Peterson, Eric Wesley Peterson Scott Todd. Look at this. I've seen a lot of web scrapers. Have you seen anything better?

No.

I'm downloading right now.

Right now. And I'm trying to figure out how I can have this. This piece deleted from this podcast. I don't think this is good relevant material.

You really.

This is so bad. Eric needs to like get rid of it right now.

Think about all that.

I need to give a new tip for today.

Yeah, yeah, let's. Let's redo this edit. Take one.

I mean this be a great way to build your list on these web based websites on from the county, right?

Yeah.

This is phenomenal. Wow. All right, Philip Ma, there you go. I hope you're listening to that. That's your. That's your one tip for the week. So I want to thank all the listeners. I just want to remind everybody, hopefully everyone's getting a lot of value from the roundtable podcasts. Please do us a small favor. Please do us the three little things. You got to subscribe, you got a rate, you got to review the podcast. Send us a screenshot of that review to support thelandgeek.com we are going to send you for free our passive income launch kit course which is regularly $97. And also today's podcast is sponsored by a new book that's coming out, Dirt rich. Just email supportthelangic.com and get on the list to. To get on to get the dirt rich the special introductory price which is yet to be announced, but I promise you, you're gonna love it, so please do that. Guys, are we good?

We're good, Mark.

All right, well, thanks guys. I want to thank everybody. We'll see you all in Vegas for Tatecon or boot camp, whichever. If you are listening to this and you were coming to boot camp, the secret phrase to win a special raffle ticket which provides lots of gifts worth. I think the last gift we gave out was worth $1.25 million. To get that extra ticket. The secret phrase will be listly. I O Listly. All right, I want to thank everybody and let's have a great boot camp. See everybody next. Oh, Tate, go ahead.

Well, I was gonna say, are we gonna send it off?

Ring.

Yeah.

One, two, three.

Let freedom ring.

Oh, my.

Aaron's always dragging the. The bus on this one.

I was right with you guys.

No, you were not.

It's his Internet. It's his Internet.

It's gotta be red bars all over his Internet.

He can't even.

I mean, like, this is what happens when you live out in the wilderness.

You know what happened that the kids just got home and the WI fi went.

Yeah, Mark, he's living.

Let me tell you where he's living. He's living in walking dead land, I think. Like, he's living in the zombieland.

I mean, you know, what a great way to unplug. I'm surprised they have Internet, maybe, you know, barely. Aaron is just very Zen focused present because there's literally nothing else to distract him in life.

That's almost true. I mean, there's a highway out front, but.

But why does he lash out on this call today? He didn't, but normally he does.

I. You know, I don't know. I think just. He gets excited about being around other people.

He's like the playful dog. He can't. He can't handle. He's like, hey, I got other people.

I get to talk to somebody.

Holy crap.

So I'm a golden retriever.

We're going to have a great weekend, man. I'm really excited to hang out with you in Vegas as all of you. And then, Eric, I was really stressed out about the end of this call because I know you have to jump, so sorry if I forgot about let freedom ring.

It's all good.

It's all good. All right, guys. See you in a little bit. All right, peace out.

Ciao.