Well his business model was stupid. He sold the trailer, then rented it out from the company that just bought it from him and he thought he would still make money from it because someone else would rent it from him and give him money. Problem was no-one rented it. So he sold a product and rented it afterwards and had no other income than selling more of them (with the liability to rent it for years after selling).
@@ddegn no, there certainly is not, it was all based on being able to get companies to buy it based on his scam of a business model, it looked so good to them they couldnt help themselves. He was basically offering free money, pay 30% which is exactly what you can deduct from taxes making it free to the company WITH the promise of continued income from the trailer being rented. Jeff's ponzi was get 30% cash and them pay back 70%, obviously doomed to fail in a bernie madoff kind of way.
I find it pretty amazing how he was willing to hire employees and make million-dollar deals to perpetuate the scam, but hiring an actual engineer to re-design his trailers so he could actually sell them and go legit has apparently never occurred to him.
With only a few solar panels they were never going to work. Just another part of the global warming scam designed to fleece the taxpayer while fooling the technically illiterate into thinking the solutions are simple. Its the best scam ever invented.
Considering that he was the fall guy for the companies avoiding taxes due to his scam without even knowing it, that defense actually showed a lot of insight.
Jeff was the biggest sucker of them all. The companies that invested in his fraud and received staggering tax breaks can pin it all on him, and it's his word against their word. Jeff goes to jail, and those companies are basically scouting the land for the next Jeff that can help them in a similar way.
Yeah, I definitely think the companies weren't "completely fooled", not all of the big ones. They probably just saw how much they could pump in it for their tax break, knowing any wrongdoing wouldn't be theirs, but Jeff's company. On the contrary they would be the poor little victims of a scam. They didn't really checked things because they didn't care. Those that did and saw something fishy must have gotten word from the higher ups that they didn't care, to go through with the deal anyway, all that mattered was the tax break.
Nope guys. You are wrong. They got an erection and invested f.e. $200 millions to gain a 20% short term tax benefit (20 millions). The contract ... the whole agreement still assumed that the whole deal would generate a return for the investing company. So they've lost at least $180 million and the guaranteed return on the contract. I should do business with you uneducated and naive characters. What are you? preschoolers or what? Hehehehe, sorry for that!:P
I know a guy who has random solar panels from old trailers, construction sites, and any other place he can get them from. He takes them either from the trash or even just left behind and forgotten, there was one panel that was literally dumped there by someone. Just left on his property. He takes them and wires them up in his shop or parts of his house. They dont work like "free energy" but they do run shop lights, charge power tools and batteries, run a small alarm clock...all sorts of small things. Its not hard at all if you understand basic electricity.
That line about Tax Credits... probably the most true thing he stated in the whole thing: How many companies refused to look closely because the tax-payer was footing a large chunk of the bill?
I think even biggest indicators that its all about the tax breaks was when he raised the price to 150k per unit, and no investors even questioned it. Just like yap, that's all good.
Getting a tax cut doesn't mean someone paid for it..... why do id**ts think this? Imagine I stole $100 from you; now imagine I only steal $50 from you next time. According to your logic, you just received a $50 tax cut; according to your logic, someone else had to pay for this, but that makes no sense. Someone isn't paying just because the government decides to steal less money "Hey guys, I decided to NOT steal $100,000 from this guy; this jerk just profited $100,000 via tax cuts! What a jerk! He is stealing from the people!" Your logic is that people are stealing from the people anytime the government decides to not steal money from the people. How utterly absurd. Why are people so cucked to their governments?
I live in Arizona, which is a state with a HUGE solar market due to being a desert. I have seen the DC commercials and ads and thought to myself "yeah, that makes sense. A solar panel you can move". It was a simple idea. Had no clue it didn't even work. Just kinda assume if they're spending that much on marketing, they would have a working product. Especially if it;s a literal product you can see and not like a digital crypto currency or something non-tangible. Crazy I didn't know it was a scam until this video. great stuff, as always!
@@Dantevonlocke and also progressively cheaper. 10 years ago the 100W panels cost more than 500 USD each, now you can afford it for a bit less than 100 USD
@@sihamhamda47 a dollar a watt lol But on topic, I remember seeing a video or something abiut these see through panels that could retain a large majority or the energy. Like more than the 10% or whatever it is currently. It was something over 80%
@@Dantevonlocke you're not going to get meaningful amounts of energy quickly enough with an array small enough to fit on a trailer. There's a reason engineers who understand the tech aren't implementing the idea; it doesn't work. They definitely thought of it already
Yep, business as usual. Also how do you not know how electricity works when there is so much resources on the net? You only need to spend a few days going through some solar, inverter, and rectifier documentation.
All they had to do was be legitimate. Just make a product that works. It wouldn't have even been that hard. I don't understand how you can just let this runaway and instead of panicking, you buy 129 cars and live like a multimillionaire until you're caught then put into prison for 30 years. He could've had a profitable business and retired somewhere a lot nicer than prison.
Assuming the tech was viable, yeah. He could've put up something legitimate to save himself, even if only to lessen the blow for the mass fraud being done. Someone could've talked eventually, but by that time he could've been in the background, made his money, and disconnected from it all, or something at least.
He's a lying ex meth addict who opened several businesses that all failed, he doesnt seem like someone who really plans things out..for that matter why didnt he just work as a fuckin mechanic in someone elses successful shop, thats a decent job he just was greedy.
It's almost as if handing out tax dollars with little to no oversight and no market pressure requiring a return on investment leads to wide scale fraud...
We actually bought out some of his trailer’s from auctions. Gutted them and used the inverters for off grid battery storage. The stuff was junk and half of the trailers didn’t even have wires in them. He would put a small battery in there to power a gps token and make it look like they had them up and running on sites when they just sat in a field doing nothing.
Reminded me of my grandfather, the lead accountant/vice president equivalent of a small local bank decades ago. One of their appointed presidents squandered bank money on dining rich people and bad investments, ran when he got caught, the next president made even worse investments that led to the employees buying out the bank. My grandfather had to settle the books, which took two years trying to track everything down, and when he was done two hot shot lawyers showed up with the IRS and forced the bank to shut down. There were no appeals, they didn't even bother looking at the books, just walked in and everyone was fired. I think Chase bought it up for something like a penny for every hundred dollars and then sued the former employees for the difference. All six of them lost everything and my grandfather spent the rest of his life trying to build up enough money to keep my grandmother afloat after he died.
@@xian1978 Just the very beginning, where they were talking about the disappeared money in court. My comment was more of a non sequitur than I realized.
Interesting. There was a case that was very similar in germany. The company FlowTex has produced horizontal drills. Over 3000 drills were sold while only 120 existed. Via sell and lease back they always had enough money to pay the leasing rates as more and more non-existing drills could be sold.
Was initially surprised I’ve never heard of this, but considering how bad it makes these large companies and the US government look, I’m not so surprised. Plus I guess COVID kinda knocked the wind out of its sails
I am not sure Covid had anything to do with this not being widely known. The raid happened two years before Covid hit and the sentencing was about three weeks ago.
The minute investors accepted that DC Solar had used their own auditor to verify their inventory, that should have been the huge red flag for everyone. I've never seen a legit deal where collateral was involved where the company was allowed to use their own auditor. It's always an independent 3rd party that is approved by the investor/lender.
why do these million or even billion dollar scammers never have an exit plan? they know it will eventually end and should make plans for that, slowly funnel money into an offshore account and have a private jet ready at an airport, once you're getting towards the end point of the scam or when people start sniffing around you just bail, you should have been able to funnel several million maybe even tens of millions so you're set for life in a nonextradition country.
I imagine the same reason lottery winners and celebrities go from being millionaires/billionaires to being homeless in a gutter. People get too focused on living the high life now, rather than preparing for the future, especially when they come into easy money. Someone who's dug a big hole in the hot Sun for $20 will value the money more than someone who was given $20 for nothing or stolen it.
People like this guy Elizabeth Holmes or SBF don't enter the market intending to scam people they just roll with the punches until eventually the center cannot hold.
He had some smaller opportunity to look for a solar engineer and put that person as the lead engineer to produce the products for his company. He blew it on partying. Guess he knows how to manage money. Probably one of the people who can blow away a half a billion dollar lottery in 5 years.
I can guarantee you the major companies knew it was a scam. They didn't care though, because they were getting their tax breaks anyway, and they knew when it all blew up in their face, he would get butt fucked with the charges and they would wash their hands of the whole situation immediately. There's no way in hell he got away with a nonexistent product for that long, people had to know. There are apparently 17000 of them and literally no one ever sees them out in the open world because none of them are actually being rented and no one asks questions? Yeah, nah, they knew.
Is it me, or am I the only one thinking this would still be going on if Hillary was elected instead of Trump? I think “2018” being when they got taken down is a pretty massive indicator that this was stopped with Trump. Ffs Hillary would’ve privately invested and Biden would’ve taken the government all in with his ridiculous green energy initiatives that are pumping out garbage products-but hey, as long as China keeps making money to work off that CEFC debt, s’all good.
The product existed, it just didn't work properly. By the sounds of it, he did have them out in the open world because some investors wanted to know the products whereabouts at all times, so he fitted them with GPS and placed them in different locations to make it look like they were being rented out. Considering all the networking he did with investors and that this whole thing is about taxation, im kinda suprised nobody gave him the idea to run everything thru a shell company overseas, or at least sell it to a fake offshore entity as an exit strategy.
As does the ability of "smart" "investors" to be scammed. I swear I don't know how some of these people made their money if they can be fooled by smoke and mirrors so frequently. Either way, I'm clearly in the wrong business.
@Jarrod Davis what's crazy is these people just wanted tax breaks. If he'd never promised rental returns and just donated the power generated and actually built every unit he'd still have made millions and not went to prison.
@@biltrex If you wanna really scare yourself, there's a strong possibility that they've all made their money off of scams and just haven't been caught yet.
1st year EE students could put together a basic solar panel array, inverter, and battery. How was this so difficult that they had to turn to a Ponzi scheme?
That's the weirdest part he could've made easy money for the rest of his life, hire a guy to make the functioning product, put factories to make the product and it's easy money
@@jakelynch3450 it's crazy how they fucked this up, it could have been an unbelievably successful business. there was no need to scam anyone with those profit margins.
@@ripdoff8549 I doubt it could have been highly successful. There simply isn't enough demand for small mobile solar equipment. I mean, it's easier and probably cheaper to mount solar panels to already existing hardware (like the trailers/mobile homes on a movie set) than to have an additional trailer that somehow has to be connected to the power grid. There are some instances where you might need such a trailer, so that guy could have made a life from it and be successful, but not on a billion dollar basis.
Considering that he bought the car collection pre-2018, he could have pulled himself out from under the mountain by selling it when the market got crazy in 2020/2021, if he had survived that long.
It's like this guy was just determined to take something legitimate and turn it into a scam. Everything started off extremely legitimate and could have been great if he just wasn't trying to scam people. 🤦🏿
I read this title, and thought, "Is this about the "SOLAR FREAKIN' ROADWAYS" thing?" I guess not, but hey, still cool. Anyway, hope you're doing well mate. Here's a comment for the old RUclips Algorithm.
The idea was sound even if the only thing they were marketed as were rentals with the occasional full purchase at double the production cost. They would have been reasonably priced to build. The man was sitting on a gold mine idea but it just wasn't fast enough for him. He wanted it all now. Imagine where he would be now if he had gone it legitimately. Most likely he would have sold off the company for billions and been set for the rest of his life.
There was one parked in the Martinez, Ca, Ace Hardware parking lot next to the roach coach. I saw the Kubota Low Boy generator on it. Solar, inverters, and lithium batteries were of interest to me so I had a look. I thought it had a lot of wasted space and was poorly designed. Somebody told me that it was for rent but nobody was interested. I figured that someday I would build one for my own personal use as lithium batteries, inverters, MPPT units were getting much better and cheaper seemingly every 6 months. Maybe.....
"But Bayless sensed the Feds weren't that stupid". Always a good assumption. If FBI agents are already showing up, its a safe bet that they've already got the rope, tied the noose, and placed it around your neck. Now they just need to tighten it.
A perfect example of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Those companies knew exactly what the deal was and were more than happy to let it continue as long as they kept seeing the benefits.
Well, AFAIK the DK effect may very well be an artifact in research design. Either way, it's not what those companies' CEO's would have been subjected to - it's not about knowing and allowing for "ends justify the means" - it's about the relationship between your level of knowledge on a topic and your confidence on that topic.
Those major companies turned a blind eye for sure. The tax breaks were too delicious for them to do any actual due diligence in investigating the situation.
People don't understand the technology around them nearly as much as they let on. For a normal person, that's not an issue. It's not your responsibility to know how a phone or fridge works. Just to know not to fill their ports with mayonnaise and similar basic maintenance knowledge. Companies rely on someone knowing the systems they use instinctively. But you also need them to be extremely socially skilled and have good instincts for bullshit. Intuitive tech knowledge and above average social skills are rare. Most people who have it simply don't pursue lofty ambitions. Why do that and be surrounded by people who might see you as a threat and screw you over when you can be a lower level but highly paid member of a smaller company
He could have hired a PE, particularly an EE to design a system for him for the cost of like $3-5k at MOST, that's for a first-of-its-kind design. Components, trailer, labor, etc. would have cost around maybe $20k, => someone that is in the position to know. $150k I would have actually started laughing, like deliriously laughing, even back then that was exorbitant, when he did his scam the total cost to customer should have been less than ~$50k / unit. Including good profit margins, overhead, equipment, and labor (the Solar Modules themselves back then were more expensive than now, but not to the level of $100k or $150k retail price).
@@kennj321 He could have sold bundles only per sale. I piece of gum is a unit but selling a whole pack of gum/units is more profitable. Both he and the companies chose fraud when there was a much better, legal alternative.
A system that would work as advertised and doesnt require assembly on each move? I doubt that would be possible to produce them at a price of 3-5k. It especially makes no sense when looking at how much electricity has to be generated. 3 solar trailers for each regular trailer or even worse.
The saddest thing about this is it was a decent idea with a lot of uses. Portable, non-fuel-sourced power is great... it's too bad he sucked at business and apparently didn't know enough about solar to put it together correctly.
I work in solar, and was offered some of those trailers in an auction. I didn't know the story behind them had so much intrigue. I didn't participate in the auction. I needed trailer-mounted solar modules, but I was building the modules, not buying them. The diesel generator was just dead weight I'd need to get rid of. I ended up building my own trailers, and they are in my backyard to this day.
That's weird. So companies bought those trailers to get tax benefits, but then left them to warehouses to rot because simply owning them was the beneficial part? All the customers should be investigated and it should be made absolutely sure that if trailer was not in use, no tax benefir for you then. Also I got exited about that trailer in the beginning. That's a great idea. If it would work..
Thanks for making another one of these Kira, always enjoy these longer form, documentary style videos. Fingers crossed this one doesn't require further edits.
So if someone had hired a real electrical engineer, and Jeff had maybe not blown assloads of money on pretending to be rich, they might have had a real product to rent out.
Love when I see an upload here, I know it's gonna be a good one. The quality of these is always amazing, they seem so well researched and high enough quality I could see it being a series on TV and I'd believe it.
I actually own one of the DC Solar trailers. It used to be a solar generator but that was removed and now I use the trailer (manufactured by Carson trailer) for moving my equipment. It's a 10k trailer, wich is decently rated for something supposed to have very little weight on it.
If you’ve got an idea but aren’t equipped to actually realize it. Just sell it for a few million and be set. Leave all the stress of trying to actually make it work to others. You can have a very good rest of your life with a small fortune. Greed is the worst.
At any point they could of hired engineers and actually make this legitimate and nobody would of known. Greed is a scary thing. Also i 100% believe the corporations knew but ignored for the tax returns. Especially since even if everything came out no blame would be on them
Dude there is a dutch company in The Netherlands that is doing exactly this! The company is called Volta Energy and they are growing fast with huge number of investments. How did this guy not turn this into an actual legitimate company is beyond me.
It's because it's technically impossible. Solar panels simply don't generate enough electricity to run loads for useful equipment. Generators use diesel because it can produce big power. Unfortunately, photo voltaic systems just can't compete with what a diesel genset can produce.
The crazy part about this to me is hoe long he took to get reported considering he had to ask many many people to break the law with him, it only takes one person getting the offer from him and reporting him to ruin the company, and yet everybody was down to be criminals with him and not report, really makes you question the American business landscape.
Very similar investigation story needed with Florida solar installation company Modern Concepts. Supposedly embezzled millions and didn’t install their contracts and took of with the money. Supposedly Feds involved. Would like more info. Many solar sales companies left unpaid unless they were also involved.
My guess would be that these investors wanted in on it because it would help hike up their ESG score, which is why it took so long for anything to be discovered.
Imagine being a 100% made man because you had some basic shit in your garage and by pure chance knew a guy then you fumble the bag like this. This man was forced into being a billionaire and just wouldn't stand for it.
I count 10 solar panels on the trailer. That is about half of what a house would have. I am not an engineer, but even simple me can figure out that it is not going to generate a lot of electricity and $150,000 is wildly over priced.
Green energy is called that because it puts green in the pockets of the people promoting it. 95% of energy used to charge electric cars comes from coal. The amount of environmental and human damage done by rare earth mineral mines is more than oil could ever do. CO2 is plant food. We are closer to plant death worldwide due to low co2 levels than were are to global warming. Atmospheric co2 levels at the moment are about 1/3 the average they have been the last 100k years. Too much money involved in the industry for people to be honest about things. Its sad.
I feel like this whole thing was so damn unnecessary. Like the dude had everything in the palm of his hands. All he had to do was hire some competent staff to get this design properly working, and he'd be living comfortably for the rest of his life. It's not like he couldn't afford it... Great video as always, mate.
Cause it meant as long as you had access to the sun you could have infinite energy without paying the electric company or gas companies. It was like printing money. Imagine going to your son's baseball game and having an air conditioned tent with working soda refrigerator. The possibilities were endless.
@@azinyefantasy4445 If you need to power a building then cover the roof with panels, if you need to power a fridge in a party tent out in the desert use a diesel generator. Trucking these mobile solar panels around is not environmentally friendly. It's a solution looking for a tiny niche hipster problem.
@@azinyefantasy4445 you're missing the economics of that though. If you need a physical $150K asset to generate let's say $300/month of electricity (being generous) then it would take 41 years to break even. That is not account for inflation or opportunity cost of capital. If you were to factor that in, you'd NEVER break even. Also, importantly, the assets will require maintenance and/or will eventually stop working - which is likely over the 100+ year time horizon to break even. So, yeah its free money if you neglect to consider the huge CAPEX of the 150k initial investment.
Can you imagine if these folks would have just been legit from the get-go and not spent all that money they would be a legitimate billion-dollar company today
fun fact, theres a company in canada that recently started making portable solar stations that actually work! as well as a fully electric and diesel electric semi truck/logging truck. Eddison motors if anyone is interested, bunch of real smart people
This type of behavior has been epidemic in the solar industry and stifled the growth of the solar industry for years. It started with the solar rebates for water heaters in 70s and that segment of the industry never recovered from the bad name it gave the technology. It's going on today with companies like Pink Solar that recently went under. Overstating the performance and overpricing the product. It's a shame because the technology works great when applied properly.
Pro tip: When the cash is already flowing in in millions, don't double down, but instead start buying gold or transfering some of the money to an off-shore bank account. Then, but still before the fraud is detected, flee the U.S. and start a new life in a country that doesn't have an extradition treaty with the U.S.
So he could have had a moderately sucessful buisiness if he'd just hired a single electrical engineer, and sold the trailers outright instead of doing a rental scheme.
Imagine if he'd invested as much effort into making a product that works as he did into lying. He'd be one of the richest people in the country by now most likely.
Instead of hiring a few engineers and investing the millions of dollars that investors gave him to fix a product that is actually in demand, he could become a billionaire in 2 or 3 years. I'm just speechless; I don't think I've ever seen anything like this."
he got such an insane golden ticket and flubbed it by not choosing to just make a few goddamn solar panel trailers that worked correctly like he could still have lived the same life and whatnot if he had gone and did it straight
My takeaway from this, as if I did not know this already, is that so-called "investors" of all types are not nearly as smart as they would like you to believe, and that includes WB. In fact, having spent years working as an investment analyst I can of course confirm from personal experience that the majority of people in the financial industry, people with several degrees and a long record of experience, are more often wrong than they are right, and the majority of them are two-bit hacks that often neglect due diligence, oversight and proper financial control. Moreover, the entire financial industry is incestuous in the extreme, where deals are made in return for what amounts to overt kickbacks in the form of luxury goods, fully paid for holidays and everything else under the sun you can imagine, legal or not. I would blow your mind if I were to actually mention things I have seen, but YT would not look favourably on me even mentioning the words. So when you rightfully ask yourself, how did so many people in high placed positions not see this sooner, trust me on this, you give them way more credit than they deserve. Lastly, large scale investors make money essentially via what amounts to little more than "gambling" but since there really is no upper limit to the upside when they make a correct call, it cancels out the other 9 times out of 10 they make incorrect calls.
It is insane how easy it was for Jeff to manipulate the free market. The fact that he was able to do all that while having THAT for his resume.... American capitalism needs some help, man. Great reporting by the way. This channel is getting better and better!
Free market? Capitalism? You do realize that government subsidies and tax breaks are the cause of this fraud? Government picking winners and losers, demanding energy to be "green". This is a fine example of why we should have free markets, and that government should not be involved in markets.
@@jaredbuttles1753 Yeah, ight. What's your definition of free markets? Being a pirate on the high seas? It's insane to want an economy with no subsidies at all. The Agricultural, Military, Technological, Educational, Industrial, small business, & Space sectors would all crumble without subsidies. (Then, it's bye-bye to being the world's largest economy.)
Greed will make a lot of people overlook obvious hints. For the investors, the stars were aligning and I could see being duped simply because your returns were coming in. The problem is that all the people about midway through were just fueled by greed and wanted this to be good because it's free cash.
were lazy mate, never seen the summer house i bought for renting 4-6 years ago lol, will look it up if the company in charge of renting it stopped sending me money.
![How to Lie Your Way to $34 Billion [Nikola Motors Fraud]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/88fWUZhYb04/mqdefault.jpg)
So basically, if he had actually found someone to design the systems properly he would be a billionaire legitimately.
Well his business model was stupid. He sold the trailer, then rented it out from the company that just bought it from him and he thought he would still make money from it because someone else would rent it from him and give him money. Problem was no-one rented it. So he sold a product and rented it afterwards and had no other income than selling more of them (with the liability to rent it for years after selling).
@@johannoas1 smiles in Elon Musk
He would have been rolling in legit money but he didn't want to put in even just a little bit of the work.
Is there any evidence there was much demand for solar trailers?
@@ddegn no, there certainly is not, it was all based on being able to get companies to buy it based on his scam of a business model, it looked so good to them they couldnt help themselves. He was basically offering free money, pay 30% which is exactly what you can deduct from taxes making it free to the company WITH the promise of continued income from the trailer being rented. Jeff's ponzi was get 30% cash and them pay back 70%, obviously doomed to fail in a bernie madoff kind of way.
I find it pretty amazing how he was willing to hire employees and make million-dollar deals to perpetuate the scam, but hiring an actual engineer to re-design his trailers so he could actually sell them and go legit has apparently never occurred to him.
With only a few solar panels they were never going to work. Just another part of the global warming scam designed to fleece the taxpayer while fooling the technically illiterate into thinking the solutions are simple. Its the best scam ever invented.
Heck he could find a shady pregrad engineer and they could probably fix the product and massively improve the renting rate
The problem was the technology doesn’t exist and still doesn’t exist. Solar is a scam.
all solar is fake as fuck
the engineer would be able to blackmail him tho
The "i'm not so smart to be able to run such a scam!" defense was the funniest part of the whole story lol
Considering that he was the fall guy for the companies avoiding taxes due to his scam without even knowing it, that defense actually showed a lot of insight.
In my experence. Addicts are smart, and stupid at the same time.
It was a good point lol
Well he did get caught
Sounds like what trump will say.
Jeff was the biggest sucker of them all. The companies that invested in his fraud and received staggering tax breaks can pin it all on him, and it's his word against their word. Jeff goes to jail, and those companies are basically scouting the land for the next Jeff that can help them in a similar way.
Yeah, I definitely think the companies weren't "completely fooled", not all of the big ones. They probably just saw how much they could pump in it for their tax break, knowing any wrongdoing wouldn't be theirs, but Jeff's company. On the contrary they would be the poor little victims of a scam. They didn't really checked things because they didn't care. Those that did and saw something fishy must have gotten word from the higher ups that they didn't care, to go through with the deal anyway, all that mattered was the tax break.
That's why i'm against charity tax write off.
Donating overestimated painting to museums. Overhype green initiatives. Unaccountable Humanitarian aids
@@chuckysmaria6466 And said charities giving some kickback to the companies in question. Win win for everyone except the common tax payer.
@@TheAzurekite7
That's why I'm for simplifying tax code. Everyone pays 5%. No loopholes, no write offs.
Nope guys. You are wrong.
They got an erection and invested f.e. $200 millions to gain a 20% short term tax benefit (20 millions). The contract ... the whole agreement still assumed that the whole deal would generate a return for the investing company. So they've lost at least $180 million and the guaranteed return on the contract.
I should do business with you uneducated and naive characters. What are you? preschoolers or what? Hehehehe, sorry for that!:P
The whole time I thought this story was wild, but nothing could have prepared me for the phrase "500k worth of meth buried in a cemetery"
Imagine an archeologist digging up that chest in the future 😅
"...He was gonna squeeze the f**k out of those lemons."😆
now his Nutz will b hammered
Is it me, or is rigging a trailer for solar energy not too difficult to begin with
It's not hard
Most of these investors probably knew and were just in it for the tax breaks
@@counter.123 you overestimate how smart people are
11:13 just Google it
I know a guy who has random solar panels from old trailers, construction sites, and any other place he can get them from. He takes them either from the trash or even just left behind and forgotten, there was one panel that was literally dumped there by someone. Just left on his property. He takes them and wires them up in his shop or parts of his house. They dont work like "free energy" but they do run shop lights, charge power tools and batteries, run a small alarm clock...all sorts of small things. Its not hard at all if you understand basic electricity.
That line about Tax Credits... probably the most true thing he stated in the whole thing:
How many companies refused to look closely because the tax-payer was footing a large chunk of the bill?
I think even biggest indicators that its all about the tax breaks was when he raised the price to 150k per unit, and no investors even questioned it. Just like yap, that's all good.
@@mmazvisas I was reading what you said video just said it and yeah... Woah
Getting a tax cut doesn't mean someone paid for it..... why do id**ts think this? Imagine I stole $100 from you; now imagine I only steal $50 from you next time. According to your logic, you just received a $50 tax cut; according to your logic, someone else had to pay for this, but that makes no sense. Someone isn't paying just because the government decides to steal less money
"Hey guys, I decided to NOT steal $100,000 from this guy; this jerk just profited $100,000 via tax cuts! What a jerk! He is stealing from the people!"
Your logic is that people are stealing from the people anytime the government decides to not steal money from the people. How utterly absurd. Why are people so cucked to their governments?
It's no different from Carbon Tax credits. How does making tax payers pay extra for a corporations' carbon emissions reduce it?
How exactly does a company having to pay less tax mean they are taking money from taxpayers?
I live in Arizona, which is a state with a HUGE solar market due to being a desert. I have seen the DC commercials and ads and thought to myself "yeah, that makes sense. A solar panel you can move". It was a simple idea. Had no clue it didn't even work. Just kinda assume if they're spending that much on marketing, they would have a working product. Especially if it;s a literal product you can see and not like a digital crypto currency or something non-tangible. Crazy I didn't know it was a scam until this video. great stuff, as always!
It seems like such a simple idea tbh. As panels and storage get better year after year this should be a very viable thing.
@@Dantevonlocke and also progressively cheaper.
10 years ago the 100W panels cost more than 500 USD each, now you can afford it for a bit less than 100 USD
@@sihamhamda47 a dollar a watt lol
But on topic, I remember seeing a video or something abiut these see through panels that could retain a large majority or the energy. Like more than the 10% or whatever it is currently. It was something over 80%
@@Dantevonlocke you're not going to get meaningful amounts of energy quickly enough with an array small enough to fit on a trailer. There's a reason engineers who understand the tech aren't implementing the idea; it doesn't work. They definitely thought of it already
@@sihamhamda47 no, no they didn't.
"Im not smart enough to run a scam like this!" Yes dude, thats why you got caught and are in court rn!
Scams rich people, gets 30 years. Rich people screw poor people - get rewarded with billions.
Truer words were never spoken
America!...
Yep, business as usual. Also how do you not know how electricity works when there is so much resources on the net? You only need to spend a few days going through some solar, inverter, and rectifier documentation.
Trump scams his base daily, and he's a hero.
That's how it's done ✔️
So when you scam rich people it’s 30 years in prison, but when they scam tons of poor people it’s 2-5 in a white collar facility.
All they had to do was be legitimate. Just make a product that works. It wouldn't have even been that hard. I don't understand how you can just let this runaway and instead of panicking, you buy 129 cars and live like a multimillionaire until you're caught then put into prison for 30 years. He could've had a profitable business and retired somewhere a lot nicer than prison.
Because he was lazy and selfish. I expect the next Republican President will pardon him.
I don't think it would have really worked. He would have had to lease the trailers out to paying customers.
@@EvilFinian You mean dem, right? They bail out literal murerers on the regular, a scammer should be no problem.
Assuming the tech was viable, yeah. He could've put up something legitimate to save himself, even if only to lessen the blow for the mass fraud being done. Someone could've talked eventually, but by that time he could've been in the background, made his money, and disconnected from it all, or something at least.
He's a lying ex meth addict who opened several businesses that all failed, he doesnt seem like someone who really plans things out..for that matter why didnt he just work as a fuckin mechanic in someone elses successful shop, thats a decent job he just was greedy.
And I'm guessing that none of the companies "tricked" into buying this scam ever had to pay back the tax cuts they profited from?
Yep, how did you know 😂 Thanks to our American "justice" system.
they were ordered to, but whether or not they did is another story
Sure they were lol. Show some proof for this claim
@@DIBZ111 didn't kira literally say they were ordered to pay it back at the end of the video
@@DryAgedMignon "they" meaning the two people he was talking about, Mr. and Mrs. ponzi
It's almost as if handing out tax dollars with little to no oversight and no market pressure requiring a return on investment leads to wide scale fraud...
Yea man. Everyone knows these business types are the most trust worthy of society lol
What we need is MORE government!
@snex ironically yes. The problem is a lot of renewable departments in the government are underfunded
There is a limit of of how many tax credits can be given out per state these days . But early days it was the wild west lol
Yes, watch out for green washing, follow the incentives.
We actually bought out some of his trailer’s from auctions. Gutted them and used the inverters for off grid battery storage. The stuff was junk and half of the trailers didn’t even have wires in them. He would put a small battery in there to power a gps token and make it look like they had them up and running on sites when they just sat in a field doing nothing.
The most valuable parts would be the diesel generators and the trailers themselves.
Reminded me of my grandfather, the lead accountant/vice president equivalent of a small local bank decades ago. One of their appointed presidents squandered bank money on dining rich people and bad investments, ran when he got caught, the next president made even worse investments that led to the employees buying out the bank. My grandfather had to settle the books, which took two years trying to track everything down, and when he was done two hot shot lawyers showed up with the IRS and forced the bank to shut down.
There were no appeals, they didn't even bother looking at the books, just walked in and everyone was fired. I think Chase bought it up for something like a penny for every hundred dollars and then sued the former employees for the difference. All six of them lost everything and my grandfather spent the rest of his life trying to build up enough money to keep my grandmother afloat after he died.
well, damn
@@crizman7032 Yep.
That's horrible 😮
Sorry, but why this video reminded you of this? Because I fail to see th similarities.
@@xian1978 Just the very beginning, where they were talking about the disappeared money in court. My comment was more of a non sequitur than I realized.
Interesting. There was a case that was very similar in germany. The company FlowTex has produced horizontal drills. Over 3000 drills were sold while only 120 existed. Via sell and lease back they always had enough money to pay the leasing rates as more and more non-existing drills could be sold.
Was initially surprised I’ve never heard of this, but considering how bad it makes these large companies and the US government look, I’m not so surprised. Plus I guess COVID kinda knocked the wind out of its sails
Its rather that they dont want get ppl become too suspicious off other green energy scams
@@dadrising6464 "they"?
Why the US government though? The government didn't give the guy money, they gave subsidies to the companies that bought/rented those units
I am not sure Covid had anything to do with this not being widely known. The raid happened two years before Covid hit and the sentencing was about three weeks ago.
@@glennjanot8128 the government gave subsidies to scammers. Also there was the part about Obama including the company in the trial.
The minute investors accepted that DC Solar had used their own auditor to verify their inventory, that should have been the huge red flag for everyone. I've never seen a legit deal where collateral was involved where the company was allowed to use their own auditor. It's always an independent 3rd party that is approved by the investor/lender.
that's not a red flag, that's literally screaming its a scam/crime.
They knew it was sketchy. It just served them better to pretend they didn't.
😮
why do these million or even billion dollar scammers never have an exit plan? they know it will eventually end and should make plans for that, slowly funnel money into an offshore account and have a private jet ready at an airport, once you're getting towards the end point of the scam or when people start sniffing around you just bail, you should have been able to funnel several million maybe even tens of millions so you're set for life in a nonextradition country.
Why even wait till its near the end
Just up and leave when scam is going strong and no one is questioning it.
Human hubris, that's how
Greed. They want more than tens of millions.
I imagine the same reason lottery winners and celebrities go from being millionaires/billionaires to being homeless in a gutter.
People get too focused on living the high life now, rather than preparing for the future, especially when they come into easy money. Someone who's dug a big hole in the hot Sun for $20 will value the money more than someone who was given $20 for nothing or stolen it.
People like this guy Elizabeth Holmes or SBF don't enter the market intending to scam people they just roll with the punches until eventually the center cannot hold.
He had some smaller opportunity to look for a solar engineer and put that person as the lead engineer to produce the products for his company.
He blew it on partying. Guess he knows how to manage money. Probably one of the people who can blow away a half a billion dollar lottery in 5 years.
I can guarantee you the major companies knew it was a scam. They didn't care though, because they were getting their tax breaks anyway, and they knew when it all blew up in their face, he would get butt fucked with the charges and they would wash their hands of the whole situation immediately. There's no way in hell he got away with a nonexistent product for that long, people had to know. There are apparently 17000 of them and literally no one ever sees them out in the open world because none of them are actually being rented and no one asks questions? Yeah, nah, they knew.
Absolutely. There was no real downside to them looking the other way.
wow what kinda tinfoiled person you have to be to be cooking that kinda of bs theories? we get it you hate the companies because you are jelous
Whatever boosts the ESG score…
Is it me, or am I the only one thinking this would still be going on if Hillary was elected instead of Trump? I think “2018” being when they got taken down is a pretty massive indicator that this was stopped with Trump. Ffs Hillary would’ve privately invested and Biden would’ve taken the government all in with his ridiculous green energy initiatives that are pumping out garbage products-but hey, as long as China keeps making money to work off that CEFC debt, s’all good.
The product existed, it just didn't work properly.
By the sounds of it, he did have them out in the open world because some investors wanted to know the products whereabouts at all times, so he fitted them with GPS and placed them in different locations to make it look like they were being rented out.
Considering all the networking he did with investors and that this whole thing is about taxation, im kinda suprised nobody gave him the idea to run everything thru a shell company overseas, or at least sell it to a fake offshore entity as an exit strategy.
How could all of these companies not care if they had a working product, or any product at all?
They were making a lot of tax free money, and wouldn't be held liable when the IRS ended the scheme. It was a win win
People's ability to scam the shit out of others never ceases to amaze me
Why are you stalking me?
I already paid for the last batch of product.
As does the ability of "smart" "investors" to be scammed. I swear I don't know how some of these people made their money if they can be fooled by smoke and mirrors so frequently. Either way, I'm clearly in the wrong business.
@Jarrod Davis what's crazy is these people just wanted tax breaks. If he'd never promised rental returns and just donated the power generated and actually built every unit he'd still have made millions and not went to prison.
@@biltrex If you wanna really scare yourself, there's a strong possibility that they've all made their money off of scams and just haven't been caught yet.
There is saying, "a sucker is born every minute"
I'm in stitches watching RUclips play ads for companies advertising solar panels while watching this lmao
1st year EE students could put together a basic solar panel array, inverter, and battery. How was this so difficult that they had to turn to a Ponzi scheme?
He's a ex meth addict his brain is fried.
Because the guy behind it is a pathological liar with a history of swindling people out of car parts?
That's the weirdest part he could've made easy money for the rest of his life, hire a guy to make the functioning product, put factories to make the product and it's easy money
I just wanted to say, this video has the best overall production, pacing, and writing of anything you've put out, man.
Never heard of this scumbag before this was really interesting .The car collection he had was ridiculous and impressive .Thanks Kira !
I’ve heard of it thanks to NASCAR. DC Solar was BIG in NASCAR sponsorships.
he shoulda got put on by cartel used additional funds to fix products
@@jakelynch3450 it's crazy how they fucked this up, it could have been an unbelievably successful business. there was no need to scam anyone with those profit margins.
@@ripdoff8549 I doubt it could have been highly successful. There simply isn't enough demand for small mobile solar equipment. I mean, it's easier and probably cheaper to mount solar panels to already existing hardware (like the trailers/mobile homes on a movie set) than to have an additional trailer that somehow has to be connected to the power grid. There are some instances where you might need such a trailer, so that guy could have made a life from it and be successful, but not on a billion dollar basis.
Considering that he bought the car collection pre-2018, he could have pulled himself out from under the mountain by selling it when the market got crazy in 2020/2021, if he had survived that long.
It's like this guy was just determined to take something legitimate and turn it into a scam. Everything started off extremely legitimate and could have been great if he just wasn't trying to scam people. 🤦🏿
I read this title, and thought, "Is this about the "SOLAR FREAKIN' ROADWAYS" thing?"
I guess not, but hey, still cool. Anyway, hope you're doing well mate. Here's a comment for the old RUclips Algorithm.
that particular scam horse has been beaten to death years ago
@@AnvilMAn603 I mean, that's definitely true. But it was so ridiculous that I wouldn't have minded a revisit.
The idea was sound even if the only thing they were marketed as were rentals with the occasional full purchase at double the production cost. They would have been reasonably priced to build. The man was sitting on a gold mine idea but it just wasn't fast enough for him. He wanted it all now. Imagine where he would be now if he had gone it legitimately. Most likely he would have sold off the company for billions and been set for the rest of his life.
Before Solar City became Tesla we got a lot of calls to go to houses and fix some DC systems. Always thought something was sketchy about them.
There was one parked in the Martinez, Ca, Ace Hardware parking lot next to the roach coach. I saw the Kubota Low Boy generator on it. Solar, inverters, and lithium batteries were of interest to me so I had a look. I thought it had a lot of wasted space and was poorly designed. Somebody told me that it was for rent but nobody was interested. I figured that someday I would build one for my own personal use as lithium batteries, inverters, MPPT units were getting much better and cheaper seemingly every 6 months. Maybe.....
"But Bayless sensed the Feds weren't that stupid". Always a good assumption. If FBI agents are already showing up, its a safe bet that they've already got the rope, tied the noose, and placed it around your neck. Now they just need to tighten it.
What hurts to watch is how he had so many opportunities to be legitimate
It's not a KiraTV video unless he uses the phrase "robbing Peter to pay Paul"
I was waiting for it.
I remember hearing that in the Artesian Builds video, but does he use it that often?
A perfect example of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Those companies knew exactly what the deal was and were more than happy to let it continue as long as they kept seeing the benefits.
I hope they paid an appropriate fine for defrauding tax-payers.
Well, AFAIK the DK effect may very well be an artifact in research design.
Either way, it's not what those companies' CEO's would have been subjected to - it's not about knowing and allowing for "ends justify the means" - it's about the relationship between your level of knowledge on a topic and your confidence on that topic.
Its all about shareholders, who are the super rich that can afford to own shares
How does that relate to the Dunning-Kruger effect?
If he had built a aluminum 52’ trailer to pull behind a semi. He could have actually made something with enough room to generate real power
I mean if you only need low power. applications the short trailer would be enough. But I like the idea you are having.
Those major companies turned a blind eye for sure. The tax breaks were too delicious for them to do any actual due diligence in investigating the situation.
I have no idea how such big companies manage to develop nothing and still people believe they developed something without even trying it once.
People don't understand the technology around them nearly as much as they let on. For a normal person, that's not an issue. It's not your responsibility to know how a phone or fridge works. Just to know not to fill their ports with mayonnaise and similar basic maintenance knowledge.
Companies rely on someone knowing the systems they use instinctively. But you also need them to be extremely socially skilled and have good instincts for bullshit. Intuitive tech knowledge and above average social skills are rare.
Most people who have it simply don't pursue lofty ambitions. Why do that and be surrounded by people who might see you as a threat and screw you over when you can be a lower level but highly paid member of a smaller company
The trick here was no one cared if it worked or even existed.
Supreme became a billion dollar business on the idea that people are fucking idiots and will buy anything.
😮
He could have hired a PE, particularly an EE to design a system for him for the cost of like $3-5k at MOST, that's for a first-of-its-kind design. Components, trailer, labor, etc. would have cost around maybe $20k, => someone that is in the position to know. $150k I would have actually started laughing, like deliriously laughing, even back then that was exorbitant, when he did his scam the total cost to customer should have been less than ~$50k / unit. Including good profit margins, overhead, equipment, and labor (the Solar Modules themselves back then were more expensive than now, but not to the level of $100k or $150k retail price).
yeah but the high price was part of the scam. higher price meant bigger tax write off.
@@kennj321 He could have sold bundles only per sale. I piece of gum is a unit but selling a whole pack of gum/units is more profitable.
Both he and the companies chose fraud when there was a much better, legal alternative.
A system that would work as advertised and doesnt require assembly on each move?
I doubt that would be possible to produce them at a price of 3-5k.
It especially makes no sense when looking at how much electricity has to be generated.
3 solar trailers for each regular trailer or even worse.
Criminals always end in the most stupidest ways... consumed by greed...
The saddest thing about this is it was a decent idea with a lot of uses. Portable, non-fuel-sourced power is great... it's too bad he sucked at business and apparently didn't know enough about solar to put it together correctly.
I work in solar, and was offered some of those trailers in an auction. I didn't know the story behind them had so much intrigue.
I didn't participate in the auction. I needed trailer-mounted solar modules, but I was building the modules, not buying them. The diesel generator was just dead weight I'd need to get rid of. I ended up building my own trailers, and they are in my backyard to this day.
Excellent video! I had not heard of this before, and you do a phenomenal job presenting everything!
That's weird. So companies bought those trailers to get tax benefits, but then left them to warehouses to rot because simply owning them was the beneficial part? All the customers should be investigated and it should be made absolutely sure that if trailer was not in use, no tax benefir for you then.
Also I got exited about that trailer in the beginning. That's a great idea. If it would work..
Thanks for making another one of these Kira, always enjoy these longer form, documentary style videos. Fingers crossed this one doesn't require further edits.
Even in 2005, how did nobody think of bolting some solar panels and batteries to a flatbed before this chucklefuck?
"Chucklefuck" is spot-on! You win teh internetz!
As soon as you said "connections with silicon valley" this pissed me off. Shocker the scam bank was involved.
So if someone had hired a real electrical engineer, and Jeff had maybe not blown assloads of money on pretending to be rich, they might have had a real product to rent out.
Love when I see an upload here, I know it's gonna be a good one. The quality of these is always amazing, they seem so well researched and high enough quality I could see it being a series on TV and I'd believe it.
I actually own one of the DC Solar trailers. It used to be a solar generator but that was removed and now I use the trailer (manufactured by Carson trailer) for moving my equipment. It's a 10k trailer, wich is decently rated for something supposed to have very little weight on it.
You're a great story teller.
Very informative and enjoyable, albeit sometimes with disturbing content.
100% those first companies knew, they just turned a blind eye knowing they were getting tax credits.
Another certified neighborhood classic!
Damn where'd ya find that son
@Nicky blue your mothers house
@@infinitexp420 😮😮😮
If you’ve got an idea but aren’t equipped to actually realize it. Just sell it for a few million and be set. Leave all the stress of trying to actually make it work to others. You can have a very good rest of your life with a small fortune. Greed is the worst.
At any point they could of hired engineers and actually make this legitimate and nobody would of known. Greed is a scary thing. Also i 100% believe the corporations knew but ignored for the tax returns. Especially since even if everything came out no blame would be on them
Dude there is a dutch company in The Netherlands that is doing exactly this!
The company is called Volta Energy and they are growing fast with huge number of investments.
How did this guy not turn this into an actual legitimate company is beyond me.
It's because it's technically impossible. Solar panels simply don't generate enough electricity to run loads for useful equipment. Generators use diesel because it can produce big power.
Unfortunately, photo voltaic systems just can't compete with what a diesel genset can produce.
Copy cats
The crazy part about this to me is hoe long he took to get reported considering he had to ask many many people to break the law with him, it only takes one person getting the offer from him and reporting him to ruin the company, and yet everybody was down to be criminals with him and not report, really makes you question the American business landscape.
The economy definitely has to be a good percentage of bussinesses like this for it to be so easy to pull off even with so many involved
"let him cook"
Very similar investigation story needed with Florida solar installation company Modern Concepts. Supposedly embezzled millions and didn’t install their contracts and took of with the money. Supposedly Feds involved. Would like more info.
Many solar sales companies left unpaid unless they were also involved.
My guess would be that these investors wanted in on it because it would help hike up their ESG score, which is why it took so long for anything to be discovered.
Haha this guy lived and ran the operation in my town. Was crazy when he got caught
Imagine being a 100% made man because you had some basic shit in your garage and by pure chance knew a guy then you fumble the bag like this. This man was forced into being a billionaire and just wouldn't stand for it.
I count 10 solar panels on the trailer. That is about half of what a house would have. I am not an engineer, but even simple me can figure out that it is not going to generate a lot of electricity and $150,000 is wildly over priced.
Green energy is called that because it puts green in the pockets of the people promoting it. 95% of energy used to charge electric cars comes from coal. The amount of environmental and human damage done by rare earth mineral mines is more than oil could ever do. CO2 is plant food. We are closer to plant death worldwide due to low co2 levels than were are to global warming. Atmospheric co2 levels at the moment are about 1/3 the average they have been the last 100k years. Too much money involved in the industry for people to be honest about things. Its sad.
but buzzwords work
So typical, the guy gets 30 years and the female partner who is 100% as guilty gets 11 years. Why?
Difference in participation, planning, and execution of events. It's pretty simple.
Great doc. Love your work Kira.
All that money and they couldn't even hire an electrician.
I feel like this whole thing was so damn unnecessary. Like the dude had everything in the palm of his hands. All he had to do was hire some competent staff to get this design properly working, and he'd be living comfortably for the rest of his life. It's not like he couldn't afford it... Great video as always, mate.
If putting solar panels on the backs of vehicles was a viable concept, don't you think someone much smarter than Jeff would have done it already?
"Good thing they have google & all that" lol fuck... What a depressing way to go down.
How the hell were solar panels on a trailer with a battery revolutionary?
Cause it meant as long as you had access to the sun you could have infinite energy without paying the electric company or gas companies. It was like printing money. Imagine going to your son's baseball game and having an air conditioned tent with working soda refrigerator. The possibilities were endless.
@@azinyefantasy4445 If you need to power a building then cover the roof with panels, if you need to power a fridge in a party tent out in the desert use a diesel generator. Trucking these mobile solar panels around is not environmentally friendly.
It's a solution looking for a tiny niche hipster problem.
@@azinyefantasy4445 you sound like a supporter of Solar Roads
It's not, but a great tax dodge and highly scalable...easier than selling solar to homes I guess.
@@azinyefantasy4445 you're missing the economics of that though. If you need a physical $150K asset to generate let's say $300/month of electricity (being generous) then it would take 41 years to break even. That is not account for inflation or opportunity cost of capital. If you were to factor that in, you'd NEVER break even. Also, importantly, the assets will require maintenance and/or will eventually stop working - which is likely over the 100+ year time horizon to break even. So, yeah its free money if you neglect to consider the huge CAPEX of the 150k initial investment.
Can you imagine if these folks would have just been legit from the get-go and not spent all that money they would be a legitimate billion-dollar company today
“So he decided to stop lying to himself”
Oh so he actually came clean and told people abou
“So he doubled down on the crime”
….ah of course….
fun fact, theres a company in canada that recently started making portable solar stations that actually work! as well as a fully electric and diesel electric semi truck/logging truck. Eddison motors if anyone is interested, bunch of real smart people
The wife getting 1/3 the jail time is hilarious when she was clearly as involved as him.
All that money and he couldn't hire people to actually fix his crappy design.
How tf do you not get more views on these?! Consistency and qaulity.
This was a great video, bud! Loved it! We have a solar panel fraud where I live too (near Nashville TN). Very similar guy!
At this point it would’ve just been easier for him to run his business legitimately than go through all the hoops of holding up this facade
This type of behavior has been epidemic in the solar industry and stifled the growth of the solar industry for years. It started with the solar rebates for water heaters in 70s and that segment of the industry never recovered from the bad name it gave the technology. It's going on today with companies like Pink Solar that recently went under. Overstating the performance and overpricing the product. It's a shame because the technology works great when applied properly.
Pro tip: When the cash is already flowing in in millions, don't double down, but instead start buying gold or transfering some of the money to an off-shore bank account. Then, but still before the fraud is detected, flee the U.S. and start a new life in a country that doesn't have an extradition treaty with the U.S.
😂😂😂😂
So he could have had a moderately sucessful buisiness if he'd just hired a single electrical engineer, and sold the trailers outright instead of doing a rental scheme.
Thanks
I wonder how many of these huge scam companies are out there now, still undetected?
Could have easily spent the money to get 5 specialist in solar energy and mechanical designs and would have easily become a legitimate billionaire.
Imagine if he'd invested as much effort into making a product that works as he did into lying. He'd be one of the richest people in the country by now most likely.
Instead of hiring a few engineers and investing the millions of dollars that investors gave him to fix a product that is actually in demand, he could become a billionaire in 2 or 3 years. I'm just speechless; I don't think I've ever seen anything like this."
Why didn't he just start a podcast?! With his history and liking to tell about it, it would be perfect.
I remember this case so well cause they had a massive sponsorship with NASCAR and NASCAR having to do damage control after everything came out
he got such an insane golden ticket and flubbed it by not choosing to just make a few goddamn solar panel trailers that worked correctly
like he could still have lived the same life and whatnot if he had gone and did it straight
I love the energy and the work you put in, the research and time to make this documentaries.. Keep it up.
Watching you
In the words of an Aussie legend..
"The rich get richer the poor get the picture"
What a top tier video, editing on-point, our man sounding as good as ever, great script
My takeaway from this, as if I did not know this already, is that so-called "investors" of all types are not nearly as smart as they would like you to believe, and that includes WB. In fact, having spent years working as an investment analyst I can of course confirm from personal experience that the majority of people in the financial industry, people with several degrees and a long record of experience, are more often wrong than they are right, and the majority of them are two-bit hacks that often neglect due diligence, oversight and proper financial control. Moreover, the entire financial industry is incestuous in the extreme, where deals are made in return for what amounts to overt kickbacks in the form of luxury goods, fully paid for holidays and everything else under the sun you can imagine, legal or not. I would blow your mind if I were to actually mention things I have seen, but YT would not look favourably on me even mentioning the words. So when you rightfully ask yourself, how did so many people in high placed positions not see this sooner, trust me on this, you give them way more credit than they deserve. Lastly, large scale investors make money essentially via what amounts to little more than "gambling" but since there really is no upper limit to the upside when they make a correct call, it cancels out the other 9 times out of 10 they make incorrect calls.
😮
I love these stories. Keep em coming. They are one of the most enjoyable things I watch.
It is insane how easy it was for Jeff to manipulate the free market. The fact that he was able to do all that while having THAT for his resume.... American capitalism needs some help, man.
Great reporting by the way. This channel is getting better and better!
It only worked because it WASN'T free market capitalism. Without the huge government subsidies nobody would have been interested.
Free market? Capitalism? You do realize that government subsidies and tax breaks are the cause of this fraud? Government picking winners and losers, demanding energy to be "green". This is a fine example of why we should have free markets, and that government should not be involved in markets.
@@jaredbuttles1753 Yeah, ight. What's your definition of free markets? Being a pirate on the high seas?
It's insane to want an economy with no subsidies at all. The Agricultural, Military, Technological, Educational, Industrial, small business, & Space sectors would all crumble without subsidies.
(Then, it's bye-bye to being the world's largest economy.)
Greed will make a lot of people overlook obvious hints. For the investors, the stars were aligning and I could see being duped simply because your returns were coming in. The problem is that all the people about midway through were just fueled by greed and wanted this to be good because it's free cash.
It's amazing how many of these scammers could be caught if literally anyone did any amount of due diligence.
were lazy mate, never seen the summer house i bought for renting 4-6 years ago lol, will look it up if the company in charge of renting it stopped sending me money.
@@Jack-he8jv The irony of someone calling others lazy when he does NOTHING to earn money from a rented property.
Investors, companies, didn't care because they enjoyed a great tax evasion by 《helping》.
As they have done and will continue doing!!