Trails & Tales

How Not To Go Up Repack

2009-10-22T20:47:00.000-07:00

Trying to go up Repack in Cascade Canyon is a bad idea, but my ungrateful progeny's unwillingness to provide car transport to Pine Ridge forced the issue.

I suppose I should have brought a map, so that I would have reduced the likelihood of going up Cascade Canyon . . .

and taking a right on Blue Ridge Fire Road:

But I've gotten used to things like pushing my bike up a mile and a half of 40% grade consisting of recently washed riverbed, mud, and slippery rock.

Nice views . . . .

Steep . . . .

Apparently not well maintained:

Here's what it looks like after you get around the tree:

And the wrong trail:

Son of a . . . . this was like having a nightmare about trying to ride the up a down escalator with 4 foot stairs, only to wake up in Tamarancho. Without the damned day pass . . . .

Wagon Wheel--the mere thought of which I detest--seemed like the best way out.

An attempt to shortcut B-17 . . . .

put me right on the fire road that's off limits to non-Boy Scouts . . . .

eventually ran into Goldman, thence to Alchemist, and several miles off to where I had parked my car.

God damn it!

Kent Lake and Oat Hill fire Road

2009-10-12T21:16:00.000-07:00

Talk about a change in weather . . . . sunny and warm last week to bleak and forbidding this week:

Kent Pump Road goes west from Alpine dam.

Bone liquefiying climb up Old Vee Road is available:

There's not a God damned thing at the end except Kent Lake, whose God forsaken shores look like something out of a text book on depression.

Gettin a little Silence of the Lambs vibe here:

So maybe you can ride up Old Vee to Oat Hill Road and take the unmaintained Oat Hill trail down to the road. If not, it's a wasted 750 foot climb in a one mile run.

Here's the intersection with Oat Hill Road. Go left, and it's two miles to Pine Ridge and thence to Pine Mtn. Loop or on to Repack.

Turn right, well this doesn't look good, but there's probably some kind of trail going down from the official end.

Come to think of it, that ranger fellow did say Oat Trail was impassable:

Christ, with this weather it's like a scene from King Lear up here. "Blow, winds . . . ."

Well maybe this goes somewhere.

Or maybe not.

Son of a bitch! A cliff with what appears to be the world's larges poison oak grove at the bottom:

Now where the hell is Hansel and Gretel's house?

Alpine Lake & Pine Ridge

2009-10-10T11:12:00.000-07:00

It seems that it's possible to get from the southern edge of the Fairfax golf course up to the road near the Pine Ridge fire trail, which connects to the Pine Mountain loop and to trails going to the brewery in San Gernonimo.

This could be added on at the end of one version of the Lake Loop around the Sky Oaks side of the golf course.

Note Sod-donistas whacking it on would you believe it a day in October:

The beginning of the trail, which goes off Bullfrog, is not advised for cyclists:

However, no one can see you after the first couple hundred feet, and you come out on an unnamed and long unused fire trail that does not appear on maps.

It looks like a good place to practice uphill technical stuff--a fair amount of rocks, but gentle grade.

There are a few sketchy places, like this twenty feet of washed out gravel.

Eventually you come out on the road a few hundred feet from the Pine Ridge trail head.

Ugly hill to get up, but only a couple hundred feet:

Then you can go all the way out to hells have acre, north to intersect with Repack . .

. . . or south towards Kent Lake, which I explored a little:

Big Rock Ridge Part I

2009-09-23T15:25:00.000-07:00

How to get on Big Rock Ridge without dying or wishing you were dead . . . .

Here's the starting point, going north from Lucas Valley Road near LucasFilms:

Up . .

Several cutbacks:

Views:

After three miles of easy, looping cutbacks seems like you're at the top:

But then there's this:

And This:

And this:

Actually, the photo above is what you see looking back--starting where we left off on the Smith Fire Road circuit makes this whole thing relatively pleasant. At this point I had no desire to go back up that.

But starting at the 650 elevation near LucasFilms means that net-net you're going a lot more down than up.

More evil hills in part II . . .

Big Rock Ridge Part II

2009-09-23T15:11:00.000-07:00

In the picture below, this is facing east towards where we reached the point on Chicken Shack Fire Road where you stop climbing and descend into Marinwood. It's pretty far away at this point.

One of many long ass hills you want to make sure you go down--and don't come back. Unfortunately, there's not avoiding this one:

View east & south from top of Queenstone Fire Road:

The Gathering Darkness: Freakish Fraud Events Cloud Year's End

2008-12-09T08:26:00.000-08:00

Recent bizarreness in investment fraud seems to be a product of cosmic alignment in the weeks leading to Christmas. This year's manger features a con man with his hand out, lit by a helicopter search light. No angels in the budget this year.

High (or low) points so far:

Pay By Touch honcho John P. Rogers puts the touch on VC investors for $340 million

Attorney Marc Dreier hung out to dry for issuing $100 million in fake notes

Boots Del Biaggio nailed by Feds in $65 million scam

Add your own bailout insanity item here!

Utah-Based 4NExchange: Just Another Ponzi Scheme

2008-11-25T07:03:00.000-08:00

In a state more knowned for Latter Day Saints and basements full of canned peaches, Forex futures "trading" company 4NExchange stuck out like the proverbial sore thumb.

Or at least it did to regulators, who arranged for proprietors Paul Grant and Ronald Bassett to pay $720,000 in civil fraud penalties. No word on the poor saps who poured untold amounts of money down the 4NExchange rathole. Some 220 customers lost about $18 million of the $30 million they invested.

Generally guys like this ignore warnings against similar practices in the future, but Grant and Bassett are in a place where fraud may be a little more difficult to commit: federal prison. Both are servering five year sentences for fraud, money laundering, and other do-re-mi related offenses.

They've also been ordered to repay the $18 million swindled out of investors. Note to investors: that's a when-monkeys-fly-out-of-my-ass scenario. The boys may not be in the Caymans, but you can damn straight bet that there money is.

SoCal Resident Fined $11 Million in Forex Ponzi

2008-10-31T07:18:00.000-07:00

There's nothing like money, especially when it comes from suckers. Southern California fraudster Jinsup Choi was ordered to fork over $11 million after he was find guilty of swindling 83 people out of about $19 million over a five year period from 2002-2005.

Choi took money from investors who believed he was investing it in commodity futures. Instead, Choi took the dough and placated customers with fake account statements. In time honored Ponzi style, he fed old investors with funds fleeced from new ones.

Customer cash went for Choi's purchases of items like a yacht, cars, and bling.

Earlier this year Choi pled guilty to criminal wire fraud charges stemming from the scam.

The time frame illustrates how slow suckers are to get wise, and how equally slow the justice system works to make things right. It remains to be seen whether Choi can or will pay back investors as ordered by U.S.D.C. Judge Howard Matz.

NYMEX Clerk to Pay $3.6 million for Fraud

2007-07-18T12:00:00.000-07:00

This is getting a bit off my currency trading fraud focus, but there's something about fraud committed by bitter clerks that's just irresistible.

The CFTC recently announced that it's making NYMEX clerk Matthew Doyle pay back about $3.5 million to his employer, a NYMEX floor broker.

Doyle attempted to assign losing natural gas futures trades to client accounts, and then to his boss's account when the first plan fell through.

The great thing is the extent of the damage that come from the actions of a seeming bit player in the futures circus. Of course, if you screw up really big time in energy futures, there's a special term for it: Amaranth.

Don't know if the guy still has the $3 mil to pay back . . . .

Fake FOREX Futures Finaglers Find Time on Their Side

2007-06-23T14:31:00.000-07:00

How do con artists rip people off with FOREX trading scams? The "brokers" make the usual appeals found in other financial scams:

Invest now before it's too late!

You'll make tons of money!

Trust us--we're experts!

A representative case is described in the U.S. Comodity Futures Trading Commission order imposing about $6 million in sanctions against Florida company (Florida!) Global Atlantic Management and the ass running it, Steven Labell.

In short, Labell's broker's used scripted pitches to lure in customers while touting huge pofits--even as they avoided discussing the risks and the firm's abysmal track record in investing.

At least 241 customers lost substantially all their assets.

But at last justice is served. Better make that at long last--the recent action stems from a complaint filed three years ago, and the robbing had been going on before that.

The caveat: given Florida's demographics, at least some of those who were scammed are dead by now, even if the perps have any money to disgorge.

Image from the FBI White Collar Crime site.

Scam of the Year Award: the Mercorella Scheme

2007-06-12T18:45:00.000-07:00

Australian securities regulator ASIC recently put forth its nominees for the Pie in the Sky Award, which goes to the most outrageous scam of the year.

Below is the skinny on the victor, but I'm confident the U.S. can provide more outrageous scams, and future posts will be the proof of the pudding.

The ASIC award went to something they call the Mercorella investment scheme, which offered the vics a return of 36% annually. That's insane enough, but suckers were lured in with the promise that they could double the return to 72% by convincing friends and family to kick in more dough.

The similarity to multi-level marketing ploys is worth noting. So is the preposterous rate of return. Sure, you might get that return with a multi-million dollar investment in the right place, but you'll probably never have the capital and the opportunity at the same time.

The Mercorella Ponzi scheme ultimately cost investors $76 million.

Next step--defining Ponzi schemes and taking a look at the wreckage from a few in the U.S. . . . .

FOREX Trading: The Fastest Way to Lose Your Shirt

2007-06-10T16:37:00.000-07:00

Before getting into the grey areas and clearly illegal stuff I promised, it's appropriate to lay out some basic realities about foreign currency, or FOREX, trading.

In short, FOREX trading is being marketed to individual investors like the malt liquor of the financial world.

Successfully trading foreign currencies requires a lot of highly specialized knowledge and capital. The arena is full of big players--international banking groups, hedge funds, and governments and their treasuries. Not the place for most individual investors.

But several things happened to make it very easy to market to those who should stick to mutual funds, or maybe even savings accounts.

Thanks to the fall of the Russian Ruble and the appreciation of the Euro, it became easy to market directional currency trading--the kind where you buy and hope to hell the price keeps going the way you want it to. However, investors still get their faces ripped off in these scenarios, and it's even worse when folks use leverage--borrow money via margin--and attempt to make money in the short term.

And the rise of internet trading platforms has taken place concurrently with internet-based marketing designed to harvest cash through ill-advised use of any number of online trading platforms.

And while FOREX used to require a big down payment, it's now possible to open a $250 "mini" account with a lot of leverage, so you can lose more than you had in the first place.

Now this is all the legal, above-board stuff. Wait'll you see what happens when you add in some good, old fashioned snake oil. I mentioned the phony fakir in a previous post--the futures trading guru who had no talent except in convincing people to believe he had talent.

Multi-million dollar FOREX scandals coming up . . . . .

Image from essays & effluvia.

The Fountain of Youth: Available Now

2007-06-07T08:42:00.000-07:00

You might think of this as my "garbage stock" post of the week: Phyto Labs.

This morning I got spam from StreetInsider.com, a source of some of the most hilarious garbage stock pitches you'll ever see. The pitch here: sell your Merck and buy Phyto Labs.

And why not? According to its website, Phyto Crap has "been able to begin turning the tide of the disastrous health situation of the north American population." And its stock is going from a buck to $10! Get your "anti-aging doses" now!

What utter bullshit.

Some points of order for identifying garbage stocks:

You hear about it from spam.

The company posts press releases about mundane developments.

The company posts a press release announcing the hiring of a public relations firm to tout its stock.

Claims are outrageous and/or idiotic.

It tries to get you to exchange a legitimate investment for garbage.

The spam is made to look like research of some sort.

The promised return--900% in this case--is outrageous.

The company or its promoter is based in Texas or Florida (this promoter's in Plano, TX, a notorious hive of con artists).

Seemingly sincere discussion of the stock on bulletin boards. All that dialog is a drama designed to get your attention. It's produced by scripted touters and bashers.

The lure of easy money is always at the bottom of these things, be it stock promotion or Ponzi schemes. The art is in making the unbelievable return seem believable just long enough to harvest the suckers' assets.

If you received spam solicitation for garbage stocks, be sure to forward it to spam@nasd.com. It only takes a second, and you could actually help someone else down the line avoid getting screwed.

Image from here.

"Guru" A Fakir in Two Areas: Psychology and Futures Trading

2007-06-06T18:40:00.000-07:00

I'm starting off easy here with a post a relatively harmless trading scheme. According to the Commodities Futures Trading Association, this character Richard McCall used websites and seminars to pass himself off as a self-help expert and a futures trading guru.

Turns out he had no credentials or success in either field, and his Mastery Group International was pretty much just masturbating investors with a wholly ineffective Sabaki-Micro Trading for Futures method.

Much as McCall's antics are pathetic, it's well worth noting the two-pronged nature of his fraud: money and personal well-being. The two are inextricably connected, and a good con works financial and emotional angles.

Numerous examples to follow . . . .

Fool's Gold Mission Statement: Tracking Securities and Currency Trading Fraud

2007-06-06T15:26:00.000-07:00

The purpose of this blog is to report on legal and fraudulent securities and foreign currency trading trends that can have an effect--usually a bad one--on individual investors.

Over the last decade, e-commerce has changed the marketing landscape for foreign exchange or FOREX products and for securities, which typically include stocks, bonds, options, and mutual funds.

New vistas have appeared for harvesting the money of individuals. Some are simply misleading, like idiotic but fully disclosed efforts of low-level stock promoters. Others are clearly fraudulent, like stock price manipulation scams and Ponzi schemes. Still others are in a greyly lit Twilight Zone where the regulators haven't established rules clearly.

There are plenty of fraud blogs out there. Many of them simply call the reader's attention to one fraud in order to sell a different one. This blog does not sell anything or offer specific investment advice.

What it does do is offer critical and sanguine commentary on many of the legal marketing approaches and illegal scams directed at pretty much anyone with access to the internet, e-mail, newspapers or is just plain alive in our world.