Pharaoh
Brigadier General
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Equilibrium Scam Tilts the Scales of Street Justice
by Pharaoh
Incurable Writing Addict
by Pharaoh
Incurable Writing Addict
Note: Wow! Just finished posting yesterday's article and got a “You've GOT to see this!” message from our very own AsstModerator. I'd like to thank FPA member LPIPS for sending it in to the FPA.
The news (good or bad, depends on your own point of view) is that street justice has already come to the world of forex.
I see suggestions and threats of violence over scams all the time. Even in our own forums, people sometimes say we should put the scammers up against the wall and shoot them (Even the gentle soul and incredibly kind person known as Ernest8Fingers – ha ha!). Personally, I'm in favor of extremely severe punishments for large scale financial crimes, but like to see a proper trial conducted first. A death penalty for a criminal who had ruined hundreds or thousands of people's lives wouldn't bother me at all, if the accused gets a proper chance to defend him/herself against the charges and all proper legal appeals are exhausted.
(For those of you who find my writing a bit lengthy, go ahead a skip ahead to the paragraph starting with “There's a reason”. I'm going to fill in some background before telling what happened.)
South Africa is the richest country in all of sub-Saharan Africa (I'll leave it to the South Africans and a couple of North African countries to debate who is the richest of all). Like all countries, it has problems, but my friends from there have told me tales of it's enchanting beauty. It's definitely on my short list of places I'd love to visit in the next few years. Like all countries, it has financial scams, and like all rich countries, some of those scams can be huge.
Servaas Louwrens has a long history of being in trouble with the authorities over fiscal matters. In 2002, he disappeared, along with his brother Theuns Louwrens and about 40 million ZAR (about $5 million US at today's conversion rates) when the Equilibrium scheme collapsed, taking with in about $50 million. It seems that Equilibrium was some sort of Ponzi or pyramid style scam using forex for cover. There were rumors they might have been kidnapped by some of their victims, but this turned out to be false. One of their associates was not so lucky.
Somehow, Servaas Louwrens managed to weasel out of the charges and ended up starting several other schemes. These served to make plenty of money for him, but not for his investors. Currently, he's wanted by the South African authorities. In 2002, he turned himself in rather than risk facing the hundreds of people who lost their life savings. This time, he didn't turn himself in. Instead, he walked into the offices of South Africa;s M-Net news site and gave a sad (and very familiar) story, trying to justify his actions and telling how he was trying to trade back losses before his credit was cut off. I seem to recall more than one FPA scam finding where account managers have gone on and on about trading back losses, but no money every materializes. A scammer might give out a little money up front (like in a Ponzi Scheme), but after a certain point, money only goes to the scammer, never back to the victims.
With the exception of Bernard Madoff, I can't recall any recent large scale swindler ever coming clean and admitting to his crimes. Servaas Louwrens has left a long trail of innocent victims in financial ruin over the last 10 years, but continues to tout himself as an investment genius. One of these days, I'd really like to strap someone like him down, pump him full of truth serum, and find out what makes this type of scum work. Obviously, there's always a ready supply of gullible victims, but does he really think he can keep lying to people who know he'll never return even 1 cent of what he's taken from them? How can someone who ruins the lives of so many people live with himself? Sure, the money is good, but are people like this really so deeply sociopathic that they don't care what happens to anyone else? If so, then I won't be to distressed about what happened to one of his associates.
There's a reason Servaas Louwrens turned himself in back in 2002. Once things unraveled, he and his brother did a great disappearing act with a lot of money. One of his associates involved in the Equilibrium scheme, Ivor Killian, wasn't quite so lucky. His bullet-riddled corpse was found in his parked car. Police think he may have known the killer instead of having been taken out in a drive-by shooting. They say this since his Mercedes was in park, alongside the road, and the bullets had gone through the door before ending his career as a scammer. Sometimes, justice can be very swift and lethal.
Would I condone murdering a scammer? Probably not. I despise scammers. I've been ripped off a few times and have seen it happen to friends, but I still wouldn't gun one down. Then again, I've never lost my life savings to one of these vermin. I can't condone this murder, but I can certainly understand the motive behind it.
I hope Servaas Louwrens is caught soon and sentenced to the harshest and longest possible punishment. I hope his victims also get civil judgments against him so that if he ever gets out, every cent he touches has to be used in compensation. I wonder if South Africa will put up posters for him - “Wanted, Dead or Alive!”
If there's any lesson to be learned from this, it's that enforcement and penalties for fiscal crimes have lagged too far behind other crimes in most countries. Legislatures and courts need to be made to see that these crimes are far from victimless. If you have been victimized, report it. Write to your government's legislature and demand harsher penalties. Until scammers realize they have a very high probability of getting caught and of loosing far more than they steal, they'll never stop.
I guess there's one other lesson. I was discussing this with someone after learning about it last night. His comment, “Why did they have to go and shoot a perfectly good Mercedes just to kill the scammer inside?”
There's a lot more out there. Just Google “Servaas Louwrens” and you'll find a lot of stories about his scams and his victims. These 3 cover the critical parts.
M-Net interview with wanted fugitive Servaas Louwrens – will he never stop scamming?
Initial reports of Ivor Killian's murder – Forex street justice at work
Servaas Louwrens turns himself in after his associate is murdered
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