First Capital Savings and Loan/ Swiss Providence

Steverby

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This company has failed to pay investors for seven months, although they haven't disappeared, their trades seem to be legitimate, and many of the investors who know the owner seem to be willing to give him and them the benefit of the doubt.

The owner took funds that were supposedly the profits of forex trades with investors money and used them to start a newspaper instead of paying back investors.

The cold facts are that they have millions of dollars that they planned to pay out by the 5th of January, and the investors have heard nothing, and received nothing.

I remain hopeful that they will pay out, and apparently their new program (cds at 24% apr) is paying. I would caution against anyone investing here until thy show that they are willing to keep their word and at least come up with a plan to pay and share this plan with investors.
 
First Capital Savings and Loan

It is true that it has been nearly 8 months since FCSL has processed any payments to current investors. They are now signing up new investors and apparently paying them thier monthly payments. Unfortunately the 500+ early investors are not getting interest payments and have no access to their principal as well.

Investors beware!
 
...still waiting...

The fund manager for First Capital Savings and Loan, Jeff Lowrance, has not made any explanation to date regarding where the funds are, or even if he still has them. Mr. Lowrance claims that he is preparing an update for investors. To date, Mr. Lowrance is communicating with one investor and has allegedly given part of this update to the investor for review before sending it out to the rest of the investors.

A blog was started (see First Capital Savings and Loan Client Weblog) for investors in First Capital to get together and discuss action plans on moving forward with this ordeal in a productive manner.

Allegedly, another investor spoke to Mr. Lowrance on the phone and inferred that Mr. Lowrance would pay back some of the more desperate current investors with new investor funds (Ponzi scheme) and Mr. Lowrance's reply was, "A bank can pay people and do with their money however they wish." Mr. Lowrance was reminded by the investor that he didn't own a bank. Mr. Lowrance said, "It's a financial company, and a financial company can invest their money how they wish and pay people with whatever money they want."

There are a range of speculations regarding why investors have not been paid, but without an update from Mr. Lowrance, that is all we have...
 
The Ominous Update

The long awaited update came out a couple days ago. It is a book (something like 47 pages long). In the update, Mr. Lowrance gives religious commentary, rants about different individuals who have called him out/criticized him publicly, etc., with maybe 1/4 of the update as relevant/pertinent information (ie what happened, what is the plan for the future). I will attempt to recap the highlights and have left out the personal attacks and religious ramblings.

Mr. Lowrance claims that he is not the same as Mr. Madoff because his intent was different. He claims that because he did not intend to scam investors from the start, that his scam (my word- not his) is more noble somehow. Mr. Lowrance states, "after reviewing the records of FCSL, they (and you) would not find me to be guilty of fraud. But honestly, you would find me to be guilty of mismanaging the funds that were on deposit at FCSL. That is what I would be “guilty” of. But not of defrauding my clients." Then he goes on to say, "To the best of my knowledge, the mismanagement of funds is not necessarily a crime either." I wonder what the SEC or FBI think about his mismanagement of funds? For Mr. Lowrance's sake I hope he doesn't find out.

Mr. Lowrance goes on to criticize investors who have lost their life savings in his investment by saying “You need to face the fact that you made a bad decision by investing everything you had into one place. That was not my fault. You did the wrong thing with your investing portfolio. That was your mistake, so you need to face the consequences of your actions head-on, just as I have to face mine as well.” Mr. Lowrance then says that it is still his intention to pay those investors back, even though he says it would not be difficult for him to hide behind bankruptcy protection.

Mr. Lowrance blames the currency market for the failure of FCSL by saying, “I could not have known in advance, and neither could my chart readers have known in advance, that the Forex business was a con-job by the major banks of the world to lure innocent people into the “business” of “currency trading”.” Mr. Lowrance had been sending emails to clients (who requested them) of trades that FCSL had been placing to show investors that they were continuing to trade profitably, however Mr. Lowrance claims that the trading signals were produced by two expert Peruvian chart readers and were not actual trades. It is ironic then that he later says that forex trading is part of his proposed solution to pay investors back. He says that his two Peruvian traders are now ready to do live trades and that is his strategy to pay back his investors the tens of millions that he owes them.

Mr. Lowrance says that he believes he owes about $26 million for invested principle only and about $42 million if you include principle plus interest accrued since FCSL stopped paying investors. Mr. Lowrance admits he told at least one person in November 2008 that the $42 million was still in tact, but now claims that he lied to that individual and that there is no money left.

A blog was started late 2008 for investors to deal with the FCSL situation and to come together to discuss solutions. Mr. Lowrance claims that this blog hindered his efforts to raise new capital to pay back the most “needy” clients. Isn't using new investor funds to pay other investors the very definition of a ponzi? Maybe I misunderstood, but here is the quote from the update so you can decide for yourself, “I started a program that was paying much less than what we had been paying for the first 4 years to FCSL Premiere Clients. We brought in about 24 clients during the months of Sept. 2008 through December, 2008, those last 4 months of the year. I believe we had brought in about $480,000 during that time. The FCSL records will show this to the penny. However, by that time in early October, the “blog” had already started to do major damage to FCSL bringing in new clients. Without interference from the blog, we were set to bring in about $2.5 to $3 million by the end of 2008. We could have easily set aside a small portion of that to pay the most-needy clients right away, pay some pressing bills, and apply the majority of the rest of that money to trading.”

Mr. Lowrance admits that besides owing millions to investors, he still owes money to employees in Panama and vendors in the United States (he had a national newspaper called “USA Tomorrow”) for services already rendered and claims he will pay them back as soon as he can.

Mr. Lowrance gives a long history about his fund and says that he tried several systems and signals but none were successful. This leads one to wonder how investors have been paid for the last 4 years...

Mr. Lowrance claims that he has projects that he is currently working on and that he will pay the most desperate investors within 2-3 months. Then his time frame for paying everyone else will be 9-12 months. He goes on to threaten “I know that I am the asset here and that if anything happens to me, no one will ever get a dime.”

Mr. Lowrance never states outright what happened with investor's money, but there can be two conclusions drawn from this update. Either Mr. Lowrance has truly lost the funds by paying investors from new investor's principle (read ponzi), or his trades were real and profitable and that Mr. Lowrance doesn't want to part with his stolen millions. It is as Mr. Lowrance put in his update- only an audit of FCSL accounts and time will tell.
 
no news- FXPA please help

It has been over a month and no further communication from Mr. Lowrance to his investors. FXPA Scam Investigation/Resolution, please help if you can.

There are some 500+ investors with a total of $42 million or more at stake and nobody has seen a penny for several months. Thank you.
 
Last Investor

Unfortunately it appears that I was one of the last , if not the last invetor to have had the misforune of ever hearing about Jeff Lowrance and First Capital SL. I sent a large investment to his organisation in September of last year. He even called me to confirm the veracity of the venture. Unfortunately like everyone else involved I too have not recieved a dime. I knew the investment was not insured but in January of this year, speaking with his senior salesperson in Panama a Joseph Love, I was assured that if I invested more monies, the CD the investment was in could be broken, the new monies added to it and the whole thing insured with a company in Cyprus, apparently the one he was supposed to get debit cards issued from. This of course has not happened. Foolishly, I sent more money knowing nothing of the problems wth the organisation nor even getting a hint of it from his man Joseph Love in Panama. I have recordings of the conversations!
It is one thing to lose money in any investment, another to knowingly continue taking money from investors knowing there is nothing to pay from, and yet another to continue to take funds from an investor and in a conversation I had with him in February be told he had to use the funds I sent to live off because they were all the funds he had and without them he would be penniless. The latter alone should be enough to send him to jail!! That is outright theft!
This guy, and his accomplice in Panama really need to be behind bars.
 
Feds Finally Nailed Lowrance

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (Home Page)

Also stories in the Chicago Tribune, Salt Lake Tribune, as well as Star-Tribune.

Questions to Tyson:

How did you come to find about this and get involved? I know the victims in Minnesota primarily got lured in via the Ron Paul hype. How about you?

Others, how did you come to get involved?
 
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