Big Rock Ridge Part I

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.