Snake Den

 

 

 

 

I once worked for a summer with a start up financial firm back in '91ish. Equity Ideas was housed in a single large room above a knife sharpening shop on that shit hole of a street, Cranston St in Providence. It was a legitimate business, just barely incepted by Tom C., who quit his mortgage job at Citizen's Bank to make a go of his own doing mortgages, hence the lousy digs because he was just starting off. Tom was affable enough, with just enough sincerity to make him believable, most of the time. I found most others in that business to be lying sons of a bitches who would back stab their own Mom for a profit of $3.

The idea of Equity Ideas was re-financing loans. Tom's company would scan the mortgage deeds in New England, get the personal details, which is public information, and call them up and hopefully get that person into a lower interest rate mortgage. Of course there would be a fee but still the homeowner would save thousands on the life of their current rip off bank mortgage.

The problem was calling them and that was part of my job. The success rate was two sales out of one hundred “leads.” That's not many. But I was selling a product that was in the area of $100,000 to $200,000. It requires some real tenacity to listen to hang ups, swearing and having to explain to sometimes morons how a mortgage works and how they were getting shafted by their current bank. The 2% I managed to sell were grateful beyond belief when we managed to lower their rates a few points. My commission was based on the size of the mortgage, 1% of the total. So refinance a loan for $150,000, I walk away with $1,500. I managed to sell two before I quit at the end of the summer.

It was also then when I learned that the sales manager felt it was his duty to put his hand into my pocket and clip a few dollars for himself. I was a newbie in the field and my protests really rattled that guy when he tried to walk off with $400 of my commission. The thing being, it was sort of expected that these guys dipped into your own profitable work. If you didn't allow it to happen, your good leads, support and general status in the organization would fall. So, bend over and allow it was the rule if you want to continue to survive. But I didn't know and my complaints got me $200 of it back, but after that, I was a dirtbag according to the sales manager. I wasn't “playing along.”

Tom had three partners, Tom himself, some loud mouthed Guido and this really prematurely bald young Italian who was so quiet and secretive it set off my own “smoke detector” and I was wary of this guy. Luckily, I didn't have to deal much with him. They spent their times at their desks making quiet phone calls or plotting their next profitable kill.

In August of that year, Tom comes to me and offers an idea, “Let's go white water rafting!” I thought it a cool idea as I had never done it before and it sounded fun. We'd be rafting down the Lehigh River in the Poconos in Pennsylvania and partying in rented condos nearby. It was one of those private bus trips where a bunch of people signed up, paid about $150 and you'd get three days of condo and rafting. What Tom told me then, was that it would be mostly young bankers, financiers and similar types he knew in the Providence area. Tom and the other two partners would be going too. Tom takes me aside from all the others and quietly tells me not to talk about any business with anyone as I would probably be pumped for any info at all by the others. Other competitors would like to know what we were up too.

So we board the bus and drive out. On the way out, I meet others in the RI banking industry. Most were sales guys, all braggarts and liars. What amazed me was that they were always “on,” always in that role no matter where they were or what subject came up. “I'm the best. I'm the richest/smartest/hottest/ and above all that, they projected the vibe of “You can trust me.” I realized I was riding on a bus full of snakes.

There was one guy NOT in finance but an owner of a jewelry store on Mineral Spring in North Providence. We got to talking and for some reason he felt comfortable opening up and confirmed to me he was just another kind of thief. He was amongst friends on that bus. He had told me that not only he overcharges for his stock and repairs, but he stole from the customer's jewelry as well. Here's how he managed to do it. If you brought in a gold chain that snapped or the clasp wasn't working, he'd fix it, but he'd also snip off two or three links of the chain, solder it back together and charge you for fixing it. “They never figure it out!” He proudly claimed. He also had tools for abrading the gold on rings. He'd sand off a bit of gold from them, polish them back up and again, the customer would never know. “At month's end, I'd have a nice little pile of gold, enough to make a 22kt ring I could sell w/o having to purchase any gold myself to make it, 100% pure profit!” He seemed rather proud of himself as he told me this story.

I sat there, being the only non business guy there and quietly thought, “You god damn thief!” Actually, most of the guys on the bus were all proud of their ability to BS people out of their money.

By the end of August, I had had enough of that job. I quit. Though I remained friends with Tom for a while longer. He struck me as being the least thieving of the lot I had met in that crowd. As life does, people drift apart and in time I don't see Tom for a few years except at a chance meeting at the Hot Club down at the river in Providence.

We have a short conversation when Tom tells me, “Remember those two others I was partners with? Well, they downloaded all my files, clients and prospective customers and sold out of the company. They used that information I had collected to start their own refinance business. They also stole a few piece of office equipment too”

“They stole your client base? Is that illegal?”

Tom tells me it probably wasn't as nobody signed any confidentiality agreements and it wasn't worth the years in court trying to prove it. He didn't want to blow that money hiring lawyers to recover as it would probably be a wash in the end. He'd recover but in essence, be in the same place he was to begin with. Tom did tell me he started another refinance business, doing the same thing. This time he was the sole owner.