Once I sold my last insurance agency, I began looking for another business as I had to sign a non-compete clause in the contract of sale. I met a man that was in the oil and gas business among many others. One of my kids and his little sister went to school together so I was aware of him. We struck up a friendship and business relationship. He had a reputation as being an expert in business and I became convinced of his expertise in short order. He had a first class office suite, lived in a large home on three hundred acres and traveled by private plane, King or Queen Air and in one case a Falcon jet. He was involved in a number of different businesses. He was also full of stories about his personal friends such as Sam Walton. As things rocked along, his persona began to unravel. He passed up offers for different interests that he had that I thought was idiotic to pass up. I told him so. He said, dont worry that he could get a better price. I found out that the office and residence were leased not owned. Also, he was always promising someone a piece of the action. I finally figured out that the reason that he couldnt sell was his interests were over subscribed. His investors didnt own 100%, they owned (including me) 150-200%. Since its impossible to divide up 200% of something, I finally called his hand by demanding my money. Needless to say, he couldnt comply and his house of cards began to fold. He had to vacate the office and the residence. He was sued for $70,000 for unpaid charter fees for the aircraft, he had leased. A criminal charge was filed against him but was dropped when he made restitution for the charter fees. Im sure he conned some poor victim to put up the money. At that point, I went to the local authorities to file a complaint for fraud. All I ever got from them was b.s. They never took any action even though I provided them with documentation to support my complaint. There were people that lost much more money than I did but took no action against him. Incredibly, I was the only one to file a civil suit against him and won treble damages. I was able to foreclose on a couple of oil leases that he owned but only recovered a fraction of my investment. In 2005, I started my own company, Joiner Petroleum Services. joinerpetroleumservices I partnered with a legitimate oil and gas man that I met through the fraud. We bought and sold oil leases. We bought existing wells and operated them. In Texas, you can only operate oil and gas wells if you are licensed with the State (Railroad Commission). When we bought the wells, we used a licensed operator that my partner worked for. He had gotten their permission to do so. I had a local friend that he and his dad were in the oil business. The four of us partnered up to start our own operating company. We moved our wells from the first operator to our own operating company. When we did for some reason only know to the psycho who was the principal of the first company, filed suit against me and my partner for $1,000,000 for his damages. As neither of us had a spare $1,000,000, we hired a lawyer to defend the suit. His investigation of the complainant showed that he had filed over twenty-five lawsuits in the previous five years. His modus operandi seemed to be file suit and get the defendant to settle. Most, unfamiliar with the law or business, would assume that no one would file suit for $1,000,000 if there wasnt something there. Where there is smoke, theres got to be fire, right? Not so fast, deposition breath. His case was the same as if an apartment owner changed apartment managers and the apartment manager file suit maintaining that since he was the manager, it made him the owner. When we got to court, we were shocked at the outcome. We had brought the evidence supporting our ownership of the leases. We werent really worried about the outcome of the suit because we knew that this idiot never was the owner of the leases at any point in time. About thirty minutes into the trial, the judge stopped the proceedings and lit into the complainants lawyer. The judge warned his attorney to NEVER bring such an unsubstantiated case into her court again. The judge chewed out the lawyer in no uncertain terms. I was shocked that she did it in open court. Im sure that judges have harsh words for lawyers all the time but I would think that would be handled in the judges chambers, not in public. She ruled in our favor, ordering the plaintiff to pay our legal fees. We owned and operated about fifteen wells in Archer, Wichita and Young counties in north Texas. I will NEVER to that again. These were shallow, stripper wells and something was always breaking down. We bought single and double pole pulling units to service the wells. We also thought we could make money working on other peoples wells. One problem.....I think I hired every crack head in north Texas to work for us. Once our company pickup was missing. One of the boys told me that he thought that he knew where it was and did I want him to go get it? In a couple of hours, he came back with our truck. He said that he found it a a crack house in Wichita Falls. I thanked him but thought, how did he know where the crack house was? Another time, all the wells were shut down on one of our leases. Something was wrong with the electricity. When I opened the electrical box, I found a bar-b-qued snake that had shorted out the box. It was always something. We sold our wells and went our separate ways. Over the next few years, I built up a substantial contact base from attending large trade shows and during just the normal course of business. I parlayed that into brokering the buying and selling of oil and gas properties. I also met a man that owned a fifteen thousand acre oil and gas lease, offshore in the Gulf of Mexico. He had two platforms that were originally built by Shell and four producing gas wells. He hired me as a consultant to raise money for additional drilling on the lease. In the last couple of years, I have expanded my business into brokering refined oil products such as diesel, jet fuel and heating oil in the international fuel market. I was just recently appointed a Mandate (Authorized Representative) for a company specializing in production contracts with refineries in Russia. The company has direct contacts with refineries in Ufa, Omsk, Tyumen and Volgograd. The international fuel market is rife with scammers who have no problem forging bank documents, oil company documents, tank receipts, etc. Just a big a problem as the scammers are the wannabees. They know little of the fuel market and are easily fooled. They intend well but can get you into trouble quickly. This is the last installment. I have family and friends that have aske me to put these series of installments into a book form. I intend on doing that and including additional information that that should make the book about three times the length of these installments. When I finish the book, if you would like a copy of it (although Im not sure why youd want it), I will email it to you if you message me your email address.
Posted on: Wed, 05 Mar 2014 22:51:48 +0000
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