[00:00:05] Neill Slater: He wasn’t slickly dressed.
He, he dressed like I did.
He seemed like a very likeable man.
(MUSIC SEGUE)
[00:00:34] Bob: Welcome back to The Perfect Scam.
I’m your host, Bob Sullivan.
One of the big themes on The Perfect Scam is that anyone can be a victim.
Now, let’s meet Neill.
[00:01:44] Bob: So what’s an emergency medicine physician?
[00:01:47] Neill Slater: I’m the guy that’s at the end of the ambulance.
[00:02:00] Bob: So you must see a lot of different things.
[00:02:03] Neill Slater: I do.
[00:02:16] Neill Slater: Yes.
That’s, that you know the number one rule is just don’t panic.
So you really have to keep your wits about you.
I think most of the time it can be trained.
[00:02:52] Bob: Hmm, then it’s your job.
[00:02:54] Neill Slater: Yes, it just becomes your job.
He decided to invest in the business of healthcare.
The physician today has a lot of stress, and you know, look.
I, nobody, nobody feels bad for doctors, right?
That’s what, this is why I think a lot of times this doesn’t become more public.
People look at us and say, oh, these people make a lot of money.
And he’s an advocate for other physicians getting involved in this too.
That’s part of why he’s speaking to us today as you’ll see.
So what exactly does Neill invest in?
And so we staff ERs.
So I’m a, a business owner in that respect.
And we have bought the land under several of those facilities as well.
I’m not going to be the guy going out and meeting everybody.
I’m kind of an introvert um, and he isn’t.
So he’s introduced me to a lot of people that have done really good things.
[00:07:31] Bob: And so one day, Jerry decides to bring Clint into their networking circle.
It was more of a, let’s meet this guy.
Maybe he can help our business.
Maybe we can bounce ideas off each other, you know, that sort of a meeting.
[00:08:30] Bob: Clint already owns a few dental offices that Neill knows about.
In fact, Jerry had already invested in them.
[00:08:38] Neill Slater: There were already a few open around town.
This was not just a idea that came out of nowhere.
And I looked at it.
I was very busy.
But Jerry and some other friends of ours did get involved and had already invested money.
And living in Austin, I knew of at least two dental locations that he had.
He was very honest about some of his past transgressions, so to speak.
I’m going to ask people, why are you taking outside money?
Why aren’t you just growing organically?
Um, why are you in the position that you’re in?
[00:10:45] Bob: Clint is an impressive man.
And certainly seems successful.
But he doesn’t flaunt it.
[00:10:52] Neill Slater: He was, I would say, of average build.
He was, I don’t, he wasn’t a tall man.
He was, you know, maybe 5'10”, medium build.
He wasn’t overweight.
He was charismatic uh whether he was handsome or not.
I mean I; I think he was a, not an unattractive guy.
He wasn’t slickly dressed.
He, he dressed like I did, you know, or that Jerry did.
Uh, you know, he seemed like a very likeable man.
And I think he was flawed enough that he seemed real.
[00:11:59] Bob: And they get along great in a low stress kind of way.
Clint doesn’t pitch Neill on anything.
[00:12:06] Neill Slater: He did not ask me for any money.
We did not talk about investing together.
So when I left, I was thinking, hey, he seems like a nice guy.
Somebody that I could be friends with.
Somebody that I could bounce ideas off.
That, that was really the thought.
And I thought, yeah, this is great.
I missed it the first time, I can get in now.
He had already, you know, I just bought into that investment group with $25,000.
[00:14:06] Bob: But that $25,000 investment, well that seems to get Clint’s attention.
I’m starting a new location.
Would you be interested in investing in that location?"
He sent over, you know, a prospectus and information about it.
I drove by; I knew where the site was supposed to be.
[00:15:20] Neill Slater: And I didn’t hear anything after that.
And again, I’m busy.
[00:15:43] Neill Slater: So within about three months, I mentioned it to Jerry.
We just weren’t getting the same level of communication that we were before.
And he took Jerry’s call.
[00:16:29] Bob: And so they agree to set up a conference call.
Maybe he has no cell service.
Did he just forget?
But when it becomes obvious that Clint is a no-show, the group starts openly discussing a darker possibility.
So I think we all sort of knew something was off at that point.
I don’t think we were; we’d been defrauded.
I just, something was triggering in my head that this really didn’t seem right.
[00:18:47] Neill Slater: I didn’t know what to do.
We waited, we tried to reschedule a call.
Again, I didn’t have any clear evidence that something had happened, but just the bad feelings.
And so we started talking more, set up an email group.
We tried to contact him a few more times and at that point it was radio silence.
So at that point we all started talking about what to do.
[00:19:22] Neill Slater: So at that point we got a lawyer and, and filed suit.
I would have not filed suit uh or got a lawyer involved.
They’re usually spe–, you know it doesn’t seem to be that way.
They never recover the money.
I didn’t want to go have to deal with all of this.
It just seemed like a lot to deal with for no return.
And, and I think ultimately that’s the right approach.
[00:21:03] Bob: Clint has done this to other investors, taken the money and disappeared.
But nobody knew where he was, and nobody knew if he had any assets.
So it was sort of an empty victory.
But after that, that was really the last I had heard of it.
How does that make you feel?
[00:22:43] Neill Slater: Not happy, obviously.
[00:22:46] Bob: Neill tries to put the whole thing out of his mind.
$75,000 is a lot of money.
But the crime certainly does impact him.
[00:23:07] Neill Slater: Having the conversation with my wife was probably the worst part.
Just, you know she lets me deal with all the money.
It, it’s what I like to do.
And, and this didn’t affect our lives in any meaningful way.
That would look a little weird.
So um, I told her and, and you know having that conversation was humbling.
So that was probably the worst part.
[00:23:42] Bob: As time goes by and Neill writes off the experience as a costly lesson.
I don’t know the legal details.
But at some point, we started hearing from the FBI that they at least were on the case.
I think Jerry actually wrote one for everybody, like kind of together and sent it in.
And then, again, didn’t hear anything for a while.
And this situation is a little unusual.
They were quite common.
[00:25:27] Bob: Building a case like this takes a lot of time.
Maybe it’s an investment gone bad or was there really fraud?
A little harder to determine that at the beginning, right?
[00:26:48] Gabriel Cohen: No, I agree with that completely, yes.
And so on and so forth.
[00:27:59] Bob: Clint receives what’s called a target letter.
Then he comes in for a conference with prosecutors.
[00:28:05] Gabriel Cohen: And we met for maybe an hour, two hours.
[00:28:09] Bob: And did you have any general impressions about him?
[00:28:12] Gabriel Cohen: Um… nothing that stands out.
It’s not, it’s not hard for me to see why he could be a successful salesman.
There’s no trial.
Clint Herzog pleads guilty to defrauding investors out of hundreds of thousands of dollars from 2016 through 2018.
Neill can finally put all this behind him.
[00:28:58] Bob: How did that feel for you?
[00:29:00] Neill Slater: There was definitely some closure there.
And I just, you kind of have to just move on and not think about them.
So it wasn’t something that was on my mind.
You know, especially after we, we got the judgment and then I didn’t hear anything else.
Honestly, I was somewhat detached from it.
But I was happy that he wasn’t going to be doing this to anybody else.
I think that would be the ideal scenario.
[00:30:02] Bob: Do you have any opinion about the 36-month sentence?
If, if more than that is too much, I’m not sure.
It’s a tough question to answer.
[00:31:04] Neill Slater: That’s what it is, yeah, 2.1 million.
Um, I’m okay with that.
I’m okay with that.
[00:31:24] Neill Slater: I think he was probably grooming me is what I think.
Looking back on it, the timing.
So I think he was probably playing the game even then.
Because again, I, I know where they were.
You could drive by and see them and they were operating.
[00:32:48] Bob: And what are Neill’s feelings about Clint now?
It’s like you don’t understand why people would do this.
You could just work as a dentist and own a practice and make money.
I, I wasn’t happy, but honestly, I was more perplexed than anything else.
You’re going to run out of money.
You’re going to get caught, why would you throw your life away on something like this.
So he’s vowed to make this story a learning experience for all other potential investors.
I’m sure you’re, you’re a good judge of character.
You’ve seen a lot of things and yet something like this happened to you.
Like I’m not, I was not naive, I was not unaware of fraud.
I had some business and financial education.
I have an MBA.
I, and I still got scammed.
So it, it really can happen to anybody, I believe that.
You know we are busy, which leads you to not do the due diligence you should be doing.
Uh we tend to be overconfident.
We haven’t earned it.
So we’re overconfident.
And that is not unusual for physicians and other medical professionals.
And that, that puts a big target on our backs.
Literally from one day to the next that changes.
But we’re not ever taught how to deal with that.
And so, again, all of those things really puts a big target on physician’s backs.
Physicians are sort of colloquially known to be bad investors.
[00:37:42] Bob: So are journalists by the way for what it’s worth.
But that, that also opens up a vulnerability, doesn’t it?
[00:38:02] Neill Slater: Yes, it does.
We, we get paid to make decisions with incomplete information.
You don’t have time.
Somebody’s having a heart attack in front of you.
They maybe can’t give you all the information you need.
Their family’s not there yet or whatever it is; you have to make decisions with incomplete information.
Um, so yeah, I think we’re, there’s a reason that doctors are targets.
Um, survivorship bias.
What is that, and how does it apply?
And so you hear about these when you’re in the doctor’s lounge or working with people.
But you never hear about those who lost money.
And it’s the same thing with just stock investments.
So you hear about people who invested early in Nvidia.
But you don’t hear about the people who invested in FTX, right, before it went down.
Or, or something else that went down previously.
So that’s the survivorship bias.
You only hear about the winners.
And uh that’s the survivorship bias.
And you know I’ve, I fall prey to that as, I mean everybody can.
It’s, it’s a natural, a natural bias.
[00:40:52] Neill Slater: Yes.
You wonder how they pay for all that up there.
Tell me what you mean by that.
Somebody that has the same ethnicity, the same hobbies, the same profession.
And you tend to have a, an immediate affinity with them.
Oh hey, I went to this school as well.
I root for this football team.
I was also a veteran, and oh, and hey, I deployed to the same place.
[00:42:25] Neill Slater: Absolutely.
So because Clint was introduced to me through Jerry, that buys you some trust, right?
If somebody came off the street and introduced themselves, you’d automatically be a little put back.
But if your friend introduces you, they automatically have some trust that they didn’t earn.
Hey, you know, Bob’s a good guy.
Your friend tells you that.
So you just believe it.
Yeah, Bob’s a good guy.
My friend must know that he is.
He’s hung out with him before, he knows him, he’s worked with him.
Must be a good guy.
And so you transfer that trust to somewhere that it’s not deserved.
And then they go to Houston, and man, this could be national.
This could be a huge thing and I could be on the ground floor.
I don’t want to miss out on that because my friends are invested.
I have always prided myself on being a hard worker.
I moonlighted, I, I worked really hard to build businesses when I got out of school.
I still work hard.
I didn’t do the work that I should have done.
I should have, you know you should always check references.
In this case I’ll forgive myself because I had references.
And if I had, I would have found clues that would have given me pause.
[00:45:35] Bob: You have to go through these steps.
Take your time, trust, but verify, even if you’re working with a close friend.
That’s good advice.
What are the facts?
[00:47:43] Bob: What are the red flags that potential investors should look for?
But I would say that was a red flag.
I don’t think its; the importance of due diligence can be stressed enough.
Or that somebody’s paying that bill ultimately.
And I’d say that’s something to be very careful of.
[00:49:32] Bob: …the criminal’s not going to admit it to you if you ask.
And look, of course you never know.
[00:50:16] Bob: So every one of us needs to go through that due diligence every time.
When it comes to money, overconfidence is not your friend.
For The Perfect Scam, I’m Bob Sullivan.
Call the AARP Fraud Watch online grid Helpline at 877-908-3360.
Their trained fraud specialists can provide you with free support and guidance on what to do next.
That address again is: theperfectscampodcast@aarp.org.
Be sure to find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
For AARP’s The Perfect Scam, I’m Bob Sullivan.
