I’ll never put you into anything that I wouldn’t put my grandmother in."
And he said, “No.”
[00:00:22] Bob: Did he give an explanation?
[00:00:25] Charlotte Annas: It was not liquid.
You couldn’t get it back.
We knew something was terribly wrong.
[00:00:35] Bob: Welcome back to the Perfect Scam.
I’m your host, Bob Sullivan.
It’s okay to ask hard questions, even to be a little cynical.
Today’s story will help you see why.
They are strangers, but they all live in Virginia, and what else do they have in common?
A company named Dominion Investment advisors.
And he just happened to come into my little unit one day to donate blood.
He was a huge blood donor.
In the course of his life he gave 1912 gallons of blood.
[00:02:10] Bob: That’s Charlotte Annas, talking about the love of her life, Pat.
They met in the most beautiful of ways.
And Pat was devoted to giving life to others in a way that’s very special.
He said, “What’s this Christmas party you’re talking about?
It sounds like fun.
How can I get an invitation?”
And I said, “Well, I’ll, I’ll ensure you get one.”
[00:03:09] Bob: Pat took giving blood very seriously.
[00:03:13] Charlotte Annas: He was like clockwork.
Every 56 days for decades he went and donated blood.
He had it on his calendar.
He didn’t miss it.
I guess by the time he got into his 50s, he started slowing down a little bit.
His goal was to get to 20 gallons, but he never made it quite there.
But personally, he was the most prolific person that I knew, personally, to give blood.
[00:04:14] Bob: Pat worked for the Virginia Department of Transportation.
Charlotte was a nurse, and later she worked in healthcare as a clinical research associate.
And she is very proud of her husband and her hometown.
[00:04:35] Bob: Well what town were you in when this happened?
[00:04:38] Charlotte Annas: Suffolk, Virginia.
Which is the home of Planters Peanuts.
[00:04:42] Bob: Aha!
(chuckles) I hope that means you like peanuts.
[00:04:47] Charlotte Annas: Yes.
[00:04:55] Bob: Now meet Richard Fairchild who lives less than an hour away.
And that’s where the NATO headquarters is located.
[00:05:10] Bob: He’s worked as a civilian with the military for decades.
At one point, part of his job at Lockheed Martin was training Apache helicopter pilots.
And this would be radar systems.
[00:05:54] Bob: Now meet Marcia Gray.
She lost her mom just last year.
Her father died almost 20 years ago.
He was also a civilian who worked with military.
[00:06:05] Bob: Well what was your dad’s name?
[00:06:06] Marcia Gray: Henry.
[00:06:09] Bob: Henry.
[00:06:11] Marcia Gray: Mildred Gray.
[00:06:13] Bob: Mildred… Henry, Henry and Mildred.
Um, and what did your dad do?
[00:06:18] Marcia Gray: My dad was a civil officer at Fort Monroe.
They only lived off of their pension.
Actually, my mom went to college.
My dad didn’t.
He had to drop out of school when he was in 8th grade ‘cause his father had died.
There, they meet a man named Roger.
So we did that.
About two months went by, and my husband and I talked about it a little bit.
He handled the finances.
Roger being Roger Hudspeth who worked at Dominion, an investment group.
[00:08:52] Bob: Marcia’s parents find their way to Dominion another way.
They’d been working with a man named Daryl Banks at a large investment brokerage for many years.
[00:09:42] Marcia Gray: Daryl promised me in 2002 that he would take care of my mom.
You know, you trusted him.
[00:09:57] Bob: Richard came across Dominion still another way, by listening to the radio.
So fast-forward to 2013 or 20–, 2013.
I think it was just in a money market at the time.
They had moved it out of, all our investments, I think.
After all, Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme was still fresh on people’s minds.
Here’s Daryl with another guest.
It’s just amazing.
Don’t get me wrong.
[00:12:28] Daryl: Yes.
And they keep cropping up.
He gave consistent returns, but they were never ridiculous.
So he calls their office and sets up a meeting.
[00:13:09] Bob: Did you meet personally with Roger right away?
[00:13:11] Richard Fairchild: Oh yes, yes, yes.
And then to the right was where his office was, his office, he would be facing us.
And you know we sat down in front of him and talked for a while.
Does the voice sound familiar because you’ve heard it before?
And I said, “Ah, okay.”
Absolutely, while and it was actually a series of meetings.
So that was the initial meeting and then his setup to bring us into pitch us on his investments.
[00:14:50] Bob: Richard likes what he hears.
He agrees to move one of his two retirement accounts into Dominion.
You know we should be able to get you returns of 10 or 12 percent.
I want good, secure investments.
So this was kind of the predecessor of what is an internet of things.
So this was the, the bleeding edge of internet of things, where we have that now.
You know, I could sit in my office right now and, you know.
[00:16:36] Bob: So these sounded like reasonable and interesting investments.
[00:16:38] Richard Fairchild: Oh absolutely.
And that was at 17 years old.
So I’ve been involved one way or another with technology.
So yeah, I was very comfortable with it.
[00:17:10] Bob: Charlotte and Pat have big dreams for their investment in Dominion.
They’re hoping they can turn their nest egg into enough for a life of exciting retirement travel.
[00:17:25] Charlotte Annas: Yes.
Not only the country, we traveled internationally too.
We have been on some wonderful trips in our lifetime.
We’ve been to Tahiti, we’ve been to Hawaii, we’ve been to Alaska.
We’ve been to Greece.
We’ve been to Turkey.
[00:18:10] Bob: Better returns on their sluggish investments sure would help them follow their dreams.
So a couple of months after that dinner with Roger, the couple decides they’ll go with him.
And they put their money in a franchise venture called Dental Support Plus.
[00:18:26] Bob: So it’s 2011, and you decide to, to go with Dominion.
How did you jump in both feet?
Did you start small?
[00:18:36] Charlotte Annas: No, we jumped in with both feet.
I was present on every phone call that was ever had with any of the Dominion people.
And so we went in, and we talked to Roger, and he presented this Dental Support Plus.
We originally bought four units.
And we bought two more units.
So then we’re in it for $150,000.
But before they have time to really think about the investment, they get some terrible news.
[00:20:03] Charlotte Annas: This was in February.
The end of May, May 29th of 2012, my husband was diagnosed with colon cancer at first.
He had surgery the next month.
So we started on that.
[00:21:11] Bob: Everything, including concerns about their retirement accounts, takes a backseat.
And we made a fairly quick decision on it because at that point supposedly Pat was in remission.
It turned out he wasnt, but we did not know that at the time.
And theyre saying that Dominion Investment Group is being investigated, and they had some questions for us.
[00:22:12] Bob: Dominion Investment Group is being investigated?
Charlotte doesn’t really have time to digest what that means, but she’s also pretty distracted.
[00:22:53] Richard Fairchild: Yes.
[00:22:54] Bob: What was that like?
So when she started talking to me, I’m like, youre kidding me.
She asked if I’d heard of these different entities, and I said, “Yes.”
And I went, “You mean she has no money?”
She said, “Well, with the LLC, she probably doesn’t have any money.”
[00:23:47] Bob: How surprised were you when this happened?
[00:23:50] Marcia Gray: Oh, we were blown away.
I, ‘cause see, Daryl promised he would take care of my mom.
Richard and Marcia are worried right away, but Charlotte, she has bigger things on her mind.
She’s trying to take care of her sick husband.
Remember, they were rushing to rebuild their home in Florida, but cancer had returned.
And all this happened within, like I said, less than 24 hours of us being home.
[00:25:13] Bob: And that’s when the investigators show up.
I said, The timing couldnt be worse.
Explained what was going on.
The gentleman, the investigator was very nice, and he said, I certainly understand.
I will not contact you again.
Here is my information.
But when he hears the news, he wants to do whatever he can to help.
And he said, “Absolutely.
Everything was, you know, rainbows and sunshine.
And so you know they’re being investigated.
What is that like?
[00:27:36] Charlotte Annas: Well, it was horrible.
And not only that, we had invested more money into other things along the line.
So all totaled we were into it at that point for $205,000.
I mean did you just want to leap through the phone and strangle the guy?
[00:27:59] Charlotte Annas: Oh, of course.
I had my own health issues, so I was dealing with that as well.
[00:28:41] Bob: Naturally, they want their money back.
But that isn’t going to happen.
And he said, “No.”
He said, “No.”
(MUSIC SEGUE)
[00:28:59] Bob: Did he give an explanation?
[00:29:02] Charlotte Annas: It was not liquid.
You couldn’t get it back.
Marcia gets a similar runaround.
“Daryl can talk his way out of anything,” she says.
And he was just so charismatic and so concerned to see what happened to my mom.
So, and even then, when I talked to him on the phone, he was so convincing.
He could have an answer for everything.
When I got there, we could call him together.
[00:30:08] Charlotte Annas: So if I may, I’ll fast-forward to summer of 2015.
Our friend, the good financial advisor, he comes over with the newspaper article.
We’re sitting at our dining room table looking at it and talking, and the phone rings.
And it’s Roger Hudspeth.
And I said to our advisor, I said, “That’s Roger on the phone.”
And he said, “No!”
And I said, “It has to be.”
And he’s saying, “So what’s going on?”
I haven’t done anything wrong.
It, it will all come out later on, but I’ve not done anything wrong.”
Well he’s trying to do damage control of this three-page expose that has come out in the paper.
Roger never knew that we had somebody there that had financial advisor expertise.
[00:32:32] Bob: He was traveling, he was living in big houses, right?
[00:32:51] Bob: So 2015 passes.
Spring and summer of 2017.
Meanwhile, Daryl Bank, cloud of investigation and all, is living his best life.
And it binds together these three strangers: Richard, Charlotte, and Marcia.
That’s next on The Perfect Scam.
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.
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.
END OF TRANSCRIPT
On his Saturday-morning radio show, Daryl Bank advises listeners on retirement investments and avoiding scams.
