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H. TULVING
mikesCoins
Posts: 179
H. TULVING WAS SENTENCED YESTERDAY TO 30 MONTHS ALSO TO SPEND 3 YEARS
PROBATION..ALSO TO PAY BACK 10 MILLION DOLLARS TO INVESTERS
PROBATION..ALSO TO PAY BACK 10 MILLION DOLLARS TO INVESTERS
Member of FUN,,also Coin Net and Certified coin exchange, pcgs authorized dealer,ANA
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Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.
does this news enhance or diminish a Tulving slabbed coin?
Most of the ones I have seen are blatantly under-graded (64's in 60 holders, etc.) but the prices he was charging more than made up for the undergrading.
Tom
Joseph J. Singleton - First Superintendent of the U.S. Branch Mint in Dahlonega Georgia
Findley Ridge Collection
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If you steal $15m and pay a $10m fine, that's a profit of $5m.
Serving 2 1/2 years means he's making $2.5m a year in jail.
Not bad
My father's business manager embezzled $30,000+ from my fathers company and she fled to Kansas just before the Sheriff knocked on her door. She got out of town less than 12 hours before she was to be arrested (inside information - small town).
My father could not extradite her from Kansas to face a trial here in Nevada as it is such small potatoes to law enforcement that there is no extradition procedure to do so.
She got away with it.
bob
I don't even feel sorry for the people that lost money, everyone knew who and what he was.
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Tom Pilitowski
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What do you suppose the sentence would be if you held up a Brinks truck and got away with $10 million and were later caught?
Harsh sentence. In spite of what some would have you believe, the laws concerning use of firearms in a crime are no joke.
I remember just a couple of years ago several of us got beat up on the boards for pointing out that Tulving was a convicted crook and you should never send him your money. Got to give a guy a second chance, dredging up the ancient past, changed man, well ... a leopard never changes it's spots.
I don't even feel sorry for the people that lost money, everyone knew who and what he was.
I bought a few things in 2009.. I never heard anything bad, all I heard was "cheapest way to buy" etc...
An authorized PCGS dealer, and a contributor to the Red Book.
Based on the article, it seems this is a person without a conscience; i.e., a sociopath.
According to the article: "Court documents show that Tulving and his company accepted the customers’ payments but failed to deliver some of the merchandise. Instead, they diverted the customers’ payments to fulfill other customers’ orders, to pay company debts and to return the money to previous customers who did not receive their merchandise."
Sounds more like a desperate businessman than a sociopath. A sociopath would have run off with the money, or spent it on himself.
BTW, despite all my years in the business, I don't remember ever meeting Hannes. So I really don't know any more than the rest of you.
Doggedly collecting coins of the Central American Republic.
Visit the Society of US Pattern Collectors at USPatterns.com.
That spoken, calmed the storm until the order arrived. Now their purchase had gained over 4% (as a commodity) in the time frame these gents waited. Barring that premium gained, they're already made whole and ahead of the game; it could have gone the other way and silver could have dropped. That's not a fault or condition any dealer wants to get caught in. So, like Mr E says, I don't know the whole deal on this case. Pity it's such a hard life in bullion.
And clearly there are areas of business, in scope and in size, where biting off more than one can chew isn't a wise thing.
Why cross another ? I don't like that in business, but I am small potatoes. In corporate affairs, sometimes things happen that some of the people responding may not see or understand.
Im not defending or prosecuting.
That said, I'd rather be cleaning toilets at the posh motels Charmy and some others stay in, than trying to deal with some of the guys I've met along this path in the coin world.
Hannes had been advertising on CCE at the time that he would take your bullion order 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I asked him about that and he essentially told me he would answer the phone through the night and for all but a few hours a day he would take all the orders. I asked him what he would do while on vacation (I do not recall him ever being on vacation when I had done business with him back in 2004-2006) and he told me he had not taken a single day off in the past 15 or so years!
When I read about the recent bankruptcy case and purportedly / allegedly exactly how much money Hannes embezzled, I was personally puzzled why anyone would do this while working 7 days a week, perhaps as many as 16 or more hours per day, without a day off in upwards of 15 years - even after a life threatening stroke?
I hope his creditors receive a decent payout in the bankruptcy case from the assets on hand as I suspect that is what Hannes is hoping for as well.
Wondercoin.
I remember just a couple of years ago several of us got beat up on the boards for pointing out that Tulving was a convicted crook and you should never send him your money. Got to give a guy a second chance, dredging up the ancient past, changed man, well ... a leopard never changes it's spots.
I don't even feel sorry for the people that lost money, everyone knew who and what he was.
People on this board should also know the history of Ian Clay (Westmisnter Mint) and his buddy Michael Kott (Highland Mint) We will see if they learn their lesson from dealing with Tulving.
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I would think large professional bullion dealers (or anyone buying/selling commodities in bulk such as heating oil companies) would use future's contracts to hedge their inventories from the potential of falling prices. The cost is relatively small and is a form of "life insurance" for such a business. True, they won't profit from a rising commodity price. But, they won't get killed if the bottom falls out all of sudden.
I would think large professional bullion dealers (or anyone buying/selling commodities in bulk such as heating oil companies) would use future's contracts to hedge their inventories from the potential of falling prices. The cost is relatively small and is a form of "life insurance" for such a business. True, they won't profit from a rising commodity price. But, they won't get killed if the bottom falls out all of sudden.
I wouldn't know… never been a large professional bullion dealer or much of a bowler or golfer , for that matter.
Amplifying on Andy's point, before Hannes' major stroke, I did a lot of modern coin business with him (around 2004-2006). Pretty much all problem free. This was the time period where I believe he was about 10-15% of PCGS' entire submission business at that time. I did virtually no business with him in the past roughly ten years, but a few years ago he sold me some modern coins answering my general buy ad on CCE (he was still a PCGS authorized dealer at the time). I got to see his new offices and spent maybe five minutes talking with him. A number of PCGS ex employees were working there the day I showed up and one even told me he was very happy working under Hannes (I heard he paid his employees very nicely).
Hannes had been advertising on CCE at the time that he would take your bullion order 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I asked him about that and he essentially told me he would answer the phone through the night and for all but a few hours a day he would take all the orders. I asked him what he would do while on vacation (I do not recall him ever being on vacation when I had done business with him back in 2004-2006) and he told me he had not taken a single day off in the past 15 or so years!
When I read about the recent bankruptcy case and purportedly / allegedly exactly how much money Hannes embezzled, I was personally puzzled why anyone would do this while working 7 days a week, perhaps as many as 16 or more hours per day, without a day off in upwards of 15 years - even after a life threatening stroke?
Actually, the employees (at least at the end, where records are public) were paid modest salaries (it looks like from $30K to $50K). It looks like Hannes was taking out a salary of about $130K-$150K before the problems started, and cut it down to $43K when the problems started (about 9 months before he shut down). Compare that to the head of Bullion Direct who was taking out some $250K+ per year for many years, who had the balls to pay himself a severance when he filed for bankruptcy.
You hit the nail on the head with the "why would he do this?" question. Everyone talks about the FTC problem in 1989-1990, but as you point out, he doesn't fit the profile of someone accused of (and agreed to plead guilty to) a $17M fraud charge. Most fraudsters don't spend nearly 2 decades working every day and taking phone calls 24x7 before pulling off their big scam (or if they do, they *keep* the money).
I believe there is a lot more than what is currently known. There is *nothing* suggesting that the $17M went to Hannes -- the Government says the $17M went to prior customers and paying company debt. Huh? 2.5 years in jail for being accused of running a bankrupt company? Yes, this was serious -- I've been helping many of those 400 or so creditors, and I know how painful it was. But he is being portrayed as a man who stole $17M for to pay for his private jet, mansion, etc. (he lived in a modest apartment).
I'm pretty confident the company was in deep debt (unrecoverable, similar to the ~$17M owed at the end) back around April, 2013. I have heard that there was a "silent partner" essentially running the company that left around June, 2013, handing over the keys to Hannes. So Hannes has this business that he built up for 20 years, was ruined, and has to figure out what to do. Just as Charles McAllister ran Bullion Direct for many, many years after realizing it was in deep debt, Hannes did too. But, he was also working on doing what he could to fix the problem (I have heard that he was in discussions with a bullion dealer who would help organize a Chapter 11 bankruptcy, where creditors would have immediately gotten some cash).
In any case, while most of the Internet is cheering, I have a strong feeling that this is not the end of the story.
Sounds like a classic Ponzi scheme similar to what Bernie Madoff did---take the money from new customers and pay off the old customers.
Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.
Based on the article, it seems this is a person without a conscience; i.e., a sociopath.
According to the article: "Court documents show that Tulving and his company accepted the customers’ payments but failed to deliver some of the merchandise. Instead, they diverted the customers’ payments to fulfill other customers’ orders, to pay company debts and to return the money to previous customers who did not receive their merchandise."
Sounds more like a desperate businessman than a sociopath. A sociopath would have run off with the money, or spent it on himself.
BTW, despite all my years in the business, I don't remember ever meeting Hannes. So I really don't know any more than the rest of you.
The shop I worked in many moons ago was primarily a bullion shop. The quote above from the article sounds very familiar. It sounds like a significant cash flow problem that the company could not manage well.
I recall times when the shop owner promised metal delivery to an angry, no longer patient client and he called up another client to borrow the metal. There were anxious times as borrowed metals were being delivered to the back door as the angry client was entering the front door ... good times.
See http://www.doubledimes.com for a free online reference for US twenty-cent pieces
Except that, my last order was for 2 "bags" of silver dimes, - $250 face bags, and I was invoiced for just the $500 face. By mistake, he shipped 2 full $1,000 bags and of course I notified them and returned the extra $1,500 face. They paid the freight, but you know what? I never got so much as a "thank-you" but I did get some attitude over the phone. Not cool. That was my last order.
Subsequent to that, I did try to place a few similar orders for smaller amounts of bullion, but he changed his minimum order size to more than what I wanted, so I stopped ordering from him. In retrospect, I was lucky.
I knew it would happen.
and then to AboutAg in giving his perspective from the clients point of view.
I enjoyed going to his website and to see up-to-date pricing on monster boxes, 10 ounces of gold and other things that I rarely purchased.
I was able to take that knowledge and move over to Modern Coin Mart, APMEX and other providers for my much smaller amount of precious metal.
It was a piece of history related to my educational journey and also my time on these boards.
We will see how the restitution turns out.
Wondercoin