Jasmine Fiore’s Murder and Concrete Equities

Most of you by now are familiar with the case of Jasmine Fiore, a model whose body was found inside a suitcase. Police are searching for her husband, Ryan Alexander Jenkins, as a person of interest. As an interesting side note, his last job was as a sales representative with a Calgary company named “Concrete Equities.” It was involved in serious real estate investment fraud in Canada and is now in receivership.

I first became interested in Concrete Equities when a friend of mine asked me to check them out as she was interested in investing with them. Being as I am a thorough investigator, I discovered the following:

• Many of the return claims were exaggerated. They calculated the annual projected returns by taking the total over 5 years and dividing by 5, which doesn’t take compound interest into account.
• The returns quoted includes a large cash inflow by re-mortgaging at the end of 5 years based on an annual increase in the property’s value. First, the market crashed and this won’t be possible. Second, this is like placing a second mortgage on your house and saying ‘Look at all the interest I made.’
• After the re-mortgaging at the end of five years, the mortgage payments would increase. Thus either rents would have to increase, or cash distributions would be eliminated and possibly the investors would have to kick in extra funds to make the payments. The interest on the increased portion of the mortgage proceeds probably wouldn’t be deductible for tax purposes, as it was not incurred to earn income, but to distribute cash to unit holders.
• I checked the tax opinion in the offering memorandums. They didn’t contain this, and seemed suspicious in several other ways. I contacted the law firms credited with authoring the opinions to see if they actually did them. I was told they did not.
• The then vice president of the firm, Dave Humeniuk, was under a lifetime ban by the Real Estate Council of Alberta.
• The company president had on his facebook page pictures of the corporate jet and his collection of exotic cars. I had to ask where the money was going.

Since that time several things have happened:

• The company has faced disciplinary action from the Alberta Securities Commission with a fine of $82,000. This was for an unrelated infraction of involving investors who did not meet the proper qualifications.
• The Limited Partnership Investments have hit hard times and were proposed to be sold to a third party in exchange for unsecured debt for the unit holders. They protested.
• The Limited Partnerships have been placed in receivership, and the receivers have notices some irregularities, including funds being diverted.
• The company’s website is now offline.

Update: It is now being reported that Mr. Jenkins had been convicted of assaulting a previous girlfriend. I would ask why Concrete Equities would hire someone with a criminal record to sell their investments, but I already know the answer:  They hired someone under a lifetime ban from the Real Estate Association of Alberta to be their Vice President.  When I asked Dave Jones, President of Concrete Equities, why they would hire such a person as their VP, he just said “I let God be the judge of his character.”  Looks like some people aren’t very good judges of character.  Then again, when it comes to people with good, solid character, it takes one to know one!

~ by Dan Bergen on August 20, 2009.