It wasn't that service went down, its that compliance procedures had to be ramped way up to comply with stricter banking regulations. So your complaint is not really with the bank, but with the government imposed rules and regulators the bank was forced to comply with.
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Euro Pacific bank is a scam
- Thread starter sonato
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"My bank failed because of the government"
"My service went down because of the government"
Does anyone see the pattern here? No remorse, no accountability, always blaming someone else.
I know some people are tired of my posts so just ignore me if you don't like it. I want you to get 100% of your money back and I want Peter Schiff to make up the difference if you are short changed. That is what any honorable man would do.
What if what I said about the government is true.? Has that ever occurred to you? Do you think everyone who works in government is honest? What don't you do some research into what happened to the bank before you just assume all politicians act honorably? Also, most bank customers didn't even know who I was when they opened their accounts, and my ownership interest had nothing to do with their decision to do so. If despite my best efforts customers en up losing a cent or two on the dollar none of those losses will have been my fault, and no one customer will lose anywhere near the approximately $25 million I lost because OCIF chose to block the sale of the bank to Qenta.
Have you seen the movie Shawshank Redemption? There is a famous line in that movie. A long time prisoner tells a recent prisoner:
"You're gonna fit right in! Everybody in here's innocent. Didn't you know that?"
Enough with the excuses. I did my investigation into you and what I found was not flattering. If you guys want me to go into detail I can.
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In regards to the $25 million. That was not money you lost out of pocket, that is what you claim you would have made if you sold the bank. Where is the offer? Let's see it.
And imagine this scenario. You have 100% of your networth in Bank of America and the CEO calls you up and says:
"Sorry, all of your money is gone but I lost more than you so don't feel so bad."
Would that make you feel better? Of course not. So quit insulting the victims on this board.
One more thing. If you are not made 100% whole, you guys need to go on a social media campaign. Get interviewed by Max Keiser, Kitco, or even CNBC. Use social media pressure to get 100% of your money back. Peter Schiff will cave in if there is enough pressure on him. He won't give you a penny otherwise.
Did you have an account at the bank? If so ,what's your name. I'll check. The $25 million purchase price was a firm offer in cash and Qenta stock, that was presented to OCIF in Nov. of 2022. It was only contingent on OCIF's approval, which according to the commissioner was just a routine background check of the principal shareholders of Qenta. Also, as a further condition of sale, Qenta was required to add $7 million in paid in capital, to increase total bank capital to several million above the regulatory minimum. My actual out-of-pocket loss was still over $10 million. That's the total amount of money I paid into the bank as capital. I never withdrew a penny in dividends, capital distributions, or salary. The sale was by far the best option for customers, employees, and Puerto Rico. But the Commissioner abruptly changed her position, withdrew her support, and insisted on liquidating the bank through a receiver, despite other buyers stepping forward after the Qenta rejection was made public, and the bank technically not needing a receiver due to its cash and cash equivalents exceeding all liabilities, including all funds owed to depositors.
Game over.
I fully agree that customers shouldn't lose a single penny! We are not the ones that made the mistake of sitting down to talk to an Australian tabloid program that is only there to ambush you, that's what they do, that's their business, it's nothing new.
At the same time customers have nothing to do with OCIF, or with the Government, we are all foreigners who have never known anything about them.
And we the customers are not the ones that were in charge of EPB, those who were in charge didn't keep the minimum capital required by OCIF, which opened the door for the OCIF to step in and close the bank, you don't leave your front door open when you go to buy groceries do you? Chances are when you come back someone has burglarized your home.
At the end, the OCIF accomplished what they wanted, Peter stands to make a few million from the defamation lawsuit against 60' Minutes Australia, Qenta bought the bank from Receivership, so everybody is going to win except the customers, that not only they have been deprived of their funds for more than 9 months, but now they could end up losing 1%-2% of their savings, UNBELIEVABLE if innocent customers end up losing money, in my case 1% to 2% would be anywhere from $23K to $46K, if I lose one penny I will make sure the whole world knows about it, this would be the most insulting event of my entire life!
Yes being an EPB customer is like death by a thousand cuts. Not only have we suffered not having access to our funds for over 9 months but also the uncertainty of whether we will ever get them back.
Now the torture gets worse with us having to pay daily for the running of the bank as if we are the bank owners.
One very famous song says "Love hurts". Our belowed bank is like a hertless bitch now. After a few dates and a hot night we have to agree to the bill.
How can you say everyone wins? The bank sold the assets to Qenta for $1.25 million. I didn't get one penny of that money. It went to the bank as additional capital to protect customers. Had the sale gone though Qenta would have put in an additional $7 million to protect customers, and I would have received $25 million in cash and stock for my bank shares. Instead, thanks to OCIF turning down the sale, I received nothing. Also, so far over the past two years I have personally incurred over $1 million in legal fees on bank related issues. I am also out over $10 million cash that I personally invested in the bank. I will likely only recover a small fraction of that loss from my lawsuit. As far as my decision to go on 60 Minutes, I wasn't even told the interview was for 60 Minutes when I agreed to do it. I was told it was for The Age website. I do interviews all the time as part of my normal business that have nothing to do with the bank. This request seemed no different It's not my fault the reporters lied to, and then ambushed me with false allegations about the bank.
As far as customer's losses, there likely will not be any, other than the opportunity cost of having their money tied up for 10 months or more. In some cases that has involved hardship. I feel horrible about that. But these losses were all unnecessary, and would have been avoided had OCFI either approved a sale, allowed me to contribute more capital, or allowed me to just liquidate the bank on my own. I gave the OCIF commissioner those three options, but she rejected them all. So when all of this is over, if any clients wish to file a lawsuit, OCIF is your best case. However lawsuits are not fun, and unless you get a lawyer to do it on contingency, which will likely require a class action, they are expensive.
Life is full of risks. Many banks fail, and if deposits are uninsured, customers can lose a lot of money. EPB didn't fail, so if customers lose any money at all, it will only be because the cost of operating the bank in receivership exhausted the bank's capital, requiring depositor money to keep it going long enough to return the money. Depositors are first in line after the receiver. I am last, and will only get something after every other creditor is made whole. I am by far the biggest victim here. So stop blaming me for things that were completely beyond my control. I was a passive shareholder in a bank, and ended up losing millions of dollars as a result of that ownership interest. Its also unfair to all expect me to cover ever single customer's loss. I owned stock in a corporation. The corporate structure offers shareholders limited liability. That's common knowledge. Anyone who opens a bank account, especially one with no deposit insurance, runs the risk of losing money. Life is full of risks. We all assume them. I took a risk by opening a bank, and I lost a lot of money. Customers took risks by opening bank accounts, and they may end up losing some money. I chose to try to recover some of my losses by suing Nine in Australia. I can't sue OCIF as I gave up that right to protect customers. But the customers made no such agreement with OCIF and are free to take legal action if they want to, either individually or collectively. But that may end up costing customers even more money, as the outcome of any lawsuit is uncertain. In fact, I may end up losing more money as a result of my lawsuit, if the damages I recover are less than my legal fees.
Peter, I don't blame you in particular, I blame a series of events that have gone from bad to worse very quickly, and specially a group of people that have not only destroyed the bank, but have also put in danger the lives of the innocent customers.
As for "life is full of risks" I believe most, if not all customers thought they were depositing their money in a full reserve bank, which should imply zero risk of losing their money, but now we are leaning that someone in the bank did not keep the bank 100% compliant, and we can all agree that it was a massive mistake for which customers are now paying the price. Yes the commissioner behaved terribly, and the J5 wanted to use the occasion for their 5 minutes of fame, and yes 60 Minutes Australia should pay for what they did to you and to all of us, and I truly hope you destroy them, but again, we have nothing to do with all those parties that somehow have and are taking advantage of this ordeal.
The question is, can the Receiver charge the bank any amount he wants? After all the Receiver is sitting on his a*s not doing much, but it seems that his fees can end up going as high as using all the bank's reserves, shouldn't there be a limited amount of money that he could charge regardless of how long this situation lasts? Or can he just ask for a blank check and demand any amount he wants?
And last but not least, I would happily join other customers in order to file a collective lawsuit if we don't get all our money back, but for that we would need you Peter to give us evidence that you offered all those alternatives to the Commissioner in order to protect customer's deposits. In order to prove that the Commissioner did not act in the best interest of the customers, we would need to prove that there were many other better options that would have resulted in customers not losing any money, if we can't prove that we have no case against OCIF.
I have all the evidence to prove the Commissioner had much better options for customers than Receivership, which would all be available to anyone who brings an action. In fact, I will likely just make all of those documents public once the liquidation process is over. Yes Receivers are expensive. That is one reason I tried to make sure the bank was sold or liquidated without one. But the OCIF commissioner would not budge. She insisted on a receiver. No other alternative was allowed. Yes the bank was 100% reserve, but there were other risks that you assumed. At one point the bank inadvertently violated that commitment. As soon as I was informed, I added $4.5 million to protect customers. I was not legally required to make that contribution, but I did anyway. However, if the receivership process imposes additional losses, I am not prepared to write another check to cover those too. I think that its very unfair to expect me to do so. If 5,000 customers end up losing $500 each, its not fair to expect me to just lose another $2.5 million to make everyone whole. If this get wrapped up in April I don't expect any customer losses, so fingers crossed. But as is always the case, things can happen that you don't expect. I never expected to lose the $10 million I invested in the bank, but it happened anyway.
I would happily join with you and any other customers who want to hold the Commissioner accountable for her actions.
We would need to try to get a lawyer in Puerto Rico to do it on contingency.
Thanks for wanting to help by providing the evidence needed to be able to file a lawsuit against the Commissioner, she must be held accountable!
Let's see what happens in the next few weeks, but I just don't trust the Receiver, they are famously known for taking advantage of these situations, I'm sure they don't get too many opportunities to make as much money as they want, bunch of vultures!
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If you want your suffering and that of the rest of us customers to keep going just keep attacking the Receiver and OCIF. They can keep prolonging this . They have power over us right now.
I repeatedly have said that I would seriously consider taking legal action against the Commissioner AFTER we get the money back, now let's hope we do get the money back, after that gloves are off!
And to be honest I don't think the Receiver or the OCIF have much power left, if they had any power we would have gotten our money back by now.
Yes but by making threats they can just keep prolonging our agony. They can read this just like anyone can.
At this point OCIF and the Receiver want customer funds returned ASAP. So they are not the problem at the moment. So there is no point in attacking them. Once the money is returned, customers can assign blame however they want and express any frustration they have without fear of adverse consequences. However, one thing I know is that due to all the bad publicity, and false allegations of money laundering and tax evasion, hundreds of EPB customers are being unfairly targeted for audits by their local governments.
At this point they don't have power over our money, it's all up to Portugal.
And if they are reading this I hope the Commissioner realizes that we now know the facts and she wasn't thinking about "protecting the interest of the customers" as she said during the press conference, she is the main culprit of this situation that we are now facing.
Well in her defense she was likely under a lot of pressure from Jim Lee of the IRS, and likely indirectly from the Age reporters who were originally leaked the information about the confidential grand jury investigation of the bank that ended after finding no evidence of any crimes. The bank's innocent customers were just unintended victims of these events and circumstances.
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