n the opening credits/mini bios, the show states barbara turned a 1g loan into "hundreds of millions" and then she tells coverplay in week 4 I think (prolly wrong but it was the episode with coverplay) that she turned that same loan into 66 million? So with this I decided to look up and see the accuracy of their stories. Mind you the producers are just as much to blame, if not more so, than the investors.
Barbara made her money in one of the biggest sweet spots in real estate history and flipping houses, to me, doesn't translate business savvy across the board. Does it to you?
Kevin O Leary was just a punk kid until his mom found a new stepdad for him who was on Canada's International Labor Organization. His mom gave him 10g up front for an investment and then after numerous mergers and acquisitions, sold it to mattel for 3.2 billion of STOCK after losses in 1997 of 475 million, not cash (liar). Mattel bought it to diversify themselves, and the deal lead mattel to their biggest accounting scandal to date. If their lead paint scandal and the suicides wasn't such a media magnet, it would have been their most famous fraudulent scandal right alongside worldcom, xerox, tyco, enron, etc... Then there was the huge class action against mattel because the value of the company had been artificially inflated.
So one year after he was named president of the company, he was asked to step down because the company was actually in very poor financial position with 1999 4th quarter losses of 105 million when they "expected" 50 million in profits... So he sold a huge dot commer when the bubble was at it's peak that was actually losing truckloads of money. His new daddy had to pay for a lot of those M&A so he really didn't even come close to making what was stated in the show and I wonder if he really deserved to make any money at all. Read his wiki, it's actually pretty sad how shady this guy is...
Sounds to me like their is a lot of deception going on. People like Kevin O are why legislation such as SOX was put into place. I wouldn't let any of these people anywhere near me or my money. They are taking advantage of people because they are ignorant, imo. I like this show, but it's pretty ridiculous what goes on here. What I don't get is that people are willing to spend years of their lives, and every penny they can scrape up, just to hand it over to someone like Kevin, are you serious? You couldn't even look him up on wiki beforehand or do just a little research? You can spend in the lower 5 digits and get yourself a decent education in just a couple years.
I like this show less and less as I learn more and more... But I will continue to watch it because it is highly entertaining. I feel that, as throughout history, behind every great fortune is a great crime. A mobster said that once, and it's true. Yeah you can make millions and billions, but you will have to lie and cheat your way to the top and as you can see by how these investors act towards potential partnerships, it's lonely up there and these small business people are letting greed and idealism get in the way of their logic.
I am really interested in what other people's thought's are on this subject etc, please I encourage discussion, a lively one even more. . .