Sop gets a cyber first: Behavioral finance/economics intersects with Slabbed. An Aaron Broussard/Trout Point Lodge Update.

Some of my better received work here on Slabbed deals with the topic of behavioral finance/economics.  That said when my curiosity compelled me to enter the laboratory I invariably would go to the Yahoo Finance Boards and issues like Allstate or the pump and dump de jour such as XING.

Cerro Coyote has changed that folks and I want to give everyone a flavor for what I am seeing by communicating with people on this topic.  After all this blog is called Slabbed, a sizable portion of our readership was slabbed by Hurricane Katrina not that long ago. Before we get to “the finance” part of behavioral finance we must start with the behavioral. Universally the investors I have heard from share 3 common traits:

1. They were sold a small stake in Cerro Coyote as evidenced by the stock purchase agreement I posted here on Slabbed last year.
2. They have found out via Slabbed the Inn at Coyote Mountain, the major asset of Cerro Coyote has been sold.
3. They have not yet received anything back on their investment.

So what do people feel upon learn such information?  The answer lies in the Kübler-Ross model and Wiki does a very good job explaining it:

The Kübler-Ross model, commonly known as The Five Stages of Grief, was a theory first introduced by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her 1969 book, On Death and Dying.

Included in her book was the Model of Coping with Dying, which she based on research and interviews with more than 500 dying patients. It describes, in five discrete stages, a process by which people cope and deal with grief and tragedy, especially when diagnosed with a terminal illness or experience a catastrophic loss. In addition to this, her book brought mainstream awareness to the sensitivity required for better treatment of individuals who are dealing with a fatal disease or illness.

Kübler-Ross added that these stages are not meant to be complete or chronological. Her theory also holds that not everyone who experiences a life-threatening or life-altering event feels all five of the responses nor will everyone who does experience them do so in any particular order. The theory is that the reactions to illness, death, and loss are as unique as the person experiencing them.

There is lots of wisdom in the Kübler-Ross model related to financial losses.  Now I’ll grant the $10 to $25K people put up for a stake in a specialty inn with some timeshare like qualities is not a catastrophic loss for most of the folks that ponied up. But that is not the only loss in play here folks as it was the sense of being betrayed by someone claiming to be a friend that landed me some of my best leads on the topic of Aaron Broussard’s Expat business activities.  So with that bit of background explained let review the 5 stages of grief:

• Denial
• Anger
• Bargaining
• Depression
• Acceptance

Now I’m gonna quote from my post yesterday and an email exchange with someone claiming to be an investor shortly after:

as more local investors in the project that had no clue Abel, Leary and Perret sold the hotel and whom received not a penny back on their investment have sent me bat signals and that does not count the inquiries from those who are still coming to grips with the fact their “friends” Danny Abel and Aaron Broussard fleeced them.

And then this from that email exchange:

If you are using my email to you to suggest that there is something untoward about Cerro Coyote, Danny, and the rest, you better think again. I am a very minor shareholder in a corporation of which they are the officers and majority shareholders. There were no “counter letters” and never any idea of making a profit–it was a place to go vacation, period. Kinda like a timeshare.

If no one was ever using the place, I can’t blame them for selling. Nor could I have controlled whether the majority voted to sell or not. I left the area and didn’t think to give them updated contact info., so it doesn’t suprise me they didn’t get in touch. I’m sure my investment is not worthless.

Your accusations are way over the top, Doug, and you should be more careful in what you say.

I’ve located Danny and will take this up with him.

My reply referenced the fact the writer had previously inquired as to the identity of my sources, whom I’ll again state I have promised anonymity due to the hostile reaction of Aaron and the girls to any line of inquiry into the current State Ethics Board investigation into a pay to play scheme involving the development at Trout Point, large parts of which were owned by Aaron Broussard and certain politically connected parish contractors.

That hostile reaction generally involves Broussard business associates Charles Leary, Vaughn Perret and Danny Abel filing defamation lawsuits against any line of inquiry in a judicial hell hole of the variety that compelled the US Congress to unanimously pass the SPEECH Act. These suits are known as SLAPP suits and they do intimidate folks. They do not intimidate me though I’ll add that while many of our judges may be corrupt at least they are not nutless pinheads like theie Canadian counterparts, who essentially sell out to scammers to squelch legitimate lines of journalistic inquiry via a system designed to encourage the filing of SLAPP suits where Barristers aka lawyers make big money.  To date they sued and intimidated the Times Picayune into silence, caused Channel 4 to pull a factually correct report on the State Ethics Investigation from their website and are currently suing Fox 8 in Nova Scotia along with yours truly.

Since I am not sharing my sources and my webhost, Automattic, does not honor court orders issued by pinhead Canadian judges against American Citizens, Perret and his wife Charles Leary are at a legal dead-end. And since they can’t find out my sources, they can’t intimidate them into silence as has been their MO since going to Nova Scotia.  My own experience is people simply do not react well to bullies and Slabbed too has benefitted from that fact as my post yesterday calling for information on Trout Point and Cerro Coyote netted me another nice tip from Nova Scotia on folks Trout Point has done business with.  So to set that up lets head back to the post where I named the property owners of the development known as Trout Point, specifically two of the lots:

LOT 3-B AND 7-D
SOLD BY RALPH FONTCUBERTA IN JAN 21 2010
TO PRAKA-NOVA SCOTIA LLC,
7216 STONELEIGH DRIVE
HARAHAN LA

Now everyone should bear in mind the real estate information I received for that post dated to the time of the post in September 2011 and it presents a snapshot in time, namely associating Jefferson Parish contractor/vender Ralph Fontcuberta to lots 3-B and 7-D. But it is a bit more than that as the nice person who got me the real estate info also made a few other observations:

RIVERBEND LODGE ( former Marie Krantz property )
OWNED BY AARON BROUSSARD ( no other owners that I see )
ASSESSED FOR 210,800 COMMERCIAL, 31,200 RESIDENTIAL
INTERESTING — IN DECEMBER 2010 AARONS DEED BECAME JOINT TENANTS WITH VAUGHN AND CHARLES AND ONLY THEY SHOW UP ON ASSESSMENT NOW AS OWNERS.
A MORTGAGE WAS TAKEN OUT THAT SAME MONTH FOR 231,000 WITH HSBC BANK OF CANADA IN MARKUM ONTARIO.
THE MORTGAGE WAS NOT REGISTERED UNTILL JANUARY 17 2011 ( this could have been deliberate or just a slow lawyer )

Changing ownership in the real estate market is not an uncommon thing folks but when the same parties appear to recycle the same land through time the picture of what is going on beyond a glorified real property circle jerk is obscured. So why do I bring up Ralph Fontcuberta besides the fact he does biz with Jefferson Parish? Mainly because a friendly reader in Nova Scotia sent me the following legal document:

December 2009 was an interesting time folks as that is when the scandal in Jefferson Parish government was breaking into the local news cycle and around a month before Rich Rainey’s factual reporting on Trout Point Lodge was first published. But this is not the only sweet nothing I received from the Maritimes yesterday folks and it is most appropriate I bring this up since it was the Billy Hill Trails Society that originally got my interest in this going in light of the legal threats Leary was passing against Advance Internet Publications, the parent of the Times Picayune.

You see while Leary and company were bamboozling the Picayune into retracting factually correct reporting (to this day the reporter has since been assigned to the Wet Kiss beat) I noticed that his relationship with Aaron Broussard per his own moderated webpages conflicted with the statements he was giving the T-P, which I’ll note had previously written 2 glowing articles about Trout Point. But there is more to that and not just from my standpoint as an investigative blogger covering corruption in metro NOLA. You see following the cyber trail lead me to intersection of the Billy Hills Trails and the Nova Scotia South West Shore Development Authority, a quasi governmental economic development agency that currently has a problem with huge sums of money being missing. And of course the SWSDA leads us back to the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, whose dealings with Leary, Abel and Perret we have covered in several posts. For that bit of early background our readers can click here, here and here. This post is a great place to learn about the related lawsuit between Leary and the ACOA. Those are not the only connections between Trout Point Lodge and the SWSDA as I’ll explore in a future post.

At this point I’ll disclose Leary and Perret evidently went postal when I disclosed that counter letters do not evidence ownership in Nova Scotia. This would not be the first time I have broken bad financial news on the internet and I hate to say this but I laughed hysterically at the latest nasty grams sent me by the girls and yes when I publish their affidavits everyone will understand why using the term “girls” to describe Leary and Perret is dead on accurate.

Stay tuned.

sop