#1123 – The Gringo Advantage, Legal Scams, and Solar Energy in Latin America

Automatically transcribed from the original recording; names and wording may contain errors.

[00:00] South of the border down Mexico way That's where I fell in love when the stars above came up to play and now that I wonder Hello there all you ex-pat wannabes. I'm Johnny Mueller and you're listening to the expat files living in Latin America The show that tells you just what it's like to live work play and or retire down here in Latin America It's a mix of the good the bad the ugly and the great and it's all right here. So let's get started That gringo advantage. It's present all the time But not so much on the gringo tourist trail where you're pretty much just a person with a dollar sign on his forehead a guy That's ripe to get gouged as far as the gringo advantage if you pay attention you can notice it all the time

[00:47] In fact the other day I was in a Costco. It's called price smart down here And you know when you're all checked out You got to go through an exit point where they look at your receipt and mark off this stuff in your shopping basket You know to see if someone's had sticky fingers. Well, isn't it funny Latinos always have their receipts thoroughly checked out But very rarely do they ever scrutinize me at all They just look at me see I'm a gringo and pass me right on through now the wokesters would say that's classist and racist Right because the Latina checkout lady is inferring us Gringos and expats are more trustworthy and less likely to have stinky fingers than the locals well call it what you will I call it the gringo advantage So what are you gonna do demand equal treatment? Yeah, right try it. They'll think you're nuts by the way oftentimes

[01:32] I'm sitting around with expat gringos newbies and people who've been here a long time and they start talking about Lawyer rip-off stories. Yep when gringos and expats get ripped off by their own lawyers In fact, just this weekend. I was sitting around with a bunch of gringos and that topic of conversation swung right to lawyer gouge and rip-off stories Because one of those gringos was just freshly ripped off by his lawyer So naturally since we were all gringos it turned into a kind of a competition who has the best lawyer rip-off story Started out with a gringo guy Jim who got ripped off in the Dominican Republic He said he gave a lawyer 500 bucks to file some paperwork in the municipal court system Regarding the value of his property You see the DR has an interesting property tax rule if your property is worth a hundred thousand dollars or less

[02:23] You pay no property taxes ever and sometimes though very infrequently when the government or municipality has a question about the value your property They'll ask for a lawyer to certify that in other words If your place is starting to look high class and really like a gym Sometimes you'll have to justify why the place is only worth 100 G's or less so this particular gringo paid a lawyer 500 bucks to put the proper paperwork together and Then about a year and a half later when he went to sell the property in other words the present day He found that lawyer never registered the document He just took the 500 bucks and ran causing an even bigger problem for the gringo who lost that dough Then came gringo Kevin's lawyer rip-off story Turns out he bought a very nice house in Panama City worth around 350 grand and he did what you should do

[03:10] He hired a lawyer to investigate the title to see if it was free and clear You have to have your lawyer do it because you see title insurance and title insurance companies Don't exist like they do up in the States down here. If you're gonna buy a property You have to have a lawyer do the title search So anyway, the gringo had his lawyer check the title before he bought the place And he found out the seller owned not only that place but a couple of other houses and a meat processing business Turns out though the guy owned a ton of back taxes on not that house But the rest of his businesses he owed something like 10 years back taxes on that meat processing plant and my gringo friend Found out that all this guy's back tax problems were bundled together at the municipality And before they'd let the title clear on that house gringo Kevin wanted to buy the seller had to settle that big back tax problem

[03:59] So things were progressing earth. So it seemed that a month later Kevin got a call from his attorney saying the title had cleared the guy cleaned up his tax problem Everything was a go. So they all met up at the seller's lawyer's office to close the deal and they did it Meanwhile about a year later that brings us up to present-day to Kevin an older guy had some medical issues And he had to go back to the States. So he decided to put his property up for sale He had an instant buyer to another gringo friend of his well, he's new gringo buyer friend He did the proper thing. He hired a lawyer to check out the title Even though it seemed redundant because just a year earlier a clean title search came up Well, guess what in doing the title search? Kevin was informed that the previous owner the guy he bought it from made a deal with the government to pay off his

[04:48] delinquent taxes in three installments 20k 20k and 20k. Yeah, that's right. He owed 60,000 bucks in back taxes Well, he paid off the first two installments 20 and 20 But as it turns out his lawyer whoever that was Forged the third installment in order to get the title to clear for Kevin One of the papers was perfectly forged Except something was wrong with the barcode on the paper now They're putting barcodes on things like that so you can scan them Well, it didn't scan which was a huge red flag and now this guy who forged those documents and sold that property to Kevin He can't be found and it turns out he unloaded all his other properties at the same time He sold his property to Kevin and where is this guy now? Well last they heard he was in the US because he married a gringo

[05:34] So now the only way Kevin can sell his house is to get that title free and clear Yep Kevin has to either wait for that guy to show up if he ever does or pony up to 20k himself or he'll never have a Clear title to sell it. So like I said all the gringos in the group were telling their lawyer gouge and ripoff stories and who had the Topper well, it was yours truly I told three different lawyer ripoff stories and the one that beat them all was a story I told a long time ago on this show probably seven or eight years ago now Turns out I was looking to buy a car found a nice two-year-old Suzuki Vittara in the classified ads and this was in Panama, too Took a ride out to see it went into the garage and saw a nice late model Suzuki all dusty and dirty But nice, but all four tires were flat turns out had been sitting in the garage about a year and a half

[06:23] I tried to start it. It wouldn't turn over needed a new battery or maybe more anyway It turns out a year earlier the owner died and the car was being sold by his estate He was a retired military guy living in Panama. He was stationed in the canal zone when the US still occupied it So he knew first hand about plan B's and how his military retirement package would let him live like a king in Panama and or live like a pauper if he returned to the states he retired in Panama So anyway, the reason why they hadn't sold the car in over years because this guy had one relative estranged a daughter up in the States in her late 30s She'd never been down to Panama before and everything passed to her the car the house She had to go down to Panama to sign all the paperwork problem

[07:08] was she didn't speak a lick of Spanish and had never been anywhere in Latin America before so she was down for a Couple of weeks just to clear all that up And that's when they put that ad in the paper to sell that car And I was in the market for just that kind of car mini SUV with a four by four attraction So I went over to see the car and end up buying it now we did the deal and signed all the paperwork in the lawyer's office turned out he was the longtime lawyer of her deceased dad and When we were done She invited me to a little cafe across the street for a cup of coffee and it seemed to me there was some Urgency involved with the request because she seemed just a little nervous uptight out of sorts So we sat down just as to she looked around and said to me that lawyer swindled me He's a crook. She said and there's nothing I can do about it

[07:54] Maybe you can help me and I'm thinking oh, no, I just want to buy a car and get out of here I'm thinking I'm not that guy not today. I just met you lady, but I listened to her story She said she'd been estranged from her dad for some decades Then she had a kid became a single mother and reconnected with him a little bit near the end He sent her photos of his house his property helped her out with some dough and said she had a big inheritance coming Towards the end he was pretty sick and knew he wouldn't last long He sent her photos of his nice big house and great property First world amenities all the way and she said when she arrived just a week or two ago and went into the house. It was completely bare She'd never been there before but she'd seen what it looked like in all the pictures And now it was completely bare There wasn't a napkin a toothpick or even a paperclip not one roll of TP in the bathrooms

[08:44] But she said the very first day she arrived and went over to her dad's lawyers office Which was one of those deals where his office was attached to his house Well, he invited her into his living room for a chat and guess what she recognized all the furniture the desks the sofas Refrigerator the works all the things that were missing from her dad's house that she recognized from the photos he sent So on top of the 10 grand that guy charged her for settling her dad's estate Which was way too much She felt the guy ripped off every stick of furniture in her dad's house and probably would have ripped out the car too Except it had four flat tires and the engine wouldn't turn over. Well, luckily for me I just had to change the spark plugs get a battery and fill up the tires and with a little teasing it fired up

[09:30] Just fine. Oh and as for her dad's bank accounts He had substantial money in the bank, but she never could find out just how much although she did find out that her dad's girlfriend Was down on the bank's paperwork as the person those accounts reverted to in the event of his death All that was a complete surprise to her because her dad had told her that she his daughter was the legal next of kin on Those documents so the accounts were supposed to go to her But in the end it was the girlfriend that got the dough and as for the girlfriend Well, the daughter had never met her before and she was long gone But as she started putting two and two together She figured the lawyer was most likely involved in that switcher route, too The fact is there are tons of live-in couples that didn't get legally married

[10:15] But after six months or so the woman can claim common law marriage status And if the guy dies all she needs is a lawyer to verify that Hmm. So anyway as for the guy's daughter's first trip to Panama, it was disappointment after disappointment She said she just wanted to sell the house in a hurry and get the hell out of Panama So bottom line every time you get a bunch of gringos and expats together You're gonna hear bad lawyer stories and that's generally because gringos find lawyers Whichever way they can because eventually we all need a lawyer for something or another most often It's a rush decision, too You need one in a hurry so you ask gringos at those notorious expat bars for their recommendations Yeah, right worse yet Sometimes you get a lawyer referral from a Latino boyfriend girlfriend or even your cleaning lady or maintenance guy

[11:04] Problem is even if your Spanish is really good There's almost no way to check up on these guys to see if they're legit or if they are known scammers There are no consumer advocate websites to check out lawyers. And though there might be such sites I haven't come across any of them yet. What they really need is a bilingual at Singlish in Spanish Latin scumbag lawyer website where people could post comments and stories about their own lawyer experiences Every Latin country needs one of those that way you could check a guy out look at the complaints and kudos We really need to see the good the bad and the ugly testimonials that clients have posted. Well, maybe someday we can dream, right? Oh, and by the way the fact is About 80% of the rotten lawyers in Latin America are on the gringo tours trail because there are so many

[11:50] Starry eyed non Spanish-speaking gullible gringos just lining up waiting to get cows especially in gringo ice places like Costa Rica Panama and the DR and all those dozens and dozens of resort towns in Mexico as For me, I've been through about three or four bad Latin lawyers myself some good ones, too What do you expect? I've been down here 30 plus years now in one case I was hooked up with a very crooked lawyer But he happened to be married to a good friend of mine a British girl So when I found out hook and crook he was gouging most of his gringo clients At least he didn't mess with me because of my earlier friendship with his wife She'd have killed him if you pull anything like that, you know who you are Guillermo In fact, I once overheard him at a party at his house Talking and joking to some other lawyer friends of his how gullible newbie gringos were not a good sign

[12:39] Talk about red flags, but that was on the gringo tourist trail Like I said when you're off the trail There are just so few gringos that local lawyers just aren't that practiced in the art of the swindle But when you get to those gringo hot spots, it's a different story By the way s for my seminar lawyer He's been with us from the beginning ever since we started the seminar thing about ten years ago now Oh, and by the way, I was his very first gringo client and yes He's on money on a time they all are and yes He might not answer your texts your phone calls or emails for a couple of days But no one I mean no one's got a bad story of him ripping off Anyone in fact when he's late with something or doesn't get something done on time After all that's gringo has come from a different culture. We want our stuff done yesterday, right?

[13:26] Anyway, when he's later, mrs. A deadline. He absolutely owns up to it. No excuses. He can't help but like him for that So I always tell people when you're dealing with any Latin lawyer. You have to be on it You can't just say please do this this and that send him some money and wait You have to check in with him regularly The problem with almost every Latin lawyer I've ever met is that they don't write things down. I don't get it Oh and just sidetrack in a bit. I never do that, right? When people ask for a few words of advice that I might give to adolescent kids on how to be a success in the future Yeah, believe it or not people do ask me questions like that. Yeah, right like I'm the answer man. Well, I'll give it a shot anyway. I Say look, I've got two maybe three pieces of advice for young adolescent kids just getting started in life First I tell them the two things I learned on my very first day of engineering school when there was an assembly on the head

[14:17] of the school spoke for a while he said Sorry to say but less than half of you will graduate and the others that do have two things in common number one They write things down number two They finish what they started even if it's a miserable and fruitless project They finish it because he said the world is full of quitters So if you get into the habit of finishing what you started, even if it's a tough long boring road It will lead you to success and he wasn't just talking about financial success either was talking about Success in the self-esteem department. I mean doesn't it feel good to finish a project? Let's say you're writing an article or changing your oil paint a house or building a picking table when you finish it feels good It's a nice big dopamine hit Now I've said about that and now an email from Ben from Down Under

[15:04] He says good day Johnny. Can you explain something to me, please because I'm a bit of a dumb prick You see I'm interested in buying some gold coins I just had a look at one of the online gold suppliers here in Melbourne And I'm trying to wrap my head around the fact that for example an American Eagle one ounce gold coin is $350 more than a Canadian maple leaf one ounce. I don't get it They're both essentially the same one ounce of pure gold clearly. He says I know bugger all about this stuff Hope you can shine some light on that for me. Cheers Ben from Down Under All right, Ben, thanks for that, you know, I've been collecting silver and gold coins since the 1960s not that I had any dough to buy them But my uncle Bernie used to give me a silver dollar for every birthday

[15:50] And I bought my first one ounce gold coin a South African cougarand in the late 70s And since then up until the time Bitcoin came around I kept accumulating and you know I'd have never sold any of it though I had the major portion of it stolen by an evil ex that was before I came down to Latin America So there were no Latinas involved Talk about thieves and swindlers in your own backyard. I had an ex who actually stole get this It'll break your heart 200 ounces of gold and 100 ounces of platinum value today over half million bucks back then When gold was 350 in platinum to us around a hundred cheese. No small change in man I was understandably pissed off far beyond the normal range of pissed off at this and man If there ever was a time I wanted to call the hitman hotline

[16:36] But the internet in the dark web didn't exist back then good thing, too Anyway, when bad things happen, usually you get over it kind of it helps when the rest of your life goes really well But it does take time to regroup after a loss like that. So anyway, Ben you came to the right guy I know quite a bit about gold and silver and precious metals in general and here's my take the most Recognizable one ounce gold coin in the world is the Canadian one ounce maple leaf coin and Pretty much tied for second and third place for number two and three that South African cougarand and the US American Eagle all three having Exactly one ounce of gold in them However, the cougarand is a little duller looking because it's got about eight point two percent copper added to it to make it more Durable, that means it's slightly larger than the maple leaf for American Eagle and less shiny, too

[17:25] So it's 22 not 24 karat However at one time way back when it was the only gold coin being produced in the world And that's why it's so recognized because other countries weren't cranking them out yet And now you got 15 sovereign countries cranking out gold and silver and platinum coins You got the UK China Australia Austria and others Still as far as I'm concerned the coin you want to hold and I want to hold is the Canadian one ounce gold maple leaf It's really the most recognizable gold coin in the world That means there's a big buy-sell market for it by the way You know those hundred percent gold coins like the maple leaf and the American Eagle they can be scratched You can bite them and put a dent into them like the old prospectors in movies used to do by the way

[18:10] That's why they put 10% copper in a South African cougarand because it makes it so much harder You can't put a dent in it by biting it, but then again jewelers don't want cougarands They want maple leaves for American Eagles, especially here in Latin America because they'll just melt them down Knowing their 24 carat or pure and then they'll add the amount of copper and other metals to make 18 and 14 carat gold out of it standard gold jewelry stuff That means if you've got a gold Canadian maple leaf or American Eagle You can walk into a jewelry store in Latin America, and they'll usually buy it off you there's a ready market for that stuff But not the cougarands with collectors. Yes, but not with jewelers anyway, Ben I think your suppliers doing you a favor by selling you Canadian maple leaves at a discount to the others Go for it, man. Get the Canadian maple leaf. She won't regret it

[18:57] Oh, and don't forget to download one of those free gold ping apps on your smartphone That way you could check your gold coins to make sure they're 24 carat or point nine nine nine fine gold That's always stamped on Canadian maple leafs in American Eagles For the ping test all you do is turn your app on balance the coin on an eraser head and give it a little tap There'll be a very faint ring or ping and your apple pick that up and each gold coin has its own ping Signature so the app will tell you instantly if it's real or fake. That's why I never recommend buying gold ingots You know those rectangular gold pieces that come in a lot of different sizes I'm against buying those because you can't do a ping test on them that only works for round symmetrical coins So with ingots or gold that's not in coin form

[19:43] You'll never really know if it's pure gold all the way through because there are so many counterfeits out there Of course those fakes feel heavy just like gold But how it's done is they usually take tungsten a heavy metal and just gold plated and there are lots and lots of fake gold coins Too maple leaves American Eagles Coogran's the works, but they won't pass the ping test Alright moving on. You know, I'm a big fan of solar Especially here in Latin America where the Sun is shining all the time And if you're in the Altiplano you got no heat or air conditioning cost That means you could rig up a solar system down here for less than half the price of what you'd pay up in the states And now I'm hearing according to an article sent by listener West that California the state that's got the most solar power per capita in the United States is

[20:29] About to lower the hammer on solar users forcing them to pay what they're calling a grid tax If you've got solar panels, in other words It seems California is a victim of its own success and giving us another couple of reasons why it's time to get the hell out of dodge And if you live in California probably the worst of all states, there's no hope for you So imagine that if you live up in the good old USS of a if your plan was to become self-sufficient Get the hell off the grid big brothers about to ruin those plans to state governments are realizing They lose state tax revenue if you get off the grid and don't pay electric charges anymore So now they're devising laws to penalize you for having solar Well, that's never gonna happen here in Latin America But if you live up in the states and decide to switch to solar in the words of BB King the thrill is gone

[21:17] So anyway listener Wes who by the way has come into my ex- I switched to solar in California. It just made sense to me because we get so much Sun however I've not saved money because the electric company takes the watts that I make during the day with my solar and Gives me the lowest amount of payback per unit when I sell the excess power back to them Then when I use watts at night when the Sun's not shining, of course, and I have to buy electricity from the grid They charge me top dollar for the watts and energy that I use He says I spent $23,000 on my solar system and only save about a thousand dollars per year

[22:06] I'm super frustrated worse yet They only give you a credit on your bill if you owe taxes as far as I know California has never given me any tax credits on top of that He says I pay a $10 per month fee just to be on the grid a so-called grid charge They're talking about raising it to 50 though They haven't yet, but I'm sure that'll come eventually when that comes my net for the year will be an average savings of around $500 for a $23,000 investment and I don't even have an electric car By the way, he says that proposal to charge solar users $50 a month for what the Commission calls grid participation charges that comes from the fact that the Commission's officials say Changes are needed to ensure solar users are equally helping to maintain the state's power grid

[22:55] Which frequently becomes overloaded and ends up in failure mode But critics say if that proposal is approved the changes could effectively kill the rooftop solar business in California Making it virtually impossible for most middle and working-class people to be able to afford solar panels Well Wes, here's my take on that Of course my slant is on doing solar here in Latin America It really pays off though I think the biggest mistake people make at least up in the states when they're doing solar is they don't get batteries They buy into the idea that they can sell excess power back to the local grid Yes, they can and will buy it back but at the very lowest wholesale per kilowatt hour power rates So if you don't have batteries like Tesla Powerwalls, etc There are many options and most people in the states who have solar just have panels and inverters

[23:44] No batteries. That means you can't store any energy yourself You have to count on grid power at night. That also means during the daytime with lots of Sun You're over producing and selling energy back to the grid, but being paid a pitifully low wholesale rate Let's say three cents a kilowatt hour Then at night when everyone's electric use goes way up because the lights are all on and everyone's watching Netflix Now you're buying electricity from the grid and being the retail electric kilowatt hour rate and you're getting taxed on it Usually at 10 cents or more a kilowatt hour That's more than three times what the power companies paying you to buy your excess electricity during the day It's a terrible deal and absolutely not fair But that's the setup in the states Europe and Australia The only way around it is to go completely off the grid That means you can need some storage batteries Tesla Powerwalls or some of the other options

[24:33] But as our emailer shows you're still beholden to the government. They're going to tax you calling it a grid Participation charge. Yep. The malignant state bureaucrats are gonna come out check your house count your panels and tax you even if you have batteries And are completely off the grid why because solar energy kills state tax revenue Have you looked at your electric bill lately? Have you checked out how much of that is tax and excess charges with charges hidden taxes under another name? So my advice whether you're up in the states or down here in Latin America Get some batteries when you do your solar system or else you can run into the very same problems Our emailer ran into you'll end up buying electricity at night at the highest rate Oh and for solar systems here in Latin America I've had a couple of different ones at various places now and I don't sell it back to the local electric power company

[25:24] Although a lot of Latin countries are starting to let you do that now just like up in the states I personally prefer to stay an arm's length away from any government entity That means I don't want to fill out the paperwork and jump through the hoops Necessary to be able to sell power back to the local grid and if that means I have excess power during the day That's going to waste Well, so be it by the way one way to solve that problem is to buy a few Bitcoin and mining machines or any of the other Units that mine shit coins. That means all the excess energy you produce during the day Will be converted little by little into your own cryptocurrency in your own wallet So that is a great way to reclaim all the energy you may have lost by not selling the excess back to the grid And as we've shown that's not really worth it In fact, you're more likely to get pissed off when you look at your electric bill than crack a smile

[26:11] Oh and just one more thing, you know Biden's got that huge What is it two and a half trillion dollar infrastructure bill people are talking about that all the time and all the pork that's baked into it But have you ever considered this all the roads and bridges that are 50 even a hundred years old and are in terrible shape Most people are thinking. Yeah, we need an infrastructure bill. That stuff has to be brought up the snuff or it's downright dangerous, right? But here's what you didn't know Every single gallon of gas you buy has a huge tax built into it For example, if you look up the spot price of a gallon of regular gas It's about two dollars fifty cents and that extra dollar a gallon you pay for gas because it's 350 a gallon Well, that's a road and infrastructure tax look it up So then where do those billions of dollars of gas taxes go and what are they for again?

[26:58] Look it up. It's for road and bridge maintenance and repair. The by the way, we're talking about 300 billion dollars a year in road taxes collected at the pump By the way, same thing with car and truck license fees. Where does that money go? There's billions there, too Where does that money go toxic bureaucrats are siphoning it off for their own purposes They always have though. It's supposed to go to road and bridge maintenance and infrastructure Yet those maggots in Congress are trying to push through a two and a half trillion dollar infrastructure package Think about that for a while. By the way, how is your plan be coming? You've been listening to the expat files living in Latin America If you need some help with your own plan be we can schedule a one-on-one phone or Skype consult Just send me an email the expat files at gmail.com

[27:44] And if you want to get on the waiting list for my next week-long expat insider seminar in Central America Where you're guaranteed to get a two to five year head start on your plan B Send me an email the expat files at gmail.com. No spamos