#1142 – The Expat Files: Gringos, Scams, and Survival 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 as 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 and now from the gringo advantage can be used for evil department So today we've got some tips and things to be aware of Yes, I got to say the gringo advantage can be used for evil You'll find that out soon enough if you move to one of the gringo tourist spots like Costa Rica Cancun

[00:49] Well most anywhere on the gringo tourist trail, especially if you don't speak Spanish So how can that be because you know if you're on the gringo tourist trail and you don't speak Spanish Gringos who do have the gringo advantage over you and often you'll try to Paddle up with or glom on to one or two of them because they'll help you maneuver your way through the non-English speaking minefield You know on the gringo tourist trail There are gringos who speak Spanish who would like to get you dependent on them But you know everything comes at a cost there's a price to pay for that. I see it all the time with fresh green gringos It's a little nuts how some of them put an inordinate amount of trust in someone They just met just because he speaks Spanish and they don't Yep, I've seen it happen with newly arrived fresh green gringos who all of a sudden have a new best friend

[01:35] You know if someone were to break this down mathematically I'd say when you're on the gringo tourist trail your greatest danger of getting screwed or gouged comes from other gringos who speak Spanish not the locals who speak English and Normally when gringos get ripped off or gouged by other gringos when it's done and they realize that they get no satisfaction By the way, that's one of the things that makes a fresh green gringo turn tail and go back home Though it depends on how many of his feathers have been plucked and how early in the game, too Look, what are you gonna do go to the cops and tell him you've been ripped off by another gringo They're gonna laugh at you Besides that if you take some in the court everything is gonna be in Spanish So you'll have to get a translator and a Latin lawyer Yep, you could get a Latino lawyer and go for it But you have heard me talk about the legal process here in Latin America. It sometimes takes years

[02:22] That's why it's very unlikely for someone to get sued Which is a good thing, right? And if somehow you really get gouged for thousands and thousands and you do end up getting a court against a gringo If it becomes a big enough problem for the guy that ripped you up It's easy enough for him to just move to the adjacent country the country next door Then he's off the hook because he's out of the jurisdiction of the country where he committed the crime I'm talking about non-violent crimes now funny enough though I've talked to enough gringos who've been ripped off by other gringos to know Even that a gringo fling in the country because he thinks you'll lose in court rarely happens That means you could be walking down the street Well after the fact well after some gringo gouged you and run into that same guy or see him in a cafe Right in your neighborhood You can be in the presence of the guy that ripped you off in the very same restaurant

[03:10] You might be standing in the same line with him at McDonald's or Starbucks You might want to kill him But you won't do that because you don't want to go to prison in a third world country not good Which reminds me of one of my expat gringo buddies once said to me when some green gringo at a bar asked him why? He'd left the United States why he'd gotten out of dodge and will never go back his answer was simple He said the United States is just not big enough for me and all of my ex-wives Now imagine that situation is shrunk down to a very small country like Uruguay you get ripped off there by some gringo You can't go after him or if you go to court you can't win because the legal system's so flawed knowing that you're always gonna harbor resentment against that guy and when you see him you're gonna boil with rage because he got the best of you and that phrase out of sight out of mind won't apply because she'll be

[03:59] Most likely hanging out in the same districts you are though if you have a good lawyer He might know a guy who knows a guy Just saying Speaking of gringo is using their gringo advantage to do wrong I'm sure you've heard me mentioned in a previous show that every so often I read in the Latin news services or online newspapers of gringo fraudsters and con men with fake professional credentials getting caught and then extradited back to the States It's a funny thing too that most of these guys that do get caught when their background has been investigated you find out They escaped the United States because they were fraudsters up there, too So from what I can see the gringo fraudsters Encounter most exclusively on the gringo tourist trail did not suddenly learn how to screw people once they got down a Latin American

[04:46] Discovered they had a gringo advantage Nope, that's almost never the case. They're generally career con man who did much of the same thing back in the States and They found when they escaped to Latin America they could start with an easy group of marks gullible green expat gringles and as far as their previously blackened and tarnished Reputations they could start fresh once they hit Latin America a clean slate now admittedly many gringles and expats here in Latin America Aren't running from anything at all, but obviously seem to have a big line of bullshit They're not necessarily out to scam you just to make you think they're a little bit bigger and more important than they really are It seems to be a natural defect in humanity that people like to impress like to pump up their resumes For example, you know the statistics say on those dating sites like tinder most men exaggerate their incomes education in height and most women

[05:40] Understate their age and their weight now as far as gringo expat bullshitters here in Latin America You find at least I found that gringas expat ladies have little to bullshit about they don't play that game They're pretty honest with you at least in person except maybe about the age thing But I got to say my bullshit detector goes off quite a bit when talking to gringos and expats I've just met or haven't known for a while seems to be a guy thing It also seems to me There's a certain percentage of gringos and expats who arrived down here who have a kind of a self-esteem problem So they pump themselves up when you talk to them That's why guys like me and so many other long-term expats have our bullshit detector set on high Oh, and here's a good example about a week or two ago a Latino real estate guy came over to my place with a couple clients and

[06:31] By coincidence one of those guys just happened to be a gringo from Florida who'd lived in Latin America for ten years a guy I'd see quite often on my power walk route I'd see him all the time sitting outside in a garden restaurant and I'd sit down have a cup of coffee with him now You know when you're off the gringo tourist trail You don't see many gringos and all and when you spot one or they spot you especially if it's happened repeatedly When you see the same person over and over again, you realize he's not a tourist. He's living down here You eventually say hi, how's it going? How'd you end up down here and all that you go back and forth with all the usual suspect questions the usual gringo banter And if he's a sensitive me to woke stir you drop him like a hot turd So anyway this real estate guy comes in with a couple people one of them is this gringo

[07:17] I've been sitting down and having coffee and pastries with off and on for two years Same time same station same garden restaurant by the Central Park It's the only place I've ever seen the guy but we sit and talk for a few minutes every time we run into each other So anyway, I give him a little tour through the place I show my 29 solar panels and two Tesla powerwalls solar hot water heater rainwater collection system My little radio and podcast studio, etc, etc And the guy looks at me wide-eyed and he says Johnny you weren't bullshitting me He said I've been down here 10 years now Almost all the gringles I meet down here seem to be full of bullshit and you've proved to be the exception to that rule So you get it, right all the time we were sitting down having coffee in session We were discussing solar power getting off the grid getting self-sufficient

[08:05] And then he talking about what he did for a living and what he does in his spare time and me the same Yet all the while he thought parts of it were BS and I had my doubts about his story, too You see both of us had our BS detectors dialed up to 10 because both of us have been around a long long time here in Latin America and we know how certain people like to turn their mundane life stories into something more interesting and enviable Believe me over the years I've heard some real tall tall tales coming from gringos and expats and tourists and who knows they might not be tall tales So you just give them the benefit of the doubt you roll with it because you might never see that guy again But back to those stories of gringos who will gouge and swindly I mentioned earlier that every once in a while more than every once in a while a gringos picked up

[08:55] For some kind of fraud and it's found that he's also wanted in the States for pretty much the same thing So he gets extradited for example just last week came the story of a fake ex-pack doctor who was arrested in Ecuador and faces extradition to the US because he pushed miracle cures for Covid and Tinfoil hat cures to counteract the deleterious effects of chemtrails Turns out all the victims he scammed with devices that were supposed to block chemtrails all of the victims He scammed were gringos and expats makes sense I personally have never met a Latina or Latino in my life who knew what a chemtrail was it's not on their radar It's not even in their dictionary. I Once tried to explain it to a bunch of Latinos at a party and man, they thought it was a joke

[09:44] They thought I was making it up Anyway, this article goes on to say the national police in Ecuador have arrested a u.s. Citizen wanted for impersonating a medical doctor and selling unlicensed products The 62 year old man identified as Lawrence Castor was taken into custody Thursday according to a statement released by prosecutors He's also wanted for posing as an evangelical minister in the US and collecting Millions of dollars in a scam called your direct line to God Prosecutors claim Lawrence Castor went by several names in Ecuador But get this neighbors in his Palermo apartment complex said he operated a colonic cleansing clinic out of his apartment US Attorney's offices in Medford, Oregon Report that Castor is wanted on several charges including impersonating a physician and selling unlicensed products and services in that state

[10:33] It says in Ashland, Oregon where he lived until he moved to Ecuador in 2018 Castor was charged with injuring a woman during a colonic irrigation using what he claimed was holy water from the River Jordan With the lab analysis showing the cleansing agent was actually a mixture of Red Bull energy drink household bleach and an opioid solution Ouch, then it says according to US Attorney John Tillison Castor faces fraud charges for offering thousands of religious subscribers a direct communication with God He's believed to defrauded people out at least three million dollars Tillson added that Castor is also under investigation in at least four other states besides Oregon The article goes on to say that in 2021 Lawrence Castor held at least two seminars in Vilcabamba selling devices he claimed would protect wearers from COVID-19 infections and chemtrails

[11:24] The devices consisted of a velcro band lined with lead film and magnets that he sold for $50 It says the neighbors in the Palermo complex said Lawrence Castor was quiet and courteous and kept to himself Though some neighbors complained to management on occasion about a foul odor coming from Castor's apartment Likely related to his colonic irrigation treatments Hmm. Isn't it funny? It seems like every time the cops catch a cracked weirdo The neighbors say he was quiet courteous and kept to himself How often have we heard that from the neighbors after guys been caught with 12 people chained up in his basement Anyway, that's why I always say if you get nicked or gouged by another gringo whether for five grand or 50 bucks

[12:10] I know it hurts, but it's a good lesson to learn Because I know there are some expat gringles out there have been nicked for a lot more than that into the hundreds of thousands And it's usually on a land or investment deal You know those teak and pineapple Plantation projects presented to gringos in English blogs blurbs and English language tourist rags your gut to keep away from that stuff The thing is though somehow you take a very astute at bright industrious gringo Who's made money and it's very successful up in the states you bring him down to a tourist area like Costa Rica or Cancun Somehow when he gets off the plane and that tropical air hits his face And there was rose colored glasses kickin something strange happens and those sharp minds and business skills fall along the wayside and

[12:58] Somehow there's always that deal that you got to act on right now where it'll get away That's why I always say to gringos and expats who whine and complain how they've been scammed out of two three or even five grand Let's say it hurts. All right, but it's a cheap lesson learned In fact, I nearly got skinned for 20,000 bucks in Costa Rica. It's a pretty interesting story and here's how it went down One day I was sitting in my lawyer's office my good lawyer in Costa Rica You remember I mentioned in a past show when I first picked up a lawyer in Costa Rica He said I'm a very honest lawyer. In fact, he was a professor of law at the University He was also a soft-hearted guy who had written two books of poetry that have been published Not to mention he was the last person in Costa Rica to have been struck down with polio So he walked with a gimp

[13:44] But on the other hand, his dad was mega rich and owned a gigantic teak plantation So he had a hell of a safety net. Oh And just as an aside like we haven't been having lots of asides today here He came right out and told me he married the wrong woman an upper-class Costa Rican Latina Because well, he was upper-class himself and they tend to marry their own right who he said was an absolute Gringo wannabe and I guess that's where I first heard that term from him many years ago Gringo wannabe he said she just love flying up to Miami three four times a year to go shopping So as much money as this guy had he said she spent at all He had no savings, but he was set to come into the family money to teak plantation money when his dad passed He worried about that once he got the family fortune what his wife was gonna do with it

[14:34] She was a bottomless money pit. He said I knew her she wore the pants and man did she dominate him? Yep, and she went to all the helicopter schools and spoke pretty good English and I remember every time she'd come around She'd tell me how wonderful the United States was and how their three kids Although she allowed them to go to grade school and high school in Costa Rica helicopter schools, of course She was gonna send them to university up in the States and you know what that would cause Anyway, it seemed to me that she felt she had done her husband a favor cuz she could get any guy She was good-looking and upper-class and she'd married a guy. Although his family had money. He had some obvious defects He just wasn't that handsome and had a kimpy leg. So that was the setup. That was what he married into He also told me she went on lots of trips to the United States alone

[15:22] Hmm and through him my first good lawyer in Costa Rica I learned all about upper-class latinas and why as far as my experience I've never seen a love match work out between a gringo and an upscale Latina from a wealthy family Problem is you see when their parents have money They're taking care of and pampered all their lives and get everything handed to them and though personality wise They may be very nice young ladies. You want to talk about high maintenance man? I could tell you stories By the way, I've never met an upscale Latina who wasn't enamored with the United States who didn't have as her goal To own an apartment in Miami preferably South Beach, of course I know I know I'm gonna get accused of generalizing here But so far none of my gringo friends who've gone out with upscale latinas have ever proven me wrong

[16:10] In fact a couple of my gringo buddies who got very serious with latinas whose parents had dough They told me in the end they were lucky to break it off because they realized that it was daddy The patriarch of the family the guy who had all the wealth and controlled it He was the guy that set the rules and made all the decisions You could marry his daughter, but she was still always under his thumb and by association you were too well at least until he died But I digress as usual back to that situation I mentioned before where I almost lost 20 G's but didn't through dumb luck and by the skin of my teeth So anyway, my good Costa Rican lawyer, I say good because he told me when I first hooked up with him He wouldn't do anything illegal or sketchy, but he had another lawyer friend on the side who would when necessary And yes, the time did come when that was necessary

[16:58] Anyway, one day I was sitting in his office and he said, you know, Johnny I have lots of Latino clans who are cash poor and land-rich and he said, you know If you've got an extra twenty thousand dollars in cash laying around and you want to put it to work I can get you a five percent interest a month do the math on that and you'll know it's around 60% on your money per year and I said, yeah, right. What's the hitch since back then on a u.s dollar CD you could put fifty or a hundred grand in one of the local banks and get ten percent a year, but 60% that was too good to be true You know what they say about things that are too good to be true But I was a greenhorn and I said tell me more he said don't worry. It's not an unsecured loan I make sure to get hippo tech us or mortgages on their properties

[17:44] And then if they don't pay after about three months or so, we go to court and you get the property He said I'm a lawyer. So I make sure all the paperwork's right and you do get the property In fact, he said a guy right down the street. I know him. He's got a little storefront in a commercial building It's worth at least thirty thousand bucks And he said I can get that property as collateral if you lend him twenty grand I know him he said he's always been a decent guy. So I did it I signed the paperwork handed over the twenty grand and sure enough the guy paid me five percent every month Paid it directly to my lawyer. It was better that way besides the fact that they were acquaintances So if there ever was a problem, I know he could get the money out of the guy better than I ever could So anyway in the first year the guy paid like clockwork five percent every month in the second year

[18:30] He'd miss a month or two or three and then catch up again And in the third year he stopped paying turns out he was getting divorced and his wife locked up his bank account So I had a meeting with my lawyer We decided to give him three more months and then go after his property Seemed simple enough, and then I got a call from my lawyer about a month later He said we can get the property all right the storefront But he hasn't paid the property taxes in 20 years with all the penalties etc That works out to around ten grand turns out the property taxes on the place were something like three hundred dollars a year So anyway, the lawyer said in order for us to get possession of that property I have to pony up the ten grand property tax that was in arrears Which to me still didn't seem like a terrible deal because the place was worth thirty or forty thousand bucks

[19:16] however He and his wife were fighting over the divorce settlement and part of it was that property and that My lawyer said could drag on for years and that would hold up the title and the property taxes would keep accumulating The good news was in those two years the guy did pay his payments I had received about the amount of 20k exactly what I'd lent the guy So I broke even by the skin of my teeth lesson learned again, right? And that lesson more or less is this if a guy wants to borrow money from you even if he's got land or property to put up as collateral if His credit is such that he can't get a mortgage or loan at the bank Why would you be so stupid as to lend that guy money when the bank won't if the bank's credit experts won't qualify him? What makes you think you know better now in the end?

[20:02] I should have been really mad at my lawyer right for putting this deal together But I wasn't because like I said before I was a green gringo and those interest rates, man Did they look enticing? Everyone wants something for nothing and they don't consider if it looks too good to be true because you see the people Proposing it to you, especially if they're professionals like a lawyer and get around that argument by saying hey You're in Costa Rica or Belize now, whatever you're not in Kansas anymore things are different down here and you fall for that sometime Especially when you arrive as a green gringo and you've got those rose-colored glasses on it takes a good six months To start seeing things as they really are sometimes a lot longer than that So as for me looking back on that episode It was just dumb luck that I broke even and didn't lose a lot more than that If the guy quit paying after just one year

[20:49] I'd have been in the hole big time and I'd have been forever pissed off at the lawyer who got me into it That's one of the big problems with being a gringo or expat on the gringo tourist trail Everyone thinks you've got door to spare so they spring all kinds of ideas on you and some of them are pretty hard to resist But back to that seemingly nutty business of the guy only 20 years in back taxes on the plate That would never happen back in the States. You quit paying your taxes for two years. The county will put your place up for auction But here in Latin America, they just don't do that They haven't got anybody to enforce those kind of rules They'll never come out your house and knock on your door say you know 10 years in back taxes No, they'll keep adding old tax bills to new along with some penalties And if there's ever a sale or the title changes hands That's when someone's gonna have to fork up the dough or they won't issue a new title

[21:36] Alright been getting a lot of inquiries lately about how my brother has been doing since his stem cell treatment Which finished around two and a half months ago You know to recap this a bit. My brother is kind of the poster child for stem cell treatments He's in his late 50s. He's 50 pounds overweight He's got high blood pressure arthritis vertigo night sweats night terrors Occasional depression high cholesterol a skin condition similar to shingles But it's not he's had five or six surgeries because he had many injuries as a hockey player in his early days And he went to the stem cell clinic Basically because doctors were telling him he would need two shoulder replacements at a knee replacement like now And he's awful depressed because he's got a certain kind of arthritis when it goes untreated

[22:25] He develops all kinds of itchy red patches on his legs and arms something like psoriasis, but it's not so every two months He's got to go get this injection of a toxic substance that they use for chemotherapy But it seems to suppress that particular kind of arthritis I never even heard of that problem till my brother told me he had it Anyway, my brother came down with all these bottles of pills 21 prescription medications and on the first day the doctors immediately knocked him down to around half about 12 Prescriptions and then he went through a three-week detox including chelation ozone treatments high doses of vitamin C and other vitamins and minerals and Then at the end of all that he got 300 million stem cells by IV and three other injections of 25 million stem cells

[23:15] One in each shoulder joint and 25 million in his bad knee and now two and a half months later Here's what he tells me for years. He said he had to take oxycodone every night Because he couldn't find a position to sleep without pain He had such night pain in both shoulders He couldn't go to sleep without oxycodone and now two months later. He says he doesn't need the oxy anymore He can go to sleep without pain first time in years and As far as his bad knee, he says he can walk on it after a while It hurts but not like before before every two blocks you'd have to sit down and rest now He says he could keep on walking. It's not perfect He said but much better than before but the thing he's most happy about is he hasn't gone back for those arthritis shots He waited and waited and nothing happened. The arthritis did not return neither did those red spots on his arms and legs and

[24:07] Then you get this just the other day. He called me up and he says guess what you're not gonna believe this But there's hair growing back on my head My brother's one of those guys who has the monk look, you know, three-quarters bald and he says his hair is growing back Anyway, that's the report two and a half months after my brother's stem cells We'll give you another update two or three months from now And for all you guys and girls who've been writing me about that stem cell clinic in the DR It's set up now So that there's an English speaking person that can walk you through the whole thing and set you up for the whole trip Because you see that's what it was lacking before when I went there with my brother There were no gringo or expat patients at all. They were all Spanish-speaking Latinos Now, of course, I hooked up my brother and a couple of other expat insider seminar attendees

[24:53] They've been through the clinic and though I'm not personally involved with this I know the doctors the staff and an English speaking hand holder so I can hook you up So will it work for you? I'll tell you what I'm a hundred percent sure of if my doctor said I needed a knee shoulder or hip prosthetic replacement I would definitely give stem cells a try first And I think it's an absolute tragedy when a person up in the state says I'm gonna get the knee Replacement because my insurance is gonna pay for it Man, that's a major surgery and not without risk besides that you'll never have complete joint mobility in that area again Sure, when it all heals up, you'll be with our pain. That's the point But did you ever see what that looks like after it's healed? Well, it's like what dr. Frankenstein said about his creation. He ain't pretty but he gets around

[25:41] So I don't know about you. But as for me, I'll definitely go for the stem cells first and as for the plastic and titanium that would be plan B and Finally according to the 2021 ranking of the world's 50 most violent cities For all of you who insist Mexico is the place to be Guess what the top eight of the 50 most violent cities in the world are in Mexico In other words, Mexico gets the gold medal for the sheer number of most dangerous cities in the world Now according to this report, you can have a copy by sending me an email the expat files at gmail.com It says quote Mexico has been the world epicenter of urban homicide violence for the last three years And that's without considering the thousands of people that have just disappeared and get this according to the study as of December 2021

[26:32] Cancun was among Mexican cities where citizens felt most insecure as For local residents there eighty five point five percent of us said they don't feel at all secure living in Cancun That according to the National Urban Public Security Survey published by the National Institute of Statistics Now get this it says a notable feature of the most violent cities list was the continuing absence of El Salvador in Guatemala Neither of those countries has a city that appears on the 50 most violent cities list The only two central American cities to appear on that list were Tagusi Galpa and San Pedro Sula The two most populated cities in Honduras By the way for Colombian cities appeared on that list and for all you expat wannabes and gunnabes who might be thinking about

[27:22] Moving to Brazil as your plan B There are nine Brazilian cities on the top 50 most violent cities in the world list nine cities You've been listening to the expat files living in Latin America If you need some help with your own plan B We can schedule a one-on-one phone or Skype consult just send me an email the expat files at gmail.com 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