The Investment That Brought Zero Returns

Have you ever invested in the Wrong Business? Did you give your money to the wrong person? Did you overlook a scam? No matter how it happened, it is hard to not blame oneself. After all, you are the one who trusted the investment or person. You put your faith, your money and reputation on the line. But when it really comes down to it, there is someone who took advantage of you. This is typically what happened to a client of mine. An acquaintance took advantage of the relationship he had with my client and made my client lose his investment.

Investment is a risky business. There is no getting around the fact, and no way to control it. There will always be bad people out to scam others or make quick money off others. I didn’t plan to write this article but after having a conversation with my friend, I opted to write this. Some of you read the post I made some days ago about an employee, Joel, who ran away with my client’s money. Well, he has been found, and he gave some pretty useless excuses. It is sad how people want to make it “BIG” real quick and end up jeopardizing relationships built on trust all because of money.

Remember i wrote an article about an employee that ran away with my client's investment. And also said that a representative of my client, David went to the farm to in other to give real time update to the client, since Joel hasn’t been reachable for a while, and when he got to the farm, he discovered that the tomatoes had already been harvested from the farm without notice of the harvest given to the client. David also decided to harvest the corn that was on the farm too as they weren’t properly taken care of by Joel.

After all calls to reach Joel were unsuccessful, David went ahead to harvest the corns by using some locals living around the farm as labour. Upon commencing the harvest, some group of locals came to stop David from harvesting the corns. The reason being that they haven’t seen him on the farm before, and Joel isn’t around (I actually commend the locals for this. It is nice to be another brothers keeper) one of the locals told David that she would try to call Joel, so David should give grace till the next day. David told me that when she said this, he laughed in his mind because he has been trying to reach Joel for days, and here she was saying Joel will be on the site the next day.

To David’s surprise, Joel showed up the next day. Like really? We have been trying to reach him for days, and he showed up just because one of the locals called him? I still don’t understand why. Anyways, his excuse was that his phone became faulty, so he couldn’t return calls whenever he had a missed call. Remember I called his excuse “useless” in the first paragraph, which was how it sounded to me when I heard it. Even a small child would figure out such lame excuse. Apparently, Joel had harvested the tomatoes a week earlier than when the scheduled harvest was set to, for reasons best known to him. But why didn’t he communicate that with the client? Why deceive the client by trying to set the harvest date days after he planned to do the real harvest? And where is the money? Interesting question.

A conference call was made between the client, David and Joel. So the client can hear both sides of the story before giving his verdict. Joel gave the same excuse that his phone was faulty, and this caused his unavailability. He confirmed that he was the one who sold the tomatoes and that the money from the sales was with him, in a Bank. Although Joel claimed he sold the tomatoes way less than what the actual value was, the client just told him not to worry about that and the client let that slide as he was already fed up with the issue.

David and Joel, Along with the client, agreed that withdrawal of the money Joel claimed was in the bank would be made the next morning. Upon waking up, David went to meet Joel and requested they both head to the bank to make the necessary withdrawal. It was then that Joel told David that he had spent the money and there wasn't any money with him. David was dumbfounded. He was furious with Joel that he couldn't just say anything. When asked what he used the money for, Joel said he used it for a personal business.

After the client heard about the new development, he told Joel not to bother paying any money, and he is going to part ways with him. My client lost both initial capital and estimated profits.

My thoughts on this

Joel is a terrible person, he is dishonest and has a bad work culture. He should be grateful that my client is a nice person irrespective of the fact that they are both acquaintances. Also, he was wrong to have decided to use the client's money without informing him first, no matter the situation. It is people like Joel that scares others living abroad from investing in my country as my client is based in Canada.