Rihanna as The Beverly Hillbillies – loses 2.4 million dollars overnight (American $: that’s real money!)

RiRi’s Beverly Hills mansion purchased in 2009 for 6.9 million – now listed for 4.5 million

by Nevermind Kurt

Rihanna got plucked like a chicken by the fancy Beverly Hills real estate crowd – but the truth is that she was little more than a rich teenager with zero life experience when in 2009 she bought a renovated home held out to be the latest, greatest and “worthy” of an international Star.

Too bad Rihanna didn’t have enough experience to make an informed decision on a multi-million dollar property purchase – because the home was almost 50 years old. Any fool purchasing a 50 year old home would have looked for certain indicators of problems: but not Rihanna, who got suckered. Any fool could have seen that the porch she now complains about was a natural funnel to direct rainwater into the structure of the home. (Clue: when the porch deck is two inches higher than the door it slopes towards, rain will run into the home. DUH!)

Rihanna: Another naive lottery winner

To paraphrase P.T. Barnum (or David Hannum or Hungry Joe Lewis for the purists), “There’s a sucker born every minute and woe to any young and naive lottery winner”

That is what Rihanna is when you get right down to it: a young lottery winner with no experience at money.

Rihanna fit the formula: thin, pretty, darker skin but without negro facial features to distract the mass markets. Lots of energy. Trainable. Voice? Doesn’t matter much these days because the computers take care of that whether in the studio or live on stage.

The product was trained, packaged, tweaked and mass-marketed. The product made big money for Robyn Rihanna Fenty and her creators.

To earn money is one thing. To hold onto it is another.

Rihanna launched a lawsuit last August against everybody in sight including the home builder, the former owner, her real estate agent and home inspector and probably the paperboy too.

The lawyers will be the only winners right now, but Rihanna might be a winner if she learns from this.

There is danger ahead for our young lottery winner.

If Rihanna doesn’t learn to handle money and to look after her own affairs – if she doesn’t stop hosting $20,000 dollar nights on the town – if she doesn’t realize that her income potential and popularity have a shelf life…

If she doesn’t start saving and wisely planning for the future… Rihanna might end up like so many other former superstars.

My advice to the bad girl: It doesn’t matter at all how much you make. What counts is how much you keep.

Further Reading…

The Real Estalker: Monday Morning Morsel: Rihanna

Forbes: Rihanna’s rain-soaked home for sale

Zillow real estate listing for Rihanna’s home

TMZ: Rihanna – I Got Duped Into Buying a Crappy Mansion

I’m from the West Indies – Shane Free has the magic!

Got Bajan? Can I?

I’ve been a Shane Free fan since he accidentally dropped his brand new guitar, put a big ding into it and laughed it off. (Can’t let them see you cry on stage!) That will let Shane know when I first saw him. His fingers were flying that night and if I had half the talent in his hands I’d be about four times as good as I am now. (I don’t deserve that new Telecaster for Christmas I know – but darlin’ you know I’d love it.)

As far as Shane’s voice and song writing goes – no contest. I bow to genius.

Thanks to Matt and all the friends at Guerrilla Remote for producing Shane’s best video to date. That’s what happens when you’re in Barbados and having a great time – The creativity just flows like rum on a Friday night at Oistins. And I hear that wasn’t such a bad time either!

Marcus

Check out Guerrilla Remote and their YouTube channel for other great videos.

British American Insurance fat cats doing fine as policy holders take beating

Cocky BA, CL Financial and CLICO executives have no worries

The numbers have been crunched and the result is what everyone already knew: ordinary BA policy holders will lose. Barbados Today neatly lays it out in a single sentence…

“Thousands of Barbadians who own policies with British American Insurance Company (Barbados) Limited will have to walk away from the insurer without all of what they are owed.” (Barbados Today article here)

A second Barbados Today story about the sale of the new BA office building tells us that although the building was carried on BA’s books with a value of $34 million dollars, it was in fact worth only about half of that.

This outrageous over-valuation of assets is so typical of the entire CL Financial / Clico / British American scandal. Policy holders should remember that company executives made the decisions to over-value assets, and that these decisions were taken for a purpose: to deceive the public and policy holders who believed that the auditors and government regulators were protecting them.

What the public and policy holders didn’t know though, was that the regulators and auditors were more like partners in crime with the CL Financial crooks than unwitting dupes.

Over valuations were only one part of the fraud, for there were other crimes committed too. We published an exclusive story in June, 2009 that showed how CL Financial Group – British American insiders took bribes and kickbacks to have the company purchase land for more than market value…

Court documents sent to Barbados Free Press reveal that a CL Financial Group company involved in a US$300 million dollar Florida land deal – paid more than market value for the land. This happened because the seller of the land provided “incentives” (read “secret commissions”, “bribes” or “gifts”) to company insiders in return for having CL Financial Group purchase the land for more than it was worth.

from BFP’s story CL Financial Group Insiders Took Bribes To Have Company Purchase Land For More Than Market Value!

Partners in Crime then. Partners in the cover-up now.

Government regulators, company auditors & British American Insurance executives – can you really tell them apart?

For years Bajans faithfully made those investments, premium payments and pension contributions. We trusted our Government’s oversight of the Insurance industry. We didn’t ask if our pension funds were segregated and protected: we knew they were because that was the law and we had auditors and government to keep an eye on the insurance companies.

We were lied to: by British American, by our government and by the auditors.

We trusted our government leaders – who took political contributions from CL Financial companies and then looked the other way when those same companies violated the rules, gambled with our money and stole what they didn’t lose.

Then when that house of cards, that Ponzi scheme, collapsed – our DLP Government protected CLICO CEO Leroy Parris and all his friends. And lest the BLP Opposition gloat, we remind Owen Arthur that he was in thick as thieves too.

Once again the ordinary folks who trusted these fine leaders get the backhand, while the crooks continue to live the good life with no worries.

No one will go to jail for what happened, no matter the evidence. You can take that to the bank… which is exactly what Leroy Parris and his friends are doing.