James Catledge
speaker
208 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard Apr 2025
James Catledge’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
And by the way, the largest law firm in the world, Greenberg Taurig, is paper and all this stuff. So this is all vetted. Everything's legit. There's no schemes that I'm aware of. He says, we're going to run out of cash flow, and I'm not worried about you, and I'm not worried about your people. I'm worried about the clients. I said, well, you have to pay the clients.
They bought the units, so it's not constructed yet. You have to pay them their dividend that they're due until the thing's constructed. He says, we're not going to be able to do that. So my clients don't know anything about the Dominican Republic except for me leading them there. They couldn't find it on a map, except we took them there. And we did take them all there.
And they're all going there to do the transaction. I meet with the largest law firm in Nevada here, who is my lawyer for my company and my business dealings. Lionel Sawyer and Collins is my firm, right downtown Vegas here. My attorney says to me, I'm concerned your partners are not using the money the way you think they are.
I said, well, what's your legal advice? He said, I want to meet with their attorney here in my office. We bring him up from Santa Monica. They meet together. At the end of that meeting, my guy comes to me and says, I'm so glad we got that on the record. I made lots of notes. You're involved in a crime, an ongoing crime. He says, I've got all the notes on it.
The guy basically explained that they're taking new money. And using it to pay old obligations. That is the definition of a Ponzi scheme. I said, okay, so what do we do? He says, you need to sue them and get a receiver appointed to the property so they don't further diminution the damage to your clients. So I do.
I pay $1.3 million to a law firm in Miami, Florida that my attorney helped me select to sue in the Turks, Dominican Republic, and Canada, where these guys are from. in federal court in Miami. I spend 1.3 million, 644 clients are in this lawsuit. We're all plaintiffs. My salespeople are in this thing because we all own these units too.
My wife and I, my mother, all of our friends, we're all in this stuff. We own these condos. The judge says after nine months of pre-litigation in the court, pre-trial stuff, he says, I'm closing the resorts. We're turning them back to the bank. And you guys need to sue separately the salespeople and the developer. Don't just sue the developer.
The judge instructs my 644 plaintiffs to put the target on their salesperson, which is not me necessarily, but I'm running the company, and then name the company. So I now have 644 potential lawsuits, individual plaintiffs who have a claim that a judge has suggested they have. So this turns into a nightmare. SEC, IRS, Department of Justice,
All the windbreakers decide they need to take a look because the judge has suggested this. They take a look. I tell the FBI, I meet with the FBI, and I let the FBI know, hey, listen, I'm available for as long as you need to meet so you understand everything that's going on here.
The moves I've made, the moves my people have made, so you understand the products we sell, I'm available for whatever you need. We meet for 14 hours against the counsel of my lawyer. He says, don't ever meet with them. Don't ever meet with them because they will figure out how to create a case if they don't have one yet. But I just felt like... They needed to know how it was all working.
I just felt like aiming the missiles at me would be inappropriate and certainly disproportionate to what really happened. And so I wanted to be helpful. Well, I didn't understand that cooperation means you've got to say you did something wrong.
It means you, yeah, you have to say you did something wrong and then we charge you and then we go lenient on you while you help us get the other guy. I said, I will never do that. You're talking to the wrong guy. I have nothing to confess. I have nothing to admit to. There is not an email. There is not a Blackberry. There's not a text message. There's never been a smoke-filled room.
And oh, by the way, if you think I'm the dummy, you think we got in a room and decided to split the dough and I would take 20% and he would get 80? You met the other guy. You think I'm the 20 guy? Okay, so this is the discussion I'm having with the authorities. And I said, look, I was paid pure commissions. That's what I've always been paid. My guys were paid pure commissions.
My clients were paid the returns they were promised, all by paperwork by lawyers. I will never admit to something I did not do under any circumstance. Well, seven years into the tenderization of the United States government, the process, Uh, my attorney convinces me that the crime that they will likely convict me of is worth 28 years in a federal prison. Yikes.
So you can either find a way to find something you did wrong. that is a crime so that we can plead guilty to it. Or we go in and hope we don't gamble on 28, 28 years. And, and I said, I did nothing wrong. There's no evidence. I know, I know what went down. There's plenty of, I own this stuff. I own this. I have contracts where I put my money in this stuff. My mother's in this stuff.
There's, if this is about facts, if this is about truth, there's no case. If it's about anything else, They could probably win. If it's about a narrative, if it's about rich guy versus poor guy, I'm going to lose on the rich guy gamble. He said, well, let's face it, James, you got all your money. You're paid 36 million directly 36. These folks may live in a cardboard box.
Now you're going to put 13 of them up on the stand with Kleenexes.
You got an airplane with pilots. Your handicap's five. You've played Augusta National. You've been all over the world. So it's going to be hard for a jury to believe you didn't know something that you didn't know. Even if you were willfully blind, that's a crime. So we get into all that. And in the end, two weeks before trial, my attorney says, let me go negotiate a deal for you.
You must let, don't be delusional here. Don't be arrogant. Don't be delusional. And I'm telling your audience, I'm telling you right now, I don't care how smart you are, how sharp you are, how clear you are. I want you to understand you can be convicted of a crime tomorrow afternoon if it's the government's wish to do so. So don't be arrogant.
Don't be thinking you shouldn't have gotten in, shouldn't have got yourself into something. There's nothing to get into here except real business, okay? And everybody that's in real business could be taken down tomorrow afternoon if they're arrogant enough to be so.
Showing 161–180 of 208 · page 9 of 11
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