Tom Vu is a self-declared real estate guru who took many a victim on a hapless ride. Tom Vu advertised by airing many luring info commercials on late night television. He would appear with numerous scantily-clad women on opulent yachts, to advertise his real estate techniques.
Tom Vu is a Vietnamese immigrant who marketed his product mainly through the use of eye-ball grabbing infomercials. Tom Vu used to sell his real estate course for $395. But in reality, the information within was worth less than a penny! It was full of common basics which are freely available on the internet. And as if this weren’t enough, Tom Vu even organized seminars to hawk his incompetent “lessons”.
Tom Vu focused all his lessons of real estate on hard-pressed properties. He taught that it was more advantageous to acquire control over real estate properties, rather than actually owning them. Tom preached that constantly looking out for distressed properties like foreclosures, and then gaining control on them was the real route to estate success.
He explained that such properties were readily available in the market and you could buy rights for them at a very low price. He taught that you shouldn’t offer more than 50% of their market value, and that you should root for heavy discounts.
Tom expanded on this topic by insisting that there were plenty of desperate sellers who would gladly give away their property for a very low cost. But what he doesn’t mention is that, he used these principles in a very unfair manner and actually conned the sellers into signing contracts…
What Tom Vu would do, was to insist on paying a cheap $10 down payment, make the contract valid, and actually include a subject to final inspection clause! And since the last date for the contract wasn’t for several months, Tom Vu would find a buyer in that time, and make a neat profit! His courses were full of similar “profitable” methodologies…
Though these underhand tactics seem simple and legit on paper, this is far from reality. First, distressed properties are not easy to find. And even if you did find one, it’s next to impossible to get its owner to sign a contract for $10. But these loopholes were overlooked by scores of people who fell for his ‘get-rich-quick’ scheme. There naivety made them ready victims for this shady scam guru.
Tom Vu is currently cooling his heels in jail. He is serving term for various charges like fraud, tax evasion, and fraudulent advertising. Just deserts, we think.
