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Aug. 25, 1999 - Art Bell
02:54:05
Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Edmund Pankau (Living off the Grid)
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Time Text
Welcome to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
Tonight, featuring Coast to Coast AM, from August 25th, 1999.
From the high desert in the great American Southwest, I bid you all good evening and or good morning, as the case may be, across this great land of ours, and it is a great land.
Remains that, indeed.
And actually beyond.
From the Tahitian and Hawaiian Islands, out west eastward, to the Caribbean and the U.S.
Virgin Islands, south into South America, north all the way to Santa Country at the Pole, and worldwide on the Internet.
Thanks to Broadcast.com for the distribution, and of course, the Intel Corporation for their wonderful mathematics that allowed this G2 program.
It really is amazing.
G2, what will it do?
Well, gee, it will allow you to see and hear the program at the same time.
So, in other words, you go to my website, download G2.
It's free.
Free, free, free.
Nice word, isn't it?
You download the G2 program, install it into your computer, return it to my site, click it on streaming video, and there I will be doing the program.
And you'll be able to actually see and hear me at the same time.
It's an amazing technology, and you can do that from here or the other side of the world.
Ain't the internet wonderful?
Now, a couple of other things.
We have a crop circle formation, which I think is a real crop circle formation.
And when you click on it, when you click on it, Maybe it's real, maybe it's not.
I think it's real.
Somebody should check the crop circle connector and tell me if they actually find it up there.
If they do, there's no question about it, this is an alien gray.
It is a crop circle of an alien gray, if I've ever seen one.
Now, whether it's legit or not, I don't know.
Somebody will have to check the crop circle connector and tell me.
And at Sandia Labs, they've got a night camera.
You remember what Peter Davenport was on talking about?
Remember that?
Sandia National Laboratories has a night-time camera out, and on that night-time camera, they caught this incredible flash that literally turns night into day.
That literally, the other day, turned night into day.
Going back to the old Close Encounters of the Third Kind, when they interviewed the Frenchman.
Remember the translation to French?
And the translation was, the sun came out last night.
Well, what Peter told us about sort of translated in my mind to that, and when you see the photographs, and or the moving video they have also, of what the Sandia Labs caught, indeed the sun came out the other night.
Now, ABC has a new game show, a new hit game show, it's called Who wants to be a millionaire?
And today it crowned its first half-millionaire, a Virginia lawyer, who passed up a one-in-a-million opportunity, well, I guess a one-in-a-million opportunity, to double his winnings from a half-million dollars to a million dollars, but the category, the only category that he could respond to was metal music.
This is a lawyer Who had a half million dollars in the kitty, and all he had to do was answer one question in the category of heavy metal music.
This is from the Associated Press, folks.
And he declined.
Listen, in Egypt, folks, they have discovered something really incredible.
Dr. Zahi Was, the Director of Antiquities at Giza, and a good friend, He's probably angry with me now because he wants me to come to Giza and I'm not going to be able to do it.
Here's Zahi Hawass.
Found 110 mummies encased in gold.
G-O-L-D, gold.
And they're predicting that as many as 10,000 more, 10,000 more may be buried at the same site.
That one sank in a little bit.
There is one more item I want to get in here before we go to a quick break, and that is this.
A scientist at Brookhaven, Long Island... Oh, the headline actually reads, New York scientist plans strange matter could cause all matter in the universe to collapse this November or December.
New York.
Scientists at Brookhaven, Long Island have built a 2.4 mile underground tunnel Where they hope to recreate nothing less than what they believe was the second, or the biggest, not second biggest, but the biggest event in the history of the universe.
Within two spiffy, shiny tubes, the ion bunches race around RHIC's, that's their acronym, RHIC's 2.4 mile ring in opposite directions.
Brookhaven physicist Thomas Ludlam Each collision will be like a mini Big Bang!
He continues to say, we also expect to be a little bit surprised, since this has never been done before.
They may be a lot surprised, because you see, other scientists are not as sure that this is really a cool idea.
One scientist suggests that the little bang might be a big bang, And the headline is, Big Bang Machine Could Destroy Earth.
In other words, one time around the tube.
You know, to me, this falls under the category, we've talked about this a lot of times, of things that we can do, but should we do it?
Of course, we plow ahead and we do it because we can.
But eventually, one of these things is going to do something like this.
I'm not suggesting that I necessarily agree with the scientists who say that everything could blink out, But I'm also not disagreeing with them, and you know, you reach over to flip up, no doubt they have a little safety thing like for a launch, you know, you flip up the switch protector, and you reach in and you press the switch, and they race around this 2.4 mile ring, and they collide, and the scientists think you get a mini Big Bang.
Well, what the hell's a mini Big Bang?
Bang created everything that is.
What if a mini Big Bang Is big enough to take out everything we can see?
All the stars, all the planets, everything.
What if?
Go ahead, and we're going to do it anyway.
And I think that's worth a few moments of thought, pondering.
In a moment, I'll tell you more about Ed Pankow, who is a fascinating man.
Absolutely fascinating.
There's much to say about him, and I will say it, and then we will speak with him.
Now, we take you back to the night of August 25th, 1999, on Art Bell's Somewhere in Time.
Now, Edmund J. Pankow is one of our nation's top ten private investigators.
Top ten.
He has also become recognized as one of the most informed financial and asset recovery experts in the country.
His expertise has prompted many clients in industry and government to utilize his investigative talent to document fraud, to locate and recover hidden assets.
Pan Gao is also a best-selling author and renowned public speaker.
In this his fifth book, number five, Hide Your Assets and Disappear, He's taken an about-face approach to his search and recovery techniques.
Techniques that he has taught two thousands at seminars and spelled out in fine detail in his bestseller.
He is an associate editor of BI Magazine, a contributing writer to International Living, writes regularly for numerous financial and investigative trade journals, and authored several award-winning books on privacy and investigation to include Everyone's Guide to Investigation, How to make $100,000 a year as a private investigator, and the PI portfolio.
All over the place.
My show, of course, Joey Reynolds, G. Gordon Liddy, the NBC Nightly News, ABC's 20-20, Larry King Live, ABC Nightline, BBC London, Gerardo Rivera, CNN, Your Money, CNBC Moneyline, Sally Jesse, I don't know, where hasn't he been?
He has investigated now for 20 years some of the highest profile cases in the entire country.
He's a graduate of the Florida State University School of Criminology, founder and director of Pancow Consulting, an international investigative agency headquartered in Houston, Texas.
Ed, welcome back to the show.
It's a pleasure to be here, Art.
I'm happy to have you.
You are such an interesting person.
Your job is so interesting.
There are a lot of people, Ed, and I think I'll start here this time.
From our last show, I can tell you that I got a million emails, and what people want to know is, how do they get into your business?
What's it really like versus what the movies, you know, they paint a private investigator in a certain way, and it looks very romantic.
Well, in some ways it is, in some it isn't.
You know all of this romance and intrigue that everybody loves so much.
Is it like it is in the movies, Ed?
Well in some ways it is, in some it isn't.
If you do this business as I have for more than 25 years, yes you get the romance, you
get the intrigue, you get to investigate and look at some of the most interesting things
in the world.
But it is a business and you've got to work at it like every other job.
But this is a business that depends more on inspiration than perspiration.
It's a business based much on common sense but also having a very good generalist mind so you can look at things and get a good broad brush idea and know where to go for more information.
Here's, I guess, something that I would ask you and ask for a good, honest answer.
Now, you've made it to the top of your field, and so your answer here, I understand.
You know that sometimes it can be like in the movies, very, very romantic and dangerous and intriguing and all of that, but then there is also the other depiction in the movies of the guy sitting in the little broken-down office, you know, with the shingle on the door and the Well, 25 years ago there were a lot of people like that.
he's just sort of kickin back taken a
a knockoff of his a whiskey uh...
that kind of picture of a p i how many end up like that
twenty five years ago there were a lot of people like that when i first got in this business most private
investigators were people that either
dot fired from of the police department or they left under bad circumstances
and uh... most of the war a little one man agency and they were they were just
like uh... humphrey rogart But today, you've got people that come into the business from computing, from banking, from all types of other fields, and I've seen this business really grow up as a profession.
And first off now, there's as many women private investigators as there are men.
Really?
Women are much more Well, I bet they're also, in some cases, better as PIs, period, because when you're making a phone call and you're saying you're somebody from some credit agency or whatever it is you guys do, to get information why a woman, for some reason, seems much more trustworthy than a man with those kinds of questions, don't they?
Well, many times they do, and two, It depends on what kind of person you're talking to.
I have a woman that works for me that has a voice that no man can hang up on.
And as long as she'll talk, they'll listen and answer questions just for her voice.
I see.
I understand.
Believe me, I understand.
And so, that is her asset.
Exactly.
I imagine there's a kind of a, must be a kind of a A shady side, too, at the lower echelons of your profession.
There has been, but again, it's really grown up a lot.
The shady side, the people that did illegal acts or that lived on the edge of the law, many of them have either gone out of business, been closed up, or just can't get clients anymore because much of what we do shows up in court Investigators now have to testify a lot to the findings.
So in other words, the old picture of PIs busting down motel room doors, taking a picture and running.
Not so true anymore, or still true?
Well, rarely.
But as I say, 25 years ago, I did some of that myself.
Did you?
Today, much more of our work is either done on computer, or it's done with an attorney developing evidence for court.
Putting together more factual information.
Well, in the NFL, if you're a wide receiver, speed counts.
And I would think knocking down a motel door, taking a picture, speed would count.
Oh, yes.
Oh, yes.
You have to have the car engine running.
You've got to have that camera loaded and ready to run.
Well, I imagine you could probably tell some colorful stories from your beginnings, eh?
Oh, it's something.
I look back on the 25 years I've been in business and you name it, we've done it.
I'll bet.
Same way with me.
You name it and I've done it.
It's been a roller coaster ride for sure.
Anytime you're near the top of your field, whatever it is, you collect some pretty good stories to be sure.
I don't want a lot of comment on it, but Ed, I can't resist.
I was so blown away earlier today, this statement, you know, I'm involved in litigation, and there is this statement that was made by the other side's legal team and put up on a website by one of the litigants.
You read that statement, I take it?
I did.
Do you have any comments you wish to make on it?
Well, there's a couple of things.
The first thing is, they said that judges are insulted with affidavits.
Oh, yes.
And really, affidavits are the backbone of a lot of court cases because it gives, in one person's own words, their knowledge of the facts.
Of course.
And judges use affidavits every day, particularly for what's called summary judgment motions, to show that there's an independent third party and that they say X, which supports Y.
And, you know, I give affidavits all the time whenever I testify or whenever I put together my information so that it gives both the court and the other side a preliminary indication of what they're going to face if they go to court.
And, of course, affidavits turn frequently into depositions.
Very often they will.
That's a good snapshot for the meat of what people are going to tell if they are deposed.
So judges generally are not insulted by affidavits?
Oh no.
In fact, it's one of the ways that they can look at a case and determine should this go forward or not, or is this worth the court's time or not.
And to characterize the ones who signed affidavits in the manner that they've apparently been characterized here, really shocking.
I couldn't believe it.
Well, there's a couple of things.
First off, this paralegal is basically insulting them and trying to contaminate them as potential witnesses.
There's also an implied threat in there in that they can now get their divorce settlements, their tax returns, their social security numbers.
If a person gives an affidavit.
It even says also their bowel habits.
Ah yes.
We're talking anal retentive here.
Oh man, I've never seen anything like this in my life.
Anyway, that's something for us to deal with.
I take it you probably see that and worse in the work you do.
Oh yeah, as I say, this goes with the territory.
The one comment I was going to make is if a person gives an affidavit and the other side wants to depose them, they can depose them, but they basically have to stick to the issues.
They can't bring in their tax returns just because they gave an affidavit.
Unless the affidavit has something pertinent to do with their tax returns, it just can't be done.
This same paralegal who wrote this thing went on Mr. Oates' radio show Talking about the litigation, and I wrote a book called The Art of Talk, which is an autobiography about myself.
I read the book.
Oh, you did?
Well, she said something roughly like this, that Art Bell, what kind of man, would attack his sister with a shovel, leaving a permanent scar upon her nose.
And, you know, that's true.
That's in my book.
But, see, that's where she stopped, you know.
And, actually, if you keep reading the incident, you find that the incident occurred in a sandbox when I was, I think, maybe five and my sister was three or four.
Now, she would have been three.
And so she leaves out that part.
And so it sounds like, as a full-blown adult, I went after my sister with a shovel.
Oh my God, what kind of man is this?
This is the kind of thing we've been getting from the other side.
I was in a sandbox, Ed, when I was five.
Oh, yeah.
Well, as I say, people that fight the legal battles outside the courtroom are just asking for trouble, and also, they incur personal liability by doing so, and also can subject their firm, if the firm has knowledge and allows this, They can incur liability themselves.
They can, you know, instead of being a witness, be a defendant.
Well, there are some very reputable people who signed these statements, very reputable, who might not take too kindly to this, but so be it.
Ed, hold on, we'll get back to you in a moment.
We're headed toward the bottom of the hour.
Yeah, these things you must see for yourself, folks.
They're on my website under tonight's show.
So just go check it out for yourself, and you can characterize it the way you want.
Remember, you can get hold of me at Art Bell at mindspring.com.
You're listening to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time, on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM, from August 25th, 1999.
25th 1999.
Free.
Only want to be free.
Free, only want to be free We'll rockabye baby in the treetop
When the wind blows the bread will roll We'll rockabye baby in the treetop
When the wind blows Well Jack be nimble, Jack be quick
Jack jumps over the canopy He jumps so high up above
He landed in the cradle of love We'll rockabye baby in the treetop
When the wind blows the bread will roll We'll rockabye baby
in the street park when the wind blows.
No.
Hi diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon.
And on her way down she met a turtle dove, said let's go rockin' in the cradle of love.
Rock!
Well rock-a-bye baby, in the street park.
You're listening to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time, on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from August 25th, 1999.
You watch, you'll find this song rattling around in your mind, irresistibly, soon.
soon. It takes about three or four exposures and then you're hooked.
Now we take you back to the night of August 25th, 1999, on Art Bell's Somewhere in Time.
Now we take you back to the night of August 25th, 1999, on Art Bell's Somewhere in Time.
you you
Now, look at this from Anchorage, Alaska, all the way from Alaska.
Ed, your book, you might like to know, somebody just checked and faxed me.
At Amazon.com, in Alaska right now, is the number one selling book in the whole state.
Alright.
Did you know that?
Well, it was actually after my first show with you, it was number one in the nation.
Really?
Oh, yes.
Number one.
It came from what to number one?
Well, it was probably at number 110 or something like that.
From 110 to number one?
Right.
In just this one day, in fact.
I got 75,000 web hits on my site at www.pancow.com the day after I did my first show with you.
This must be one heavy book.
Let's face it, the title of your book is Hide Your Assets and Disappear.
Are there really that many people who would like to hide what they've got and just blink out?
There really is.
This is an idea whose time has come.
Apparently.
There are a lot of people that, first off, want to just drop out of society.
They've just had it.
And it's really interesting, the information overload that's been caused by all of the things related to computers and technology and everything else... Oh, are you right.
...has literally doubled the suicide rate.
Uh, and it's most obvious in Australia and New Zealand because they've been exposed to our technology in a couple years where we've had 20 years to get used to it.
So, Australians and what was the other?
New Zealanders now have the highest suicide rate and the highest incidence of serial killers in the world.
What?
Mm-hmm.
Australia has the highest rate of serial killers.
Not percentage-wise.
Percentage-wise, Australia beats the United States and, you know, we're like number two.
That's amazing!
And here I thought, all this time, we were the worst.
Well, we're worse, but we've got a lot bigger numbers.
But Australia, percentage-wise, is a good buy.
Oh, that's amazing!
A lot of people just, they've had it.
There's an overload.
Whatever it is in society, they're sick of dealing with people.
They want to start a new life.
They want to erase their old life.
They want to take the money and run.
Exactly.
There's people that read books like Anne Rand's Atlas Shrugged and they say, I want to be John Galt.
I want personal freedom.
I want financial freedom.
I don't want the cheese.
I just want out of the trap.
Goodbye cruel world.
Exactly.
Well, first of all, I noticed in some of the materials that were sent to me about you since our last show that you have been commenting on somebody who disappeared recently but is not doing a real good job of it.
What was that all about?
Over the past year, there's been a lot of articles published and a lot of stuff done about this guy, Marty Frankel, that stole somewhere between $350 million and possibly as much as a billion dollars by defrauding insurance companies.
That's a lot of money.
It really is.
It may be the largest individual financial fraud in the history of the United States and possibly the world.
We don't know yet.
So Marty's on the lam.
Oh yeah, and Marty left the United States, he went to Spain, he went to Italy, and he's just been walking around the streets of Rome, and this is a guy who's not a rocket scientist.
Every police agency in the world is looking for him, and he's sitting at these little coffee shops and using cell phones to call all over and try to figure out what he's going to do.
I don't know a whole lot about disappearing, but even I know that you should go to countries that won't send you back.
In other words, the last show we talked about Belize, and I think there are some other countries in Central or South America that are pretty good that way.
And what are the good countries, by the way, besides Belize, the tropical paradise one may disappear to?
And we'll talk about Belize.
But what other countries are good to go to, and what are bad countries to go to?
Well, suppose he's in Europe, which is what we know to be true.
The very best place for Marty Frankl would be Austria, because Austria does not have an extradition treaty with the U.S.
and many other countries, particularly for financial crimes.
These places view tax evasion as a sport, not a crime.
A sport?
A sport.
It's a way of life.
Basically, once you get in their country, it's like in the Middle Ages, you could go and take shelter and refuge in a church and nobody can pull you out.
And they give you shelter and refuge.
Exactly.
And they can stay there, they can figure out what they're going to do.
Yeah, but what about political pressure?
I mean, couldn't it be that somebody, if we want somebody bad enough, badly enough, that our State Department or whoever does this kind of thing, does a bunch of back-channel pressure and You know, he's whisked out in the middle of the night or something like that.
Well, that may happen, but it takes weeks and months to do that.
And in the meantime, he could decide to go to Estonia or Moldavia, which would also welcome him with open arms.
Really?
I mean, you know, you get a man that says, I'll deposit $50 million in your bank if you'll let me stay here a while.
Meyer Lansky, the great international financial criminal, he did this.
Back in the early 1970s, he donated $10 million to a university in Israel.
You're talking about one of the Founding Fathers now of the city very close to me.
Oh, yes.
Good old Uncle Meyer offered to deposit $100 million in banks if they would let him stay in Israel.
You mean to say bankers are like that, Ed?
Oh, listen.
Money talks.
You know, bull walks.
That's the way it goes.
Yes, right.
Yeah, so the Israelites, the bankers there said, thank you very much, and then how does that, how do the bankers influence the politicians who might otherwise cave and send you back?
How's that done?
Well, most politicians are attorneys.
Attorneys are among the most, shall we say, financially motivated people in the world.
I guess I can safely say that.
You can safely say that and I agree with you, yes.
And attorneys are the ones that make the laws.
Why?
Because we elect attorneys to be politicians.
I never thought of it that way.
Well, it just kind of works out that way.
There's more politicians that are lawyers than probably everything else put together.
But here somebody comes to a country, says, I'll deposit, you know, serious money, if you will allow me to say.
Well, the bankers have their own lobbyists.
The lobbyists talk to the lawyers, the lawyers talk to the politicians, and wonderful things happen.
Yes.
Well, now, here's a question for you.
You said, how much money?
$500 million to a billion somewhere?
Right.
Somewhere between $350 million to a billion dollars.
Plus, he's walking around with gold bars and as much as $10 million worth of diamonds.
Really?
On his body.
On his body?
That doesn't seem like a safe thing to do.
I mean, you can get knocked over in New York City for $20.
Oh, yeah.
And this is what I'm saying.
Marty Frankl should fear thugs and basically the bounty hunters who will bag him for the diamonds much more than the FBI and Interpol.
Because if they get him, he's not going to be arrested.
He's going to be vacuumed and put at the bottom of the river.
Vacuumed, yes.
Yes, vacuumed.
A lot of people who have shifted monies like this around, and I've always wondered how they do it.
Exactly, how do you move, say, a hundred million dollars?
How the hell do you do that?
Many ways.
First off, you do what Marty did, and you buy something small that you can carry on your body that has great value, like diamonds and jewelry.
That's one thing.
So he wasn't dumb there, in a way?
No.
money, cash and puts it in different banks in different parts of the world.
So when he has access to it or needs access to it he can get it through an international
MasterCard or Visa.
He can have a Visa card issued on the Isle of Man's bank and use it anywhere in the world.
Really?
You know, unless somebody knows what the name of the account is in they won't be able to
tie it to him.
So really he's okay except for the fact that he's, there he is in Italy as you said in
a little coffee shop or something and were he to be apprehended there I take it the jig
would be up.
Well, maybe and maybe not.
Again, there's not even, to my knowledge, an arrest warrant for him in Italy.
If he was arrested in Italy, first off, the local police would have to make a command decision.
Do I take $10,000 in American money and walk away?
A command decision.
Or do I arrest him?
And if I do arrest him, what are the charges?
And then he hires an attorney, and an attorney says basically, what charges do you have?
If not, you've got to let him post a bond, another $10,000, and let him go walk.
And Marty is on a plane.
That's right.
Marty is out of there.
So, you know, it's just one big catch-22 or boondoggle the way it's going right now.
Now, Marty should have talked to you before he took off, huh?
Well, I have heard a rumor that they found a copy of my book in his house.
Really?
Well, then why the hell didn't he read the whole thing?
He's emotionally a basket case.
I mean, you take a man that Has stolen this much money, a man that has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars buying ten Mercedes, buying one house for three and a half million dollars cash, another house for a million dollars cash, and the pressure of knowing that the government is looking for him.
And you're not talking about Mr. Stability in the first place.
You're talking about somebody that lost his securities license.
Has screwed everything up he's ever done in his life.
This is the first thing he's ever worked out right.
So it's like he needs mounted mirrors so he can look behind him.
That's right.
And he's having these women companions literally go out and do his errands and run his daily activities right now.
Speaking of women, I'm sure he's not wanting in that category.
With that kind of money you can look awful handsome awful quick, yes.
All right, well, so much for Marty.
What do you think will happen?
Do you think they'll get him?
Well, one of two things is going to happen.
As I say, the bad guys are going to bag him and they'll find his body someday at the bottom of the canal, or he's going to just emotionally run himself to such a point where he just gives up, or they find him making one of the stupid moves that he's making every day, like calling his mother back in the U.S.
They'll be able to figure out where he is from calls like that.
And for that kind of money, I would think that all kinds of things could happen.
I mean, you could be on a plane overnight.
Baloosh!
Sure.
But the thing is, he doesn't know who to trust.
And he's in such a circumstance that he doesn't trust anybody.
He doesn't speak the foreign language.
And the only people he trusts are his bin bets that follow him around.
If he had somebody that was competent, that could provide security and also handle the daily activities, he'd be a fugitive the rest of his life.
Nobody would ever find him, nobody would ever catch him, and he could live the life he wants.
A golden parachuted fugitive.
Exactly.
Well, I don't know.
You could consider that to be a horrible life or I guess depending on how you think about things, it might not look so bad.
Well, there's a lot worse circumstances.
That's true.
That's really true.
So, now let's focus back upon the relatively common man.
A lot of people in America, I mean, this is a very prosperous country right now, and there are a lot of people who have made a considerable amount of money.
And they're just sort of fed up, either with the overload of information, or litigation, or all the crap that's going on at AMA, or they've got a spouse they want to get the hell away from, some shrieking, screaming, horrid witch of a woman, and they want to get away, or whatever it is, for whatever reason they want to split with the Bucks.
What are the... We've just talked about Marty, and I guess these are pretty much the wrong things to do, but how about what are the right things to do?
Well, the right thing to do first is to make a plan.
You've got to say, all right, I want out.
And you ask yourself some questions.
Number one is, do I need good medical facilities?
If so, you want a country with good medical facilities.
Do I like the weather hot?
Do I like the weather cold?
The next thing is...
Does this country have extradition?
And have they signed the MLAT, the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty, which says if you smoke one marijuana cigarette and inhale, then, you know, the government can reach in and touch you.
So, in other words, technically, then, Bill Clinton's still okay, even if he took off.
Well, you know, he's admitted he smoked one marijuana cigarette.
Yeah, but he didn't inhale.
Well, that's right.
That's right.
I forgot that.
You did say inhale.
Yeah, I got to inhale.
But basically, you know, he could go to a country like Belize, he could go to one of a number of Latin American or former European countries, like Moldavia and Estonia, and they will let him live there.
They will not extradite him unless it's a capital crime.
Okay, let's talk about Estonia.
What kind of life in Moldavia or Estonia could one have?
Well, you could have a great life.
I mean, here you've got a country that's a former Soviet Republic.
Right.
It's hurting for hard dollar currency.
Right.
It's a beautiful country.
It looks much like Switzerland did 20 years ago.
The weather?
The weather's not bad, you know.
It's got skiing in the winter.
You've got nice stuff in the summer.
This is where all the Russian politicians and KGB had their winter homes.
And there are thousands of women there that don't care if you've got a Mercedes, they
don't care if you have a Rolex, they just want to know that you have a stove.
So in other words, if you do have a Mercedes and you've got a watch, you're saying there
are thousands?
Well in those countries, if you've got money, if you've got the ability to provide a good
lifestyle, there are thousands that would just jump right in your lap and say, I'm yours.
I'll take whatever you've got.
And you could live there on basically 25 cents on the dollar of what it would cost here.
Really?
Oh yeah.
And see, many of these countries, they're now getting a great deal of American expatriates because You and I couldn't retire on the money that Social Security's going to give us.
No, indeed not.
But you could take that money and go to Honduras.
You could go to Belize.
You could go to Argentina.
You could go to Dominica.
You could go to Moldavia.
You'd still get your Social Security check, right?
Oh, yeah.
Well, they'd mail it to your U.S.
bank.
The U.S.
bank, you give them wiring instructions to send it somewhere else.
Basically, that money would go three times as far as it would in the United States.
So your quality of life would be 300% better?
Exactly.
And you would have the ability to live with dignity where here you'd just be sitting there waiting for your duck to die.
That's amazing.
It's not just the rich ones or the well-off ones, but even just the middle or even low, fairly low-income people can profit significantly in lifestyle.
And that is what counts, after all, by doing as you suggest.
Is that about right?
That's what you can do.
And there's large American communities today in Guadalajara, in Belize, in Costa Rica.
So you wouldn't be alone?
Yeah, you've done just this, and that's it.
You'd have hundreds of other Americans.
You can pick up a local newspaper called the Tico Times, and they advertise for members of the opposite sex to just come live with them down there.
Hold on, Ed.
You see now why this book is so popular, right?
It's called Hide Your Assets and Disappear.
You can get it just about anywhere, including my website.
If you'll just click on Ed Van Gaal's name, it'll take you over to Amazon.com.
You can get your copy on the way.
We'll be right back.
You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time, on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from August 25th, 1999.
This is a presentation of Coast to Coast AM from August 25th, 1999.
Don't say that you love me.
Don't tell me that you don't mean.
It could equal worldwide humiliation.
Goodbye, cruel world.
I'm off to join the circus.
You're gonna be a broken-hearted clown.
Paint my face with a good-for-nothin' smile.
Cause a mean, fickle woman.
Turn my whole world upside down.
Goodbye, cruel world.
Farewell to love, I'm off to join the circus.
Gotta find a way to hide my tears.
Bet I'll have them rolling in the aisle and I'll forget that woman if it takes a hundred years.
Oh, step right up and take a look at a fool.
He's got a heart as stubborn as a mule.
Come on, everybody, he's good for a laugh.
And no one could tell his heart is broken and have a well of jokes on me.
I'm off to join the circus.
Oh, Mr. Barnum, save a place for me.
I don't care.
Let the people point at me and stare.
I'll tell the world that woman, wherever she may be, That mean, sick old woman made a crying clown out of me.
I'll tell the world that woman, wherever she may be, That mean, sick old woman made a crying clown out of me.
Tonight's program originally aired August 25th, 1999.
I thought this would go well with the current topic in mind.
Ed Pankow here.
A mean woman.
Yes.
Anyway, how does Belize look to you folks?
We'll ask a little bit about the leaves in a moment.
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You'll find it on Coast to Coast AM with George Norrie.
Even though I think the middle class is being eroded away, because most people are doing relatively okay, we haven't seen that balance of power shift yet.
If that gets higher, I think we've got a real problem.
I don't see governments being supportive of this kind of rising up of people asserting their frustrations.
We're looking at a very historic time beginning to emerge right now.
Now we take you back to the night of August 25th, 1999, on Art Bell's Somewhere in Time.
Back now to Ed Pencow, and we were talking about Estonia and countries there, but Belize
really is a pretty spiffy country because of the tropical climate, I guess, isn't it?
It is.
It's, you know, very much like you'd get in Florida or California.
Well, that's not bad.
That's not bad at all.
It may be even a little bit better than... What's the summertime mean average, do you know?
Well, it's probably in the mid-80s.
But the thing is, if you don't like it that hot, you just go up in the mountains a little bit and the temperature drops 8 or 10 degrees.
Sounds nice.
There have been rumors, now this may be further down in South America or other Central American countries, but a lot of Americans have a mental image of these countries, Ed, as unstable.
Countries that are constantly going from one dictator To another, and you might not be safe, you might get kidnapped, a lot of terrible things might happen to you.
So, how about crime down in Belize?
Well, crime in Belize, Honduras, Costa Rica, most of the Central American countries is very minimal.
There's petty theft and things like this because they still are economically depressed.
But all of the real violent crime has faded away to a great degree.
Ever since the Russians no longer sent money to the Cubans to stir up trouble and basically pay for the guerrilla warfare, these countries have gone through a real renovation.
First off, they bought all the guns that were out there.
They said, if you people will turn in guns, we'll pay you money, and they brought in everything from hand grenades to howitzers.
The next thing that went on was that They've realized that the one salvation for these countries was to get the American and European retirees, which both raised real estate prices, provided jobs, and brought people in with hard dollars.
So crime is much lower than it is in our major cities in the United States.
Isn't that something?
And the lifestyle that you could lead there Let's say you went down there and you had a half million dollars.
What expectations could you have for a lifestyle?
Well, if you went down there with half a million dollars, you could live like a king, because while your money would only get 3.5% or 4% in a bank here, down there in many countries they pay 9% to 12% interest if you invest in American dollars, and they pay as high as 24.9% If you invest in the local currency, the Lempira.
Holy moly!
So, you know, there's a lot of opportunities and even if you had $100,000 and it drew $10,000 to $12,000 or $15,000 a year interest, you could live off that very comfortably.
Would you end up with an American style or a Western style Well, you'd get a very similar house to what they have in South Florida.
Basically, it's a house with a regular inner living core, with a big outside patio.
A lot of the houses don't have air conditioning, but they've got, you know, just good patios and breezeways.
So, it wouldn't be exactly like you would expect here, but very similar and It'd be more adapted to their lifestyle and to their living conditions.
How big is Belize?
Belize is a very small country.
It's probably the size, well it's actually I think smaller than Maine, but it's a small country.
It's part of what used to be British Honduras, which encompassed most of Belize and the country today of Honduras, which is much larger than Belize.
So, all in all, what about the government?
Governments are very stale.
They're former British colonies, so they follow the British system of law.
They don't have petty dictators.
They don't have problems.
They don't have the currency devaluations that we've seen in Mexico and Ecuador.
Right.
And basically, it's very much like living in a former British colony.
And yet, they offer those kind of interest rates.
So, what about inflation?
Inflation really hasn't hit there yet.
Why are there such big interest rates?
Normally, when you run into those kind of interest rates, the inflation rate is tremendous.
Well, the inflation rate is not that big because there's a lot of activity going on.
The reason that the interest rates are so high is they don't have the infrastructure for lending like we do in the United States.
I mean, we make an art form of lending money.
These other countries, They don't have the long-term financing that we specialize
in and they loan short-term money.
So if you wanted to build a house or some apartment, the interest rate for borrowing
there is much higher.
It's like 30 percent.
So you don't fiddle with it and build a home that takes six months.
You do it in two months so you get much better and quicker use of your money.
It sounds, it really does sound like a kind of a tropical paradise.
Is that a fair assessment?
To many people it is.
If you expect to live in the United States or have every one of the same amenities, you're not going to have that.
The telephone may be out for a day or two.
The electricity from time to time does go out.
If you get a satellite, you've got your cable television, but you know they don't have All of the modern amenities, but it's a different lifestyle.
It's a slower pace, and the people there live an average of 4.8 years longer than they do here in the U.S.
You're kidding!
I thought we had a much higher... They live longer than we do, huh?
Yeah.
Especially Costa Rica.
Costa Rica is known as the Switzerland of the Caribbean.
They have a higher literacy rate than the U.S.
Their people live longer, and their quality of life is so much better than we've got here.
People don't believe that.
Now, I've been to a lot of areas of the world.
For example, the Greek islands.
I've been to a lot of the Greek islands, and they are, oh my God, they're incredible.
Just beautiful.
I like Patmos, for example.
I don't know if you've ever been to Patmos.
Not yet.
But the quality of life there is mwah!
Now, I don't know about the cost of living.
It may be high, but boy, the quality of life is just... Oh, here's something else I want to ask you about.
You're an expert in this area.
The Cayman Islands have been a traditional haven for people to put money.
I saw something the other day that suggested that there was one Super-duper court case that was going to get, somehow, possibly threaten all of the people who have these secret little accounts in the Caymans, have their names suddenly exposed.
Well, what happened there?
Oh, you do know about this?
I know about this.
A financial money manager, we'll call him, somebody that used to be a banker, that now offers up services for individuals that want to hide their money outside the U.S.
He was grabbed by the IRS, and they offered him the opportunity to be a witness or a co-defendant.
So rather than go to jail, he turned in his 1,500 clients.
And the IRS has already collected $50 million, and they say they're going to collect as much as $300 million just on the information he's providing about clients.
And, you know, in my book, Hide It All, or Hide Your Assets and Disappear, I tell people, don't have someone else do this for you because three can keep a secret if two of them are dead.
You can open your own bank account.
In other words, you're going to do this.
Take your own money to wherever you're going to take it and open your own account.
Exactly.
You don't want somebody doing it for you just for this reason that if they get caught, they'll say, no, no, you don't want me.
You want the bigger fish.
Well, I'm going to tell you something, Ed.
And you can comment on it, and I'm not going to say who it is, but I had counsel from an acquaintance who said, you ought to take this money and put it in the Caymans, in a bank account.
And it was explained to me how it was done through a third party.
And, you know, it was said to be safe, safe, safe, and I always said to the person, well, you know, what about this third party?
I mean, I, first of all, I swear to God this is true.
I decided I don't play that kind of game.
You know, I am an American citizen, and I don't cheat on my taxes, number one.
I pay my taxes.
I grumble and bitch a lot about it, but I pay them.
And I felt like it was cheating my own country.
And I know that seems, to the people who do this, it's very naive.
But that's the way I feel.
At any rate, when it was discussed, I said, yeah, but you know, how can you trust Well, it can be done.
That's why you don't want to relinquish control of your money.
comes and goes at their
uh...
bs their signature transfers money what stops them from taking your money
well it can be done that's why you don't want to relinquish control of your money
and you know this kind of program is not for people that are just trying
to hide money from the u s
this is for people that very legitimately have worked here that pay taxes
want to look forward to retirement or to move their money outside the jurisdiction of u s
courts.
See, one of the problems is anybody with $102.50 can file a lawsuit.
You know the drill.
fifty cents can file a lawsuit.
You know the drill.
How well I know, yes.
They can tie up your assets, they can deny you the ability to use your own money to defend
yourself by making up affidavits and false statements and a court can tie up your assets
and freeze them for two or three years while this all gets sorted out.
So if your money is outside the United States, outside the jurisdiction of U.S.
courts, it's making a lot better interest, plus Yes, but if it is known that the account is there, then he can do it?
forty percent fee of whatever you have and put his hooks in the money
and it's going to be not very motivated to pursue a case that he can't
the the part of gold at the end of the other but but it yes but
it is known that the account is there then he can do it
or not we can't we can't so in other words first off with the only people really in trouble from with
this guy turning over all these names are the people
not who legitimately have the money there are other tax already paid but
people who who uh... have have specific rigid uh...
the money over there without having to tax on Yes.
Those people that made cash money or whatever or had money that they never declared the income on And it's now there, and they're not declaring the interest as well.
So, the government can go back on them and say, you did not pay the interest on your income, you did not report all your income, you are now a candidate for the Criminal Investigative Division of the IRS, which is not a nice place to be.
No.
No.
So, I guess, then, will that collapse everything in the Caymans, or is it just big trouble for these 1,500 people or however many.
Well, the first thing is it makes trouble for those 1,500, but the second thing is it gives the IRS a good look at what's going on in the 460-some banks in the Cayman Islands.
Oh, they know damn well what's going on.
Well, to a good degree they do, but see now, the Cayman Islands has signed a treaty called the MLAT, the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty, and they will provide financial information if You're involved in money laundering, if you're involved in drugs, if you're involved in a capital crime.
So if the government can show that this money was made through laundering and the definition of laundering is so loose that basically taking any money that you make and removing it from the court's jurisdiction and moving that money to avoid other matters They can consider that money laundering as well.
So it really strikes a real blow against all of the setup of the Cayman Island banking system.
I see.
That's the way it was written, and I went, wow!
Yeah, well, I wrote an article a couple weeks ago and said, this is going to really put a big dent in the Cayman Island banking infrastructure, because people are going to move their money from the Cayman Islands to places that have not signed the MLAT.
places that that haven't become so well-known in public in recent years but
how do you know that uh... whatever country you might choose
would not you know two years after you put your money there
sign the whatever you just called the end lap uh... would sign that and uh... suddenly uh... there you
are uh...
baronet well you don't know but the thing is
if you read the newspaper if you keep abreast of rules you're gonna see that a
country is either considering that or your bankers.
Say, if you've got your money in the Cook Islands, which is out in the middle of nowhere in the Pacific.
Sure is.
The local banker's going to tell you, oops, our government is considering passing this law.
We have a branch in the Isle of Man.
We suggest you move your money there.
Now, there you go.
I've heard good things about the Isle of Man.
Isle of Man has very protective laws.
The Turks and Caicos Islands have very protective laws.
Well, I've heard, yes.
But you say, again, now coming back to this, You don't recommend a third party?
I really don't, because there's too many opportunities for them to get greedy.
And when you let someone else manage your money, they start to think of it as their money.
Yeah, that's one of the things that really bothered me.
And I tried to talk this person out of it, and they went ahead and did it anyway.
That's their business.
But I wouldn't do such a thing.
Now, you're saying, though, for example, the Isle of Man.
Now, I always thought If you're going to open your own account, how do you do that?
Because you can't really move more than $10,000 at a time or carry it with you, can you?
Isn't there something about $10,000 limits now with the IRS?
The law allows you to take $10,000 per person per trip out of the country without declaring it.
You can carry more, but you've got to say, this is for business purposes.
I've traveled out of the country many times with hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash.
Really?
But it was in relationship to my business.
One of my clients leases the Russian Mir satellite to museums, and every year we have to bring them literally three gym bags full of hundred dollar bills, fly to the Soviet Union, get off the plane, hand them the gym bags, get back on the plane, get back to the U.S.
You're kidding!
Gym bags full of money?
300, no actually last trip was $600,000.
Oh my God!
That's $600,000 taken in, you know, you're talking now about a country where they'll knock you off for your passport.
Uh, the people that meet you at the plane have enough stroke to make sure that doesn't happen.
Uh, they are the guys that run the country.
Um, you know, I've, I've heard that Ed, I've heard that.
Alright, hold on, stay right there Ed VanGaal is my guest.
Which I'm sure you really want to read is Hide Your Assets and Disappear.
You can go to my website and click on Ed's name.
It'll take you to Amazon.com where you can get the book on the way.
If you're not intrigued, then you're just not listening.
I'm Art Bell and this is Coast to Coast AM.
You're listening to Art Bell's Somewhere in Time.
Tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from August 25th, 1999.
The Coast to Coast is a 1999 film about a young man who is trapped in a world where he can't find his way.
The story is about a young man who is trapped in a world where he can't find his way.
The film is a tribute to the life of a young man who is trapped in a world where he can't find his way.
Dead sight, sand, smell, touch, something.
Inside that they need so much.
The sight of a touch, or the scent of the sand, or the strength of an oak when it's deep in the ground.
The wonder of flowers to be covered and then to burst up through tarmac to the sun again.
Or to fly to the sun without burning a wing.
To lie in a meadow and hear the grass sing.
To have all these things in our memories.
And they use them to help us to power.
And we're going to do it.
Why does it all take its toll?
Why, why can't you take your place on this trip, just for me?
Why, take a free ride, take a rest, I might see it's all free.
I've been running this way for years, worked so hard just to rid my fears.
Had to risk my life to go my direction, but by now I know the true right way.
I've been running this way for years, worked so hard just to rid my fears.
You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time.
Tonight, featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from August 25th, 1999.
Hide your assets and disappear as the book, and I see why it's selling so well.
We've got the author of it here, Ed Pankow, and we're talking of many things.
I've got a little, uh... Actually, it's pretty nice.
It's from somebody in the audience, faxed to me.
Hi Art, I was in Tallinn, Estonia last summer, and I must say that it is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been.
Imagine, if you will, a city straight out of the Middle Ages with all of the romantic appeal.
It was an enchanting city with old, beautiful buildings and cobblestone streets.
The people there were very friendly as well.
It is the way that I always pictured Europe would be.
I did not realize all of the things that Ed Pantow has mentioned about it when I was there.
Ever since being there, I've wished to get back.
And now that I know what I know, I shall.
I advise all in your audience to go to Estonia if they get an opportunity after hearing this.
I certainly plan to get back there as soon as possible.
Signed, Easy Street Dreamer in Phoenix.
Easy Street Dreamer.
That's a good handle.
You're listening to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time, on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from August 25th, 1999.
Well, the caller was right.
There was a 4.7 magnitude earthquake at Yuma.
Yuma, Arizona.
And it shook models and rattled stuff and so forth and so on.
It occurred 6.04 a.m.
on Tuesday morning.
4.7 in Yuma.
Tornadoes in Alaska.
Hurricanes marching across the Atlantic.
These really are very, very interesting times we live in.
Once again, The author of Hide Your Assets and Disappear, Ed Pankow.
Hey, Ed, have you ever thought about doing that yourself?
Well, in a few years, I will probably do this.
See, there's another benefit to living outside the U.S.
If you declare your primary residence outside the U.S., your first $70,000 of income is tax-free.
Why would that be?
Our government says if you earn your money outside the U.S., you determine personally that this is going to be your primary residence, and you're not, you know, using U.S.
government services, well, then you get a deduction for that.
That's a pretty damn big deduction, $70,000 a year.
Well, not only for you, but your wife, your kid, and your dog.
Oh, my.
And your dog?
Your dog.
You know, he's on the payroll, too.
I now see how you've arrived where you've arrived at.
So in other words, if you're in Belize, even your dog Fred gets a $70,000 deduction.
If you choose to do that, yes.
But basically with my wife and my son and myself, that's $210,000 a year.
That's a lot of money.
It's not chump change.
Yeah, not chump change is right.
Well, you heard what the fellow said about Estonia.
That sounds pretty nice, actually.
Oh, it's a gorgeous country.
There are some Americans who would say, hey, you know, this really sounds unpatriotic.
To which you would say, Well, today it's a different world.
I mean, many people live in one country, do business in a second country, and do their financial dealings in a third country.
With communications and the world opening up, it's not like you live in one town or one country anymore.
There's opportunities in other places that don't exist here.
Our stock market is probably getting pretty top-heavy right now, at least I feel so.
But there's other countries that need so many things and have got so many natural resources but they don't have the technology that you could go, like if you could get the contract to provide a phone system for Belize, you could rent a satellite shot, provide them with satellite service and give everybody in the country a cell phone and become a multi-million dollar millionaire overnight.
Yeah, I guess that would go big.
So they don't have cell phones there yet?
Well, they do, but they're these Iridium phones or other world cell phones.
Ah, the Iridium thing.
Iridium has not quite lived up to its rep.
It hasn't, but it's got the technology and one day they or somebody using something similar is going to work.
Absolutely.
And Iridium does work.
As a matter of fact, I had a young lady on a mountain in Peru that I interviewed on an Iridium phone here about a month ago and it worked very well, but somehow commercially I think Iridium, I've heard they were filing Chapter 11 or something and they're going to reorganize and so they've had some difficulties, but it's a whole series of constellation of satellites that's supposed to allow you to just use what seems like almost a
Cell phone, virtually, and make a call from the jungles of Brazil, if you want to.
And you can do that, right?
Well, it can be done, but what's really interesting to me is there are people running around the country saying that this is a government plot, that they're going to use this technology to implant little meta-tags in our skulls and track us anywhere in the world.
Great!
Actually, that really Technology is within our grasp now.
It is.
The technology is there, but I don't think anybody's going to allow this to be done to them.
Not in my lifetime.
Not in my head, you don't.
That's right.
But that may be the horrid future we face, huh?
Potentially, that could be done.
The technology certainly is there.
Back to what we were talking about, taking $10,000, say, at a time out.
Let's say you wanted to begin putting your money in a bank, say, in the Isle of Man.
So, you've got to make trip after trip after trip, you and your wife taking $10,000 apiece out and putting it in the bank in the Isle of Man, or can you go once, establish the account, and then just wire the money over there?
You can go once, establish the account, have them tie it to an international MasterCard Visa, and from then on do all your business with them through the Internet.
In my book and on my new website, which is hideyourassets.com, I have a list of banks and other businesses that are user-friendly and do this kind of thing.
So, no cash goes anywhere.
In other words, you get your money over there, you establish these international, what did you say, MasterCard and Visa accounts?
Right.
You're just going nowhere without it.
It's like your checkbook.
That's what it is.
It's basically your bank account in your pocket.
And it leaves no financial footprint in the United States, only in the country that holds the uh... mastercard visa
uh... transaction racks or other words if you if you go down to uh...
walmart any by something and you present your international mastercard no problem no
trace outright because
the record doesn't go to that big great computer in phoenix arizona
it goes to one out of the country no kidding
what here's another question for you
and i'm just so full of questions we just recently changed our currency
And...
And, you know, they did it ostensibly, they said, because of forgery going on in Lebanon and so forth and so on.
So the currency is different now.
And it has this little metal strip that runs down.
A mylar strip.
Yeah.
And I'm told that border checkpoints and Anybody else who has the technology can literally tell how much money you're carrying with you.
Is that true?
Not yet.
That technology is not in place today.
It could be.
Would it come as a result of this little strip?
In other words, would that eventually be something they could read at a few feet away?
I would say, again, not today, but if they, in the future, with a little better technology, could determine how much money it is and also the presence of money like this.
Because once you can get computer chips down and something that's recognizable to any kind of a scanner down to that size, it's possible.
But as I say, we don't have the technology today, and if you carry money through a computer checkpoint, it's not going to pick that up.
Let me tell you a little story.
I was in Hong Kong, and I flew back from Hong Kong, and when our plane landed in San Francisco, we went through one of these horrors.
We were on the ground for a good hour and a half, and they wouldn't open the damn plane up and let us out.
And everybody was wondering what was going on, and eventually, some security guys rushed on board the airplane, grabbed three Oriental people, and whisked them off.
And finally, the stewardess, the aircrew, came and told us what it was.
It was an Oriental family that had brought an entire shoebox, I say again, a shoebox full of high-denomination bills, Well, they didn't violate any Hong Kong law.
They may not have violated any U.S.
this had been discovered in hong kong
they didn't jump on them till they got to san francisco
well they didn't violate any hong kong law uh... they may not have violated any u s law because
i'm not sure of the hong kong law sending money you know of
sending money out but bringing money into the united But there's a little form.
Before you land, they always have you fill out about how much currency you're bringing in.
Is there something about that?
Yeah, they ask that question.
Mostly, and most countries have laws saying you can't take money out.
It's like the Union of South Africa.
You can travel anywhere you want, but they don't allow you to take a lot of money out because they're afraid you're just going to emigrate.
Really?
Oh yeah.
A lot of these countries, they'll let you travel, but they don't want you taking what they consider is their national treasure, which is your money, which you've earned out of the country.
Because you might immigrate, leave the country, and there goes your money.
Right.
And that's the reason for that law.
That's the reason for the law.
I never knew that.
It's something new every day.
I guess so.
But we, of course, being the land of the free and the fairly rich, we have no such law.
We don't have that law yet, but we do have the backdoor to that law through our tax code.
And they're going to presume, it's like if you're in an airport, And you hear the announcement that says, warning, it is illegal to carry more than $10,000 cash out of the country without reporting it.
The only time they play that message is when they know someone's in the airport carrying that much money, and they make the announcement so that they'll have evidence in court that you're aware of that.
Well, how the hell do they know someone's in there with that much money?
Mostly informants.
Ex-wives, people that earn them in for a buck and things like that.
The government doesn't really have all of the art and technology that people think they do.
They still depend very heavily on informants.
More people get caught because of their ex-spouse or their ex-meaningful other or something like this than everything else put together.
And so they make the announcement, and then when you go through, they search and bust you.
Right.
So, really disappearing, hiding your assets and disappearing properly, is in itself an art form.
It is.
You've got to have, you know, a checklist, you've got to have a plan, and if you follow the plan, it's no problem.
If you go about it haphazardly, you're going to make mistakes.
Even one stinking little Lonely moment of a phone call back home, and you could be cooked.
Exactly.
Don't be like E.T.
Don't phone home.
I wonder how many people actually, ultimately, make that mistake.
Do you have any sense?
Well, a lot of them do.
They get bored.
They get sloppy.
Back into the United States, we had a banker in Seattle, Washington.
He was living in Mexico, and he would talk to his spouse and everything else, and the government put what's called a pin register on the phone, which told them not what his phone calls said, but what calls were incoming and outgoing from his wife's calls.
So just before Christmas, they saw some telephone activity saying, okay, mom is going to go meet him somewhere.
So the government followed her and she left Seattle, drove down to a border town across from Tijuana, Mexico.
And when he came across the border to see her, instead of her going across to see him, they introduced him to the ghost of Christmas Past.
And you know, all his best laid plans all went to hell because he broke the rules.
But if you follow the rules, if you follow the plan, If you've read your book, and you followed it, then you're going to have a whole new life.
Many times better than the life you have right now.
In many circumstances, yes.
When you speak, Ed, to large groups of people, of course you're speaking to one now, but you're not getting immediate feedback.
We'll go to the phones here in the next hour, but I mean, you're not getting the groans or the claps or the agreements or the disagreements.
When you speak to a live group of people, How does all of this information hit them usually?
A lot of people just, it stuns them because they don't realize that such opportunities are there.
And a lot of them, it's like pouring water in a sponge.
They just soak it up and say, more, more, more.
I did a seminar in Denver last weekend, and after the seminar I got literally hundreds of emails, more information.
How can I do this?
How can I find out who's real?
What's real?
It does two things.
Number one, it introduces them to a whole new way of thinking.
More than anything else, that's what this does.
It tells them there are opportunities out there.
You don't have to take them today.
You can think about them, but the opportunity is there.
Knowledge is power.
Knowledge is power, and the more knowledge, the more power.
People just wake up one day and say, the world is not what I thought it was.
Let me teach you about email.
What's your email address?
The best one is EJPankow at AOL.com.
E-J-Pankow.
That's P-A-N-K-O-W.
E-J-P-A-N-K-A-U, and that's all in lowercase, at AOL.com.
Now you'll find out about email.
Oh, listen, last time we did our show, it was like the Encyclopedia Britannica was waiting for me every morning.
Well, AOL has a maximum size mailbox of, I don't know, several hundred, but you'll find it It will be there.
It's going to be real full.
Well, I try to answer every email.
Do you really?
I spend an hour or two a day doing that every day.
Oh, how do you do it?
How do you do it?
I get now 600, 700 emails every time I open my mailbox.
I'll tell people out there right now, it's a triage system and I look at the subject header And you better attract my attention in that or it might not get read because it's just it's not humanly possible.
Well one thing I did is I created a second website called hideyourassets.com and I put answers to the most often asked questions and the best resources like where to retire, where to go for international information, where to go for financial information.
So I tell people go to there first and it will give them some clues and if you want to learn more you either go to my www.PanCow site for investigative information or send me an email and I do.
I answer almost everyone.
In the years I've been in this business, I've made so many friends, and I've had so many people say, Ed, you literally saved my life.
All right.
Well, here's your chance, folks.
We're at the top of the hour.
We're going to go to the phones.
Email is ejpankau, that's P-A-N-K-A-U, at aol.com.
E-J-P-A-N-K-A-U at aol.com.
He's gonna be writing for a while.
This is Coast to Coast AM.
You're listening to Art Bell's Somewhere in Time on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from August 25th, 1999.
To realize just what I have found, I have to stand on the path of what I am.
It's all clear to me now.
My heart is on fire.
My soul's like a wheel that's turning.
My love is a knife.
My love is a...
Am I the only one?
Hey, yo, yo, yo.
Where to find me?
You know where to find Ed Pankow?
You know where to find his book?
Bookstores, I guess, nationwide.
Amazon.com, through my website.
coast to coast a m from august twenty-fifth nineteen ninety nine
where to find me you know where to find it and uh...
you know where to find his book bookstores i guess nationwide
amazon dot com through my website you can email him at d j and how all
strong together lowercase e j p a m
k a u at a l dot com and if you want to find me
you'll find me at part bell at mind spring dot com
you Bye.
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Even though I think the middle class is being eroded away, because most people are doing relatively okay, we haven't seen that balance of power shift yet.
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Now we take you back to the night of August 25th, 1999, on Art Bell's Somewhere in Time.
Alright, here we go.
Now, I promised you we would begin to take calls for Ed Pankow, who is one of our nation's top ten Private investigators has authored Hide Your Assets and Disappear, one of five books, actually, that he's authored.
And so we're going to do exactly that.
If you have a question, we've covered a lot of territory, and there's a lot of territory that could be covered here, depending on what you would like to ask.
We're now going to make him available, if that is okay with Ed.
Ed.
That'll work.
That works for you?
That works for me.
All right.
Let's see what's out there, then.
First-time caller line, you're on the air with Ed Pankow.
Hi.
Boy, I can barely hear you, sir.
You're going to have to yell.
Hello, Art.
Hello, Ed.
Terrific show.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I have two questions.
One of them is concerning personal, a little selfish, and the second one is about Y2K.
First question, I'm 47 years old.
I was married, got into divorce, literally lost everything.
We both lost.
I was penniless.
Lawyers make money, yes.
Yeah, you know it, Art.
I am now in my second career in real estate.
I know I'm going to be doing well because sales was what I was doing before.
The first question is, how do I hide a half of my income or one-third of my income so that it's non-traceable, someplace where if something happens again I can rely on that money?
That's a big question.
That's a major question.
First off, it's hard to hide income because if it's reported by an employer, They know the fact how much you make.
But, once you cash your paycheck and everything else, if you just take a piece of it and just put it in a box, put it in a safe, put it just under your mattress until you save up a couple thousand dollars, then you take a nice little weekend trip, take one of these junkets or tours down to Belize, Honduras, any of these countries, and just open a bank account there.
Just keep putting your money there.
Save up your money and then wire transfer it or mail them a cashier's check when you
get enough.
That money will sit in the bank, it will make 10 to 12% interest and it will be gone.
So that's the way to do that trick.
Great.
Y2K.
We don't know what's going to happen on Y2K.
A lot of people have been saying, put a little bit of your money in cash and silver, Troy Eagles and things like that.
What do you suggest a short term for the next few months, trying to save some of our money should something happen on Y2K?
Well, what I'm doing is buying a diesel generator.
I'm going to make sure I have at least 10,000 rounds of ammunition.
And you can't eat gold.
If things are really going to happen in Y2K, the things that you can eat and use to generate electricity and things like that are going to have a lot more value than gold.
What is your take on Y2K?
I mean, here it is, close to September now, and we're getting such incredibly conflicting signals.
Some people think that several months of disaster, people won't be able to get their money out of the banks.
That's one side.
The other side says, baloney, a hiccup, nothing's going to happen.
What do you think?
We just don't know.
We have no idea.
The one thing that is good news, though, is that of all the compliant agencies, or agencies that have got their act together, the IRS is not one of them.
You know, that was actually brought up the other night, when I had Gary North on, that the IRS is not prepared for Y2K, and it may well be that they won't know who's paying taxes and who's not, and who's supposed to, and what a mess!
Well, I wouldn't want to be having them owe me money at the end of the year.
I'd much rather be owing them money.
That's a way to think about it.
Yeah.
That's true.
Alright, East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Ed Vantow.
Hi.
Yes, I'm Dale Myers and I've got a question for him.
If I was to be looking for a person, how would I go about doing it on a fixed budget?
Well, the easy way to do it is to go to the free websites in the internet or go to your public library and use the free sites.
I use a search engine called Dogpile.
And by using that as a search engine instead of many of the others, it magnifies your effort.
But either do that or go to the county courthouse and find identifiers on the people.
Find their date of birth, their social security number, in voter registration records, in marriage records, in lawsuit records.
Once you've got someone's name or date of birth, you own them.
Also, go to my website, www.pankau.com, and there's links for all the free searches for all of the internet sites where you want to go and find people like Bigfoot, which gives you a printout of everybody in the country with that last name, with their address and phone number.
So, try that first.
Alright, I do appreciate it.
My pleasure.
Alright, John, those internet search engines Are pretty good.
Let me ask you a question, Ed.
There are companies, and they'll be nameless, that are on the internet that claim to go way beyond the free searches that are available on the internet for people for $19.95, $39.95, whatever it is charged to your credit card.
They will supply you with all kinds of additional information that you can't get otherwise.
True or not true?
Most of them are a rip-off because they give you no more information that you can get for free by going to Bigfoot.
The real databases that have information inexpensively are only available to attorneys, private investigators, and people in the business.
There's a company called DBT Autotrack and they have the best information in the country for the money available But you as a general public can't buy it.
How come?
I mean, why?
Because they provide credit information and other information and they limit access to it because they've made a determination that they're going to police themselves and limit access rather than have the government do it.
By hiring a PI, but under the color of law, How does a private investigator have a right, or does he not have a right, to any greater level of information about somebody than Joe Blow?
Well, they don't have any greater right, but the companies that sell the information, their policy is, and it's no law or anything else, it's their policy, and they quote the Fair Credit Reporting Act as a means of restricting access to their information.
Now, they can't restrict access to public information, And public information is publicly available, just they have a more accessible port.
But they don't have to give you access unless they want to.
Interesting.
How many things like that are private investigators, similar privileges do PIs have that the average person on an information search would not have?
Well, it's not.
There's very few that they actually have the privilege to join that a public person or average Joe Blow doesn't have access to, but most of all, they have the knowledge of where to go.
Private investigators in general don't spread that knowledge, and so the average person doesn't know about a lot of the free sites, or they don't know about There's not a lot of privacy left, is there Ed?
There really isn't.
address and it'll tell who owns that email address.
But since we do this every day for a business, we know that you can go to the PI mall, put
in someone's web address, and it'll tell who owns it.
Wow.
There's not a lot of privacy left, is there, Ed?
There really isn't.
There's a balance, usually, between security and privacy, and that balance has tipped very
pretty far to the side of of making information public
The one thing is the public doesn't realize that their electronic signature does not belong to them and it's worth thousands of dollars.
Credit card companies, marketing companies, automobile companies know the value of your electronic profile and they buy it and sell it and use it every day.
But it's not yours because you don't own it.
What a nice new, brave new world, huh?
Oh, hey, it's a wonderful place out there.
Those are the Rockies.
You're on the air with Ed Pankow.
Hello.
Hello.
Hi.
Where are you?
I'm listening to KLB in Albuquerque.
Right.
Yeah, well, when one considers Belize or a similar tropical area, what unusual disease problems might you encounter, such as maybe the prevalence of malaria or Dengue fever, which about two years ago I noticed had caused many illnesses in Costa Rica, even in the San Jose area.
Okay, well that's a great question because the first thing you listed as a thing you should consider is medical.
Well, you want to definitely get a tetanus shot.
I would recommend a malaria shot and also a yellow fever shot.
You can go to the website of the U.S.
Health Department, and they'll tell you for particular countries, get this or get that, but I would definitely get the malaria treatment.
My mother-in-law, she's been living down there for four years.
She loves it down there.
I told her to get the malaria shot.
She didn't do it.
She got a very mild dose, but it's, you know, something that stays with you forever.
Malaria?
I went to Africa, and when I went to Africa, I had to... It wasn't shots, thank God.
But they give you these pills and you've got to take them for, like, I can't remember, my wife would know, four or five weeks.
I mean, you just have to keep taking them and taking the horse pills, too.
Oh, yeah.
So that's a consideration.
For example, in Belize, you might want to update your shot record, find out what's going around down there, and get shot before you go.
That's right.
An ounce of prevention is worth a fifth of cure.
First time caller line, you're on the air with Ed Pankow.
Hello.
Hi, Art.
Yes.
Hi, I'm Betty from Staten Island, New York.
Hello, Betty.
Hi.
First, I want to mention something.
What I saw yesterday, the sky was very clear and blue.
And all day long, there was these long white lines.
And two times, I saw an X. All right.
Well, you're talking about contrails.
Now, this is for a different show, hon.
Right.
All right.
i want to know we're not allowed to take too much money out of our country
right but yet about dollars per person per trip right but the
president is taking out billions of dollars
well this is a political complaint about foreign aid yet
if i think well uh... i don't know that uh...
i tell that dot that dot is personal money so he can get away with that
It's yours and mine, unfortunately.
And that goes across borders totally unhindered.
Really.
They'd have to fill Air Force One with as much money as he gives away.
That's right.
A wild card line.
You're on there with that Ben Cal, hello.
Okay, this is Ben again from Oregon City.
Ben again?
Yeah.
What do you mean again?
Oh, from last night.
Ben again, yeah.
Okay.
How Y2K ready are these?
countries or how they affect you.
Alright, another word, for example Belize.
Belize, Honduras and other countries really have very little in the way of computer systems so they're not going to be troubled by this.
The only thing I would recommend is I wouldn't fly within three or four days before Y2K or three or four days afterward because their radar screens may go out and your pilot will be flying blind.
But that could happen anywhere in the world, but particularly in third world countries.
I really like the Communist Chinese solution to this.
And I thought it was very intelligent.
The Communist Chinese government has ordered that every single last one of their airline executives will, in fact, be on a flight at midnight on New Year's Eve.
That'll wake them up, yeah.
Well, I think it's caused them to pay some attention, definitely, to the safety of flight in China.
That's one way to address the problem.
It's the way they're addressing it.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Ed Pantow.
Hello.
Hi, Art.
Hi, Ed.
How are you doing?
Hi, this is Curt in Milwaukee.
Yes.
I emailed Ed a few weeks ago.
It's about a student loan, Garry Schiemann.
You took out a student loan and now they're garnishing it?
Yeah, it was like several years ago.
I've been trying to pay it back whenever I could, but I have other loans and whatnot.
But anyways, without any warning, I had 10% of my paycheck taken out.
The employer told me nothing.
I got nothing.
No court orders or anything like that.
I guess something has changed in the last year or so.
Last October they changed the law.
Really?
Basically now they have got you by your family best and you literally can't dismiss this in bankruptcy.
You can't get any kind of deviation.
They cut a deal with the banks that finance these student loans and said, you're going to get paid no matter what.
Otherwise, nobody would have taken any of these student loan monies.
But because they're guaranteed, because they can do garnishment without court, this is now the biggest money maker the banks have in the country.
How can they do that, Ed?
They're the government, and they're here to help you.
But, Ed, a student loan, it seems to me, Would be covered in a personal bankruptcy.
How do they get around that?
Special legislation.
They created special legislation just for student loans.
It's an outrage.
It's against everything else in the law, but as I say, our government decided we want the ability to have these guaranteed, so they created their own legislative guarantee.
That's outrageous.
I don't know what to tell you.
The only thing I'm upset about is that they just started taking it out without a day in court or anything like that.
Well, unfortunately, that's what they can do.
That's what everyone's told me now.
Our congressman, they passed this.
Alright, thank you very much for the call.
That's incredible.
I had not heard that.
Well, after my last show with you, Art, I got thousands of calls from people asking about student loans, and they're all suffering the same thing.
It's one of the biggest disgraces and one of the biggest black eyes we have in this country is that people go and they get these student loans, they believe they're going to get an education, they get nailed by a fly-by-night company, they don't get the education, and then they're stuck with the bill anyway.
Wow.
When I purchased the property I have now and the house that I have now, Ed, I determined that I was going to live and rot within its walls for the rest of my life.
I love it.
And I love where I live.
So I homesteaded my home under Nevada law.
We have very strong homesteading laws here.
Beautiful downtown Pahrump, yeah.
How good are the homesteading laws?
The homestead laws have been very, very good, especially in states like Nevada, Florida, Texas, and others that have strong homestead acts.
But, again, our wonderful government is trying to erode that by saying you can only homestead up to the first $125,000 of your homestead.
So they're trying to pass new legislation?
Exactly.
They are trying to do everything they can to basically make The consumer, the victim, and guaranteeing lenders the ability to get their money no matter what.
God, I love our government.
All right, Ed, stay right there.
We'll be right back with Ed Pangao.
You're listening to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
The night featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from August 25th, 1999.
Premier Radio Networks presents Art Bell's Somewhere in Time.
Tonight's program originally aired August 25th, 1999.
Never, never to break that chain.
And that's all it takes.
If you have hidden your assets and split, one little break in the chain and you're cooked.
So, you've got to stick to your plan.
That's what Ed says.
We'll get back to Ed Pankow and more of this in a moment.
Here's kind of an interesting... Well, why don't I hold it until after the break.
We'll do the break and then I'll read the facts to end.
Now we take you back to the night of August 25th, 1999, on Art Bell's Somewhere in Time.
The end.
you you
The following is from Mike in Armagosa, which is close to me here in Nevada, and it's entitled Living in Foreign Countries.
In July of 1997, I retired from the motel business in Las Vegas with a small retirement income.
I bought a one-way ticket for India for $250 a month.
I had a beautiful new studio with a refrigerator, air conditioning, utilities included.
All that for $250 a month.
two hundred fifty bucks a month as my two hundred fifty dollars a month example illustrates
uh... one can have most of the comforts of home and still live cheaper much
cheaper than in the u s One advantage I had is that I had made three prior trips to India.
I'd spent seven months in India prior to the July 97 trip.
Therefore, I had no culture shock on my last trip to India when I was going and just going to live there.
Do you recommend that, Ed, that people Go to these countries and get comfortable before they make the big one?
Yes.
Before you go and make the big step, go take a week-long visit.
Almost all these countries have cheapy tours through travel agencies, and you can go there, look around, see if this is for you, make some local contacts.
There's a group called International Living, and they take tours down there.
And they have a newsletter.
You can subscribe to that, go to the internet, read about it, get all the information you can, and then go look and see.
You might say, this isn't for me.
I don't like to fish.
I don't like the sun.
I'd much rather be in some place that I can play more pinochle.
Well, you know, they've got places like that.
But you should definitely go and see if this is the place for you.
So it's kind of like a marriage.
You want to live together a little bit first?
You've got to sit in the dark and raise your kimono, yes.
First I'm going to line you on the air with Ed Pancow.
Hello.
Hello there, Ed and Art.
Hi.
Where are you, sir?
Springfield, Branson, Missouri area.
Alright.
First time caller, long time listener, Art.
Thank you.
And to Ed, I've read a couple of your books.
Alright.
I wanted to get the word out or let you explain because I'm not really that familiar with it, but the word expatriate seems to carry a negative connotation.
I would like for you to explain that a little bit because I've read where several people, I say I've read where several people, I've known several people in reality that have went to Costa Rica and Belize, etc.
And more or less sent their passport home.
Would you further explain the word expatriate?
I don't think that means what most people think as far as... Okay, that's a pretty good point.
Actually, both are.
One, expatriate does have a negative connotation to it here.
Right, Ed?
It does, and it has in the past.
Today they have a new term, it's called PT, which is either Previous Taxpayer or Perpetual Traveler.
And that's the new terminology.
Really?
Alright, and what the heck else did he ask?
Let's see.
Well, the thing is, this negative connotation, it all comes back from the story in the book of The Man Without a Country.
But today, being a man without a country, in many cases, is a strategic and tactical advantage.
Okay.
I remember.
He was talking about people sending their passports home.
In other words, that's it.
I'm done with you United States.
I'm out of here.
I don't want to play the game no more.
Well, people have been doing this for years.
The entertainers and rock stars, rather than pay Britain's 50% tax rate, they went next door to Ireland and paid no taxes.
So the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, all of these groups, they gave up their British citizenship and said, you know, I'm now an Irish citizen.
Forget my taxes.
Do not deduct.
Do not pass go.
Do not collect $200.
How long do you think what we're talking about tonight What can be done, personally and successfully, so if you do it the right way, as you have outlined in your books, not in totality here, but in your books, if it's done the right way, how many more years or generations do you think we're going to be able to get away with this?
Or do you think that the old one-world monetary and finally political system will take over and stop all this?
In some ways they're trying to do that now and I think that our generation and the people for the next 10 to 20 years are going to be safe because there's still going to be have not countries that want to have.
So they're going to create these opportunities.
But the have countries, the ones that have had all the benefits for years, they're going to make it more and more restrictive to try and keep people from getting their money out of their countries.
So, if you're going to do it, now's the time.
So, the audience, the people now living, who are considering something like this, you can do it, you can probably get away with it for your lifetime, but your children, maybe not.
If you don't set it up for them now, they may never have the opportunity.
Hello, this is Maria from British Columbia, Canada.
Hi, Maria.
You're going to have to yell at us.
You're not too loud here.
Okay, I'll yell.
Thank you.
I listen to you every night up here.
You've got a lot of listeners here, Art.
Thank you.
Ed, I read your book.
Good.
I savored every page of it.
Oh, my kind of woman.
I'm seriously considering doing this.
I'm on early pension, and I'm a single young woman.
I'm worried about my safety in countries like this.
And I'd also like to know about medical costs.
What are medical costs there in countries like that?
All very good questions.
And also the safety of depositing money in banks.
I do have friends who have... Okay, hold that question for a second.
With respect to medical costs, if you're in Belize and you get sick, Medical costs are much lower in these countries, and the same doctors treating you there are the same ones treating you in the U.S.
or Canada.
You see, many of our doctors didn't go to med school in the U.S.
They went to teaching medical colleges in Honduras or Costa Rica, and they have very good medical for 25% of the cost in the United States.
Because they don't have to put up with the horrendous malpractice insurance rates.
And it might also be added, they have people all the time, I hear about people leaving the U.S.
to get treatments that are not allowed here.
Yeah, our FDA has not approved treatments and they do more experimental treatments and treatments that are frowned upon here.
Okay.
If you're looking for certain treatment that hasn't been approved or hasn't been tested on 10 million people, you may want to go to Mexico or to Costa Rica and things like that.
But medical treatment is much cheaper.
It is very good.
And also, to answer your question about personal safety, I feel you'd be safer in many of these countries, particularly if you're in one of the gringo communities, than you would be on the streets of any major city in the United States.
I agree with that.
Yeah, but you're in Canada.
Oh, Vancouver!
I was there a few months ago speaking at the Jerome Schneider Offshore Wealth Seminar.
Wonderful place.
Oh my goodness, I've seen so many of Art's guests up here on lecture tours.
It's been wonderful.
It's a beautiful city.
Also, the safety of depositing money in banks.
Friends of mine had deposited in South America thinking it was safe and then when they went to the bank they said, sorry, you can't have your money back.
Really?
Well, if you do business, as Mae West would say, with a well established firm.
One of your big Canadian banks, CIBC, has offices all over the world.
And that's what you do.
You put it in your branch of CIBC in Belize and if for any reason there is any kind of
unrest or you are not comfortable, you just give them a phone call or send them a fax
or email and say transfer my money to your branch in scotland for the next ninety days
so your your money is is at faith if not safer than it would be here in the u s
i should just visit the country set up a bank account have a master card and i'm
you're in business uh... so much okay thank you uh... when gary north was on
the other night he said something really interesting and really
shocking when we go to the bank
uh... and we're told consumers are told
that your deposit is insured by the f d i c up to one hundred thousand dollars
Correct.
But, Ed, I tell you, Gary North said, actually, the guarantee is to the bank, not to the customer.
That's correct.
That is correct.
There were a lot of people that had their money tied up, or people that had more than $100,000 in banks, and they lost it.
banking crisis and i did many of those investigations there were a lot of
people that had their money tied up or people that had more than a hundred
thousand dollars in bank and they lost it they lost it
and if there was a really serious problem there is no guarantee directly
down to the consumer It's to the bank.
It's to the bank and to the fund.
And the fund was almost bankrupted.
It came real close to having to have, you know, major, major problems.
Boy.
That's a scary thing to realize.
And all of the stuff I'm finding out tonight that I didn't know.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Ed Pangao.
Hi.
Hi, this is Angela from Kip Coral, Florida.
Hello, Angela.
Hi, good morning.
I have a question for Ed.
He mentioned earlier about IRS possibly not being Y2K ready.
Yes.
And I was wondering, do you think that the judicial courts in regards to a person's criminal record, if they'll be ready?
Well, those records are really stored at the county level and they're first put on microfiche or microfilm The court record, both at the local police level and maybe at the national level, which is the National Crime Information Center, may get screwed up for a short while.
But the actual record itself, which exists in the county, is going to be there and will be kept more or less as a hard copy.
But the system could go down and they could lose, and many states have lost a great deal of their criminal histories Uh, that they had on computer.
Okay.
I don't have a criminal history myself, but, um, the reason I'm asking, my husband is originally from Mexico, and he applied for permanent residency here after we married, and, um, he, one of the requirements to prove, um, he had to have a background check and all of this, and he needed to show, um, an arrest record, if he had had one, and he had had a DUI like ten years ago.
They had to look this up in their computers at the courthouse here, and they could only go back five years.
Right.
They weren't able to find it.
So I was wondering, when Y2K comes, you know, is it a possibility that a lot of people lose their criminal histories?
Well, some of it may happen, but again, if they really go back and look manually, the computer isn't everything it's cracked up to be.
And much of the records from before computers.
BC is 1985 in my book.
But that information, it is retrievable, it does exist, but it can't be pulled up on computer.
So it won't totally disappear, but it will be less accessible.
For a while, at least.
This comes off the ESPN wire.
They've got a wire now.
And it's a story entitled, filed August 20th, entitled, Bank Insiders Can Beat the System.
It says, it was an official document called a Suspicious Activity Report, which banks and other financial institutions are required to file with federal authorities when employees detect unusually large deposits or transfers or other aberrations.
Now, Ed, I thought we just went through this whole brouhaha about profiling Bank customers, and the damn thing got shot down, but this would seem to indicate that there's something in place now that does report unusual transactions, large amounts of money coming and going, whatever.
Oh, very definitely.
The only thing that got shot down was the Know Your Customer rule, which basically said banks have to document not only who you are, but who you do business with.
And identify them by photo ID.
The actual profiling by the CTRs, the Currency Transaction Reports, and the SARs, the Suspicious Activity Reports, those are still there, they're very much enforceable, and they've actually reduced the dollar limit from $10,000 to $3,000 on a Currency Transaction Report in most jurisdictions.
You're kidding.
So they're tightening the noose, not lowering it.
Wow!
They have that much control over money that you have already paid taxes on, or whatever.
I mean, if you just happen to have a bunch of money, they have that kind of control and tracking?
They do.
And see, the government's got a semi-secret little agency called FinCEN, the Financial Crime Enforcement Network, and it's their job to gather this information and to use it to support other investigative agencies.
So, your material may be looked at at an agency that makes the FBI look like little Lord Fauntleroy, and you'll never know it.
Incredible.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Ed Pankow.
Hi.
Good morning, Ed.
How are you doing?
We're fine, sir.
Where are you?
This is Joe, Bovo, Utah, KTOC 570.
And on a cell phone?
And on a cell phone, yes.
I drive a truck in the morning.
I see.
Yeah, I'm very involved with Native American issues, and I don't know if you know too much about that, but if you're involved with that, you're on kind of the cutting edge of conflict with the government.
Oh, yes.
And so we're fighting a nuclear waste dump out here against a consortium of utilities that are trying to, they've basically gone in and undermined the integrity of a small band or tribe that goes shoots out here about 45 miles west of Salt Lake.
We're using my house as kind of an area for setting up an office.
We've created a non-profit to be able to generate funds for legal expenses and so forth.
And I put a couple of lines in, extra lines in my house, and one of them rang the other night, which I thought was odd, since I didn't even know what the number was.
And so I was talking with the guys, and I picked it up, and it was dead.
And it was just like as if it hadn't been hooked up.
I told one of the guys, he rolled his eyes back and said, well now you're bugged.
Ah, Ed, does that sound like I've been bugged?
No, not really.
A lot of people think they're bugged and that's not really the case.
There's a little too much paranoia about that.
There are in fact circumstances where things like this happen, but I wouldn't automatically consider that that's the circumstance.
I would definitely look a little further to see.
Is there more substance behind that?
The real truth of the matter is, Ed, if they wish to bug your phone, you know, all the time you hear people say, oh, I hear the clicks, and I hear crunches, and I even hear somebody, I think I hear somebody breathing, and you hear all this.
The truth is, if they want to tap your phone, there's no way in hell you're ever going to know it's tapped, is there?
That's right.
You'll never hear a sound because it's done.
Through the phone company with their permission and their assistance and you know, that's it.
You'll never know.
There will be no way to test it and actually there's no way to, you know, buy one of these little devices over the telephone that say you're bugged.
It'll never show up.
Yeah, of course not.
That'll tell you whether an extension has picked up perhaps, but that's about it.
And your book, I Take It Now, is not just Amazon.com, but it's available generally in bookstores around the country?
Yes.
Actually, it made number nine on the New York Times Best Seller list.
Wow!
It's everywhere.
I've got to thank you a lot for that, Art.
But it's in all the bookstores.
In fact, I was in one bookstore doing a book signing.
They put 200 of the books in the window and people that had never walked in this bookstore in their life were coming in by the droves and buying the book.
I had like a three-hour signing party.
I can see why.
In a way, Ed, it's a sad commentary on our times.
That something like this would sell so well.
And I in no way belittle your book, but it's just... I mean, it really is, isn't it?
Kind of a sad commentary?
Well, it is.
It's really, you know, unfortunate that our country has reached a point where people can no longer look at it as the place that we've been proud of for so many years.
That's exactly right.
It's not there anymore.
All right, listen, I've got one more hour.
Are you good to go?
Oh, I'm good to go.
All right.
If you'd like to email this brilliant man, he is EJPankau.
That's E-J-P-A-N-K-A-U at AOL.com.
If you want his book, my website, Amazon.com.
You've got it on the way.
Or, of course, in your local bookstore.
It's called Hide Your Assets and Disappear, which is what I'm going to do for about five minutes.
Be right back.
You're listening to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from August 25th, 1999.
The Coast to Coast AM performance, performed by the Coast to Coast Amphitheatre, was a production of the Coast to
Coast Amphitheatre.
The performance was performed by the Coast to Coast Amphitheatre.
The performance was performed by the Coast to Coast Amphitheatre.
The Coast to Coast Amphitheatre performance was performed by the Coast to Coast Amphitheatre.
The Coast to Coast Amphitheatre performance was performed by the Coast to Coast Amphitheatre.
I'm missing, holding full the wretching.
I'm missing, falling in love with you.
Shall I stay?
You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time.
Tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from August 25th, 1999.
And Ed Pancow, who's authored Hide Your Assets and Disappear.
It's a runaway bestseller, no question about it.
And I guess if you've been listening tonight, you know why.
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Looking for the truth?
You'll find it on Coast to Coast AM with George Norrie.
I argue with people about disclosure time and time again.
I've told them governments are not going to come out willingly to tell us it's going to happen by a mistake, it's going to happen by a whistleblower, but it's not going to be an organized thing.
Governments won't do that.
The reason why they won't do it is because they do not want us to know.
They think that they'll lose control of us.
Yes, if we know.
If you actually truly believe that we were being visited by extraterrestrials and you had categorical proof that it was happening, do you think you would listen to some of the bull that government throws out all the time?
Absolutely not!
You'd look toward the heavens, you'd say there's got to be a better way, and you would start doing your own thing.
And you would forget all about government control and everything else.
So, the bottom line is, government will never, ever disclose the true facts of UFOs.
You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time, on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from August 25th, 1999.
Back now to Ed Van Cow.
Ed, I've got a quick fact I want to read.
It says, the Government of Canada enacted legislation two years ago permitting Canada student loans to survive most forms of bankruptcy.
This was because 1.
7% of all loans were in default four years after graduation.
2.
Of these, there were just a few too many doctors, dentists, and lawyers for the government to ignore the political heat.
Well, the same thing is happening here.
two or three simultaneously divorce the spouse who had sacrificed and delayed their own studies to put the
other through school lynch mobs were literally forming in the streets of oh so
gentle canada comments
well the same thing is happening here the uh... the banks have put pressure on the government
saying we're not going to guarantee student loans unless you make
them ironclad that people can't get out of them.
That's what's happened.
Canada went through this.
We've gone through this.
The next is going to be Australia and New Zealand.
Every time something like this comes up and every time the government has some new program and they want somebody to buy into it, they create legislation that It guarantees it.
I mean, it's, you know, it's crazy.
I agree.
First time caller line, you're on the air with Ed Pankow.
Good morning.
Good morning, both Art and Ed.
Where are you, ma'am?
I am in Texas.
Okay.
All right.
This, thank you, has immediate response to what you were just speaking of, only a little more enlightenment, with regard to what they call fraudulent transfer.
Right.
Now, if you happen to have transferred funds out of the country, or even for this reason or that, to your children, and then later on you have to take Chapter 7 bankruptcy, which has nothing to do with the other, and this is not with consumer or big credit card debt.
You can be nailed for the fraudulent transfer, and while the law says one year limit, this It has to be done in anticipation of a debt.
back in time and they can find some reason.
Now this is the federal bankruptcy court.
Right, well the question is, it has to be done in anticipation of a debt.
If you transfer the money before you have a financial obligation or knowledge of impending
financial obligations, then you can make those transfers and they cannot charge you or bother
you under the Financial Conveyance Act.
Well, even under case law, which I'm very familiar with, it's your word against theirs whether you knew about it or anticipated it.
But the interesting thing, if you have a creditor, let's say it's a business associate or even a relative.
Using your own money that they caused you to lose and then you claim bankruptcy.
And they claim fraudulent transfer.
They can fund the bankruptcy court trustee to reopen a case and make sure you are ruined.
Well, not necessarily.
They can try to make that claim.
I've testified probably in more than 50 cases of this type.
And again, it goes back to knowledge and intent.
Uh, and the bankruptcy trustees and the bankruptcy courts really have very little jurisdiction outside the United States.
And first off, they have to document and prove that such a foreign account exists.
And in most places, that's impossible to do if you set up your account with no paper trail.
Right.
And another thing, having done this, I would suggest that you do not travel from your home city.
It's very easy to get to another city and book from that city.
Exactly.
In my book I tell people to fly to Mexico City and then get a second ticket from Mexico City to the Cayman Islands.
Have a break and travel so nobody knows where you went.
Also, don't have your passport stamped because if you're ever deposed in a court case One thing attorneys do is ask to see your passport.
Definitely.
And they look to see, you know, where these good housekeeping seal of approval stamps are to indicate where you've been.
That is an ego thing.
And just one other thing.
A trustee can be funded by a creditor to reopen and then totally fund it.
Now, if you're bankrupt, even if you have your cash in another country, you can't bring it back, obviously.
You don't have the money to defend yourself, which is in district court.
Bankruptcy court is the only one without a jury.
Well, not necessarily.
Again, bankruptcy court is a federal court.
District court is either a state court or a federal court.
Again, there are so many bankruptcies and so many issues that they don't have the ability to go and do everything that needs to be done.
People make a lot of claims and a lot of allegations, but if they can't document them, that dog don't hunt.
Yeah, you bet.
You betcha.
Wild Card Line, you're on the air with Ed Pankow.
Hi.
Ed?
Yes?
I'd like to know, where in the world, I know here in America there's some wealth, but it's so hard to get to, but where in the world is there a location I've heard of some people going to South Africa, getting dirty, and doing diamond mining and stuff like that.
Yes.
Is there still wealth in the world for a man who has some get-up-and-go?
Oh, yes.
Boy, is there ever.
Ed?
Yeah, there's a lot of places.
In Central and South America, there's emerald mining.
There are tons of places both in the U.S.
and in foreign countries.
That have gold reserves.
You just take the stretch of highway between Denver and Durango, Colorado.
There's people that go out there in the summers and pan the rivers and make enough college money to pay for the rest of the year's education.
If you're willing to go out and break your back and sweat and work and want to do this, Canada, Alaska, Colorado, Honduras, there's still places with tremendous mineral wealth that are waiting to be picked up.
You know what I always thought it would be fun to do, Ed?
What's that?
Go to a highway, like you mentioned, that is not frequently patrolled by the police.
And just early evening, set up a toll booth.
And I would be willing to bet you that 99 out of 100 people Would stomp and dutifully pay the toll, maybe with sort of a cringing face, but they'd pay the toll and go on.
Probably.
I had a grocery store manager that set up an extra aisle in the grocery store that was his own private aisle.
Same thing.
Same thing, yeah.
East of the Rockies, Ron here with Ed Pencow.
Hi.
Hey, how are you guys doing tonight?
Alright, actually.
This is one of my favorite shows I've ever heard you do, Art.
I'm glad.
And I gotta try that toll booth thing sometime.
But I'm Josh, I'm calling from Tulsa, Oklahoma, and I have two questions.
You guys have toll booths there, so it'd really work there.
Yeah, it would.
But number one is, I was wondering how Y2K compliant is the offshore banking community?
That's a whale of a question.
Well, it depends.
A lot of the countries are very compliant, but others They're low-tech.
They keep all of their documents on 3x5 cards.
They don't have them computerized.
As long as you've got a good hard copy, there's not going to be a lot of problems.
No one knows how the banking and brokerage industries, which are the ones that really hold our money, are going to deal with this.
I personally think that the stock market is going to take a big, big hit between October, November, and December.
A lot of people, win, lose, or draw, are going to want to take their money out because they don't know what's going to happen.
A lot of the banks, especially the very computerized ones, may have some very real problems.
The banks that are low-tech aren't going to have those kinds of problems.
What I'm most worried about, Ed, is the panic factor.
I think that's more likely to do us in than the... Perception is worse than reality every time.
Precisely.
You know, I've heard it a million times from Gary North and a lot of other people, and that is that if everybody, or even half of everybody, went and withdrew just a little bit of their money, the banking system could no more handle it than the man in the moon.
Exactly.
They have got to convince people between now and then, come what may, that everything is solid as a rock, don't go to the bank, don't withdraw money.
That's true, because if people did start doing that, it would create a run on the bank, it would create tremendous problems, and it would be like a snowball going downhill.
Each step would create five more.
I don't know how you do that.
I just, that's as much of a mystery to me as what actually may occur with Y2K.
I don't know how you put it.
Well, no one knows, and no one knows what's really going to happen.
It's one of those things we're going to watch and see.
What I've heard a lot of, and I agree with, is that things are going to wind down and people are going to get more and more conservative and more cautious, but if January 2nd comes along and nothing's happened, There'll be a tremendous upsurge again in stocks and this and that and everything else.
Yeah, that would make sense, of course.
But this is something new, and this has got ramifications that no one knows the real answer to.
Are you getting a lot of questions from your clients about Y2K?
Yes, I am.
And they're asking me, you know, how can they go lower tech?
Put their assets and themselves in a situation that if there is a problem that they can deal with it, that they can put their arms around it and solve the problem.
What do you tell them?
I tell them basically that, number one, you want to have sufficient survival materials, food, water.
electric, this and that and everything else available to yourself to get you through a
minimum of ten days just in case.
The other thing is your money.
Number one, I would not want to have the government owing me money at that period of time.
I would feel much better underpaying my taxes and then catching it all up at the end of
the year than have some computer saying, dear sir, you're lost in the system within the
next nine months.
We'll get you straightened out.
That really could happen, huh?
It really could.
And, you know, from what I understand of the IRS and others' computer systems, they're just a huge mess.
The IRS had a big problem years ago.
They bought a huge Cray supercomputer.
We're going to put in everything about everybody, but the system scrambled.
It turned to toast.
And they lost a tremendous amount of data.
Yeah, I know.
It couldn't happen to nicer guys.
But, you know, we just don't know.
And, you know, in confusion, there is opportunity.
Always.
Always opportunity.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Ed Pangao.
Good morning.
Art, how are you doing tonight?
All right, sir.
This is the lone gumman from News Radio 630 KIDO, your affiliate in Boise.
Boise, Idaho.
Yes, sir.
I've got a show Saturday night at 11 on KIDO.
All right.
Do you know how many hours we get your show in Boise?
How many?
Nine hours a night, six nights a week.
How can you stand it?
I love you out there.
I guess.
I'm short of the Art Bell substitute on Saturday night.
It's the one night you're not on the air.
I see.
Nine hours a night, I can use a break.
All right.
Anyway, welcome.
Ed, John Galt Society, hello to you.
All right.
Well, I'll be seeing you guys in Australia.
I'll be speaking there first week of September.
I think you know my on-air partner, Andrew.
I do.
Andrew and I are well connected.
I wasn't able to make it out to the last seminar, but he had good reports that you're probably the best guest there.
Well, I tell you, I really believe in the John Galt Society and it's an idea whose time has come.
Oh, we think so.
We definitely think so.
I was wondering, this might be more of a question for the general audience, but do you feel that there's more Do you feel that there's any financial privacy available in the United States?
I've heard that as long as your money is anywhere in the U.S., if it's in a trust, if it's in any bank account, it can be gotten to by the government one way or another.
That's true.
If they allege fraud, if they allege alter ego, if they allege fraudulent transfer, there is no means to protect it.
You can have trusts, partnerships, This, that, they can cut through it like a knife through butter.
So if your money is here, it's just open to any type of government scrutiny.
So that's really frightening.
No, they make the rules.
Mark, I was hearing you say that you didn't want to send your money out of the country because it might be a tad unpatriotic.
Yeah, I really felt that way.
Somebody unnamed sat down with me and talked to me about it, and I just didn't feel right.
Let me tell you something about that, Art.
Our banks send their money out of the country.
Our banks send your money out of the country on the weekends to gain interest on days that they don't get interest in the U.S.
Yes, I know that's true.
My feelings are very provincial, I know.
I think you're letting the bureaucrats define your patriotism.
Well, I'm 54 years old, and I guess I'm out of what is now the old school.
And so I may have to learn a lesson.
I felt that way.
I just somehow... Art, I felt that way five years ago.
If someone would have told me five years ago that I would be a radical, that I would be arguing against many of the policies that I taught and I worked for, I never would have believed it.
But I'm like you.
I'm 54 and I've seen the world change all around me.
And today we do.
We live in a different world and we either adapt to it and we either deal with things as they come up and create our own reality or someone does it for us.
Well, I'm sure you're right and I probably should re-examine how I feel about all this.
So I'm kind of glad you brought that up, Caller.
All right.
Well, hey, good talking to you, Art.
And listen to the show on KIDO Saturday night.
All right.
You take care.
All right.
And hang in there and fill the gap on Saturdays.
Will do.
Do you do nine hours?
I got one hour.
Just one hour?
We're brand new.
Good luck, my friend.
Thanks, Art.
Take care.
All right.
Ed Pancao is my guest.
His book is Hide Your Assets and Disappear.
I put in the...
If you would like to email Ed, you can do so at E as in Elizabeth, J as in Japan, PANCAL, run it all together, E-J-P-A-N-C-A-L-P-A-N-K-A-U at A-O-L dot com.
You're listening to Art Bell's Somewhere in Time, tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from August 25th, 1999.
25th 1999.
I can't save a life without your love. Oh baby, don't leave me this way. I can't accept, I'll surely miss your tender
kiss. Don't leave me this way.
Oh baby, my heart is full of love and desire for you. Now come on down and do what you gotta do. When you start to
feel it, you'll know it's true.
Now there's a fire down in my soul Now can't you see it's burning out of control
Cold as fire, the needy need the lean And it's alright, it's over, oh we're gonna get right back
to it Love is gone, love is good, love's a game
Love is good, love can be strong.
We gotta get right back to where we started from.
Do you remember that day?
And surely you will When you first came my way
I said no one could take your place And if you get hurt
If you get hurt By the little things I say
I can put that smile back on your face You're listening to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time, on Premier
Radio Networks.
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from August 25th, 1999.
It's bound to happen.
That is to say, the period of time between now and January 1st is going to be a very, very interesting time.
Weather-wise, Y2K-wise, stock market-wise.
It's going to really be a fascinating time.
Now we take you back to the night of August 25th, 1999 on Art Bell's Somewhere in Time.
We're going to take you back to the night of August 25th, 1999
We were talking about, you know, the way you feel about things and the way I feel about things a little while ago.
It's an interesting conversation.
I have what I call my mortality theorem, which is that as we get older, the music of the day sounds like crap.
Society begins to change in a way that we are no longer comfortable with, and that includes financial and social aspects of society.
The laws change, the government begins to be more intrusive, privacy disappears, and so You see, by the time we get to be in our 70s, if we make it that far, even our 80s or better, we're ready to throw up our hands and say, I'm out of here!
I'm out of here!
I don't like it anymore!
Take me away!
And, you know, the new people, what do they know?
They're living with the new, the brave new world, and for them everything's okay.
That's my mortality theorem.
You know, God take me, I'm ready.
I think there's a lot of truth to that.
Yeah, so do I. First time caller on the line, you're on the air with Ed Pankow.
Hi.
Hi.
Am I on?
Well, yes, you are.
Oh, great.
This is Diane on Camino Island, Washington.
Art, I live near Gilbert and O'Carper, and I always wanted to go look for him here, but decided not to.
Anyway, I have two quick questions.
One kind of goes to when Ed was a private investigator.
Sure.
I've done some article writing and I found that, this is going to sound strange, but I find that men in general will tell women all sorts of things.
They almost don't perceive it as a threat.
And I've been able to weasel so much stuff out of people just... Because you're a woman?
Just because I'm a woman, yes.
Did you find that with any operatives you worked with or anything like that?
You must not have heard the first part of the show.
I didn't, I'm sorry.
Ed employs a woman.
Who has a voice that will cause a man to tell her anything she wants to know.
Right, Ed?
Yeah, she has a voice that no man can hang up on.
And, you know, in my staff, I've had a staff as high as 75 people, and two-thirds of my investigators were women, because women are more detail-oriented and better for doing certain kinds of work, like particularly the court record research and the just digging.
Women want to know.
They have this insane desire to know.
They do.
They make the best investigators.
I was doing some marketing research and I found I had a real talent for this.
The next thing I know they have me doing all sorts of little buying things on their competitors.
I didn't have to say hardly anything and these guys gave it all away.
But anyway, my other question is, how good is creating a non-profit organization to hide your assets under?
Again, if it's done with the intent to commit fraud or to defraud predators or as an alter ego of an individual, they will slice right through that like a hot knife through butter.
The issue is the intent.
If the intent is to have a charitable foundation and it's used as a charitable foundation, that's one thing.
But if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck and quacks like a duck, they're going to think it's a duck.
We've been doing wildlife rescue on the side here and if we turn that into a real charitable organization...
Oh yeah, if it's done right, they'll never be able to bother it and they won't bother it.
Oh, okay.
Alright, thank you ma'am.
Well then, let me ask you this Ed, in order to become one of our nation's top ten private investigators, was it necessary for you to get really in touch with your feminine side?
Hello!
Hello!
Or just hire a bunch of females.
Well, I've got a lot of women that are just real good at that.
I work better the way I am.
Good morning, gentlemen.
How are you?
We're all right, sir.
This is Daryl from Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
Calgary, yes, sir.
You spent some time in Costa Rica about three and a half years ago.
That's a beautiful place.
If I was going to go move somewhere, that would be it.
Down there we have settler's rights.
If some guy owns some land and he doesn't live in the country, he doesn't show up there at least once every six months, you can jump on the land and stake a claim.
Well, it's not quite that easy, but some people have tried that and things like this.
You've got to protect your property and your claim, but still the law and the deeds and the records today are pretty well caught up.
The one thing about Costa Rica is that the real estate prices in Costa Rica have gone up 500% in the last five years.
And Honduras and Guatemala and Nicaragua are not going to be real far behind.
Wow.
So right now, they're the places that everybody's looking to go to.
But the handwriting's on the wall.
Even Cuba.
We, as Americans, can't go in there and buy property, but the Germans, the Italians, and the French are in there buying up everything they can get their hands on.
Canadians?
Yeah, Canadians.
I was about to say that.
The resort that we stayed at was owned by Germans and Canadians.
And it was a beautiful place.
Another thing I like about it there is the beaches are all public land.
Right.
You can pitch a tent on a beach and nobody can tell you to leave.
Really?
That's exactly right.
This resort that we were at was right on the beach, of course, in Nicoya Bay, and there's guys wandering around on the beaches there to live in the nearby villages, and the resorts don't like having them around because they're coming along and they're taking business away from the people that are working there, i.e.
taking them fishing for a price, but there's nothing they can do about them because they stay on the beach and the beach is public domain.
Alright, well then that makes me want to ask the following question.
Ed, we believe, most Americans believe, and this may be another one of my old myths and bloons that are about to be popped, but we think we live in the greatest bastion of freedom in the world.
Is that still technically true?
In some ways, yes.
In some ways, no.
As far as having the personal freedoms to be able to express yourself, it has been for many years.
But again, we've got more to protect now, and so the interests that have the ability to do so will do it.
But as far as having the other freedoms to Not be taxed without representation, to not do things, or to have the ability to be more creative.
No, we don't have that.
There are other countries that have a lot more opportunities.
It's always a question of the haves and have-nots.
When this country was a have-not, we invited people in, we did everything, but today we restrict the people that can come into the United States.
We restrict the amount of money you can take out of the country.
We do all these restrictions because we've become a have instead of a have not.
That's a sad thought to contemplate.
I mean, I guess I've done a lot of travel ed and it did strike me, I'm afraid, in certain places that the style of living was easier, more friendly, And it seemed like there were more freedoms, at least on the surface.
Now, I guess our freedom of speech is pretty much still intact, but even that is beginning to get curved edges to it, isn't it?
It is.
Everything now, people are trying, and the government's trying, to hold on to what it's got.
Slowly but surely, all of those things that we've taken for granted are changing.
There's too many people, there's too many interests, there's too much competing interest for everything out there.
And we're like the frog in the slowly heating water.
Yep.
Or lobster or whatever, I don't know.
That's right.
As long as it's done slowly, we're never going to complain.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Ed Pankow.
Hi.
Gentlemen, it's good to talk to you tonight.
And to you, sir.
Where are you?
I'm in Oklahoma.
I was wondering if there is something like an FDIC equivalent that works with the offshore banks and how much they insure up to?
There is no such thing that really works.
There is an organization that calls itself the IDIC, the International Deposit Insurance Corporation, but it really doesn't have any backing.
Basically, in these other countries, you do business on the strength of the institution, like a Barclays Bank or this or that.
There's not something that crosses any borders or lines.
Certain individual countries have their own kinds of insurance, but there's no international insurance that really provides any type of protection.
So would it be safer if I was going to put it in like a German bank that had a branch in Aruba or something like that?
Yeah, you take a large international bank, a bank that has got worldwide branches, experience and stability.
They are going to be a much better candidate for your business than the Joe Bagadonets Bank of Belize.
Like the Bundesbank or something.
It's still not risk-free, though, is what you're saying.
Today, nothing is risk-free.
I mean, we can step out of the car and walk down the street and there is risk.
But there's no risk-free banking, even in the United States.
We like to think there is.
Over $100,000.
However, if you look at institutions like we were talking about earlier on the island of man, for example, they have been safely storing money and providing interest accounts for people far longer than any bank in the U.S.
has been doing it.
Right?
Right, Ed?
Yes.
They've got a much greater, longer banking history than we've ever thought of, and they've never had the failures and the problems.
So that's another way of thinking about a caller.
Okay, well, then I'll amend to big international banks.
I'll keep that in mind.
Okay, take care.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Ed Pankow.
Hi.
Hello.
Hello.
Yes.
Yes.
First time caller.
Good.
I want to inquire about the corporations of Nevada.
I'll get the detail on that.
I think I've gotten involved in it.
All right.
Family Limited Partnership in Nevada?
Yes.
We are having a, there's like a gold rush going on.
I'm sorry?
There's like a gold rush going on.
People leaving California and coming to Nevada.
Yeah.
So specifically, what is your question?
Are those asset protections any good?
There's companies advertising today.
Go Nevada, California, anyone California, Oregon, Arizona.
That's not true.
Because basically, again, if the civil authorities or the government alleges fraud, they can cut through all of that.
under a fabricated name, put your bank account under a limited partnership, and they cannot
touch it.
They say they guarantee it.
That company is advertised for it right now.
That's not true because basically, again, if the civil authorities or the government
alleges fraud, they can cut through all of that, especially if you do it in a fraudulent
name or anything.
There's always a paper trail that can be followed for money, and the more steps you take to
to wiggle the more likely they are to find you guilty of fraud
Interesting.
The only thing that Nevada really offers different in a corporation is that they only list one officer or director rather than three.
But if you've written a check for a corporation, if you've transferred money out of an entity into that, there is a record in the banks And they're going to be able to follow that, and when they find it, you know, there's a word.
It's called BOHICA.
It stands for bend over, here it comes again.
That's what you're going to be dealing with.
So the people that are selling all this and promising this are making empty promises.
I've got to remember that.
All right.
First time caller on the line, you're on the air with Ed Pankow.
Hi.
BOHICA.
This is Chris in Choo Choo Town.
Chattanooga?
Yes, sir.
Mr. Pankow, the island life sounds wonderful, but I can't help but think of the Andy Griffith Show where Howard Sprague decided to move down to the islands and soon found that there was nothing to do.
For a person who's not retired, what sort of work would there be besides milking coconuts and peeling pineapples?
Well, there's a lot of work down there.
These companies are really coming into the 21st century, so they need people that have teaching skills, people that have computer skills, and if you can repair a car in Honduras, you are a god.
Any of the skills we have here, sales skills, there's many American companies that are looking for agents to go down there and sell their U.S.
product In these foreign countries.
But Intel, the big computer company, just built a huge plant in Costa Rica and, you know, they're employing thousands of Americans as well as many thousands of Hondurans and Costa Ricans to build computers and to do work that was formerly done in the U.S.
So there's plenty of work down there.
My mother-in-law moved down there four years ago.
She now owns the largest real estate business in the island of Roytan.
And makes far more in Honduras than she ever made in the U.S.
How about that, Culler?
Great.
I'm with you on islands.
I lived on islands for a lot of my life, and you get island fever after a while.
But if you're in, say, Costa Rica, why, you know, there's a fair amount of land around you.
Well, you can always travel.
If you deposit $50,000 in the banks of many of these countries, they will give you citizenship and a passport In any name you want.
So if you want to not be Art Bell and become Joe Bagadona, no problem.
50 grand and I've got a passport and a new ID and a new life if I wanted to.
Right.
Incredible Ed.
Wild Card Line, without a lot of time left, you're on the air with Ed Pankow.
Hi.
Ed, there is a great way to practice disappearing without actually doing anything and that is to call up Alcoholics Anonymous.
Go to their meetings and you can have a whole new name and meet a whole new class of people.
It seems to be that underclass of people that deal with cash only.
You can practice getting a new job and a brand new life and see if you can handle it.
Just call up in the white pages and head down to one of their meetings.
That's a new one for me, but I like that.
Yes, it's kind of fun too, but it's really anonymous.
And they'll protect you with their life, and it's a cash-only society.
It's kind of scary, because there's some undercover cops, but they're there secretly.
You know, they don't even want their bosses to know that they come to our meetings.
It's kind of fun.
That's a new one on me, too, but I do understand the theory.
In other words, I think the one thing that people should really do before they take the first step is to really Go visit that country.
Really decide if they're going to make a happy step, whether they're going to get down to Belize or wherever it is, and they're going to be suddenly very, very unhappy.
So a little bit of investigation before action would be in order, right?
Definitely.
Definitely.
All right.
Well, it has been a great show.
A second, just absolutely outstanding show, Ed.
And I really, really want to thank you.
I hope your book sells right back up to number one on Amazon.
Headed that way.
Yeah, I bet.
A lot of people are going to order that book, Hide Your Assets and Disappear, and it's Ed VanCow, and Ed, we will do, I'm sure, another program yet.
It has been a real pleasure having you on the air.
Do you have any final words for the unhidden masses?
Well, I guess the one thing is that before you Jump into anything, whether you invest your money, your life, or your heart.
Remember that magic saying, when in doubt, check it out.
It's the business you're in.
That's right.
How long have you been doing this altogether?
Actually, I became a private investigator in 1973, so it's more than 25 years now.
25 years.
That's like me and radio.
If you had to do it all over again, would you do anything different?
I really wouldn't.
I've got the best job in the world.
I love it, and it's something I wouldn't change a thing.
I know the feeling.
All right, my friend.
Thank you so very much, and until we meet again, and I'm certain we will, you're a very popular guy.
Thanks, Ed.
My pleasure, Art.
Good night.
You have a good one.
All right.
That's Ed Pankow, and he is one really bright guy.
I think you're going to enjoy his book.
Let me again, once more, give you his email address.
I know a lot of you want that.
It's E.J.Pankow, all strung together, lowercase e-j-p, as in Paul, A-N-K-A-U, at AOL.com.
Ask him a question.
He answers his email.
I try.
I'm Art Bell at MindSpring.com.
And we'll be back tomorrow night with a very, very unusual, controversial show.
It's not going to be for the kids, so get the kids to bed.
By the time I come on the air, they ought to be in bed anyway.
From the high desert, I'm Art Bell.
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