How a free meal cost an investor his retirement savings

George Wilson learned the hard way that there's no such thing as a free lunch — or, in his case, a free dinner that cost him a chunk of his retirement savings.

As a retiree, he regularly received postcards in the mail, offering to teach him about finance and how to make money in retirement. They usually involved a presentation at a nice restaurant, and he would go without acting on any of the investment advice.

But on one occasion, Wilson did take the bait after a brochure he received in 2010 inviting him to an evening at Ruth's Chris Steak House ended up costing him $158,000.

"It was a very good restaurant. And so, of course, it caught my attention," Wilson said in an interview.

At that fateful dinner, he enjoyed his favorite top sirloin steak, asparagus tips, and a "fabulous" chocolate cake. He also met David Escarcega, one of the hosts and a broker who would eventually advise him to invest in so-called non-correlated, fixed-income alternative products from the now-bankrupt firm GWG.

Years later, Wilson is still fighting to regain what he lost from that investment. An arbitration decision recently awarded him $267,252 in compensation, including emotional distress damages from the last broker who facilitated the transaction. But the respondent only paid approximately $103,363.40 toward sanctions and the award. After costs, Mr. Wilson will end up with almost no payout, according to his attorney.

Fancy restaurants with presentations are a common practice in the industry, says financial planner Michael Murray, adding that there are services that provide mailing lists of people with a certain net worth, and retirees are often on them because it's where wealth tends to be concentrated.

But those meals aren't really free, Murray said. They're predominantly set up to sell high-commission products. In GWG's case, brokers earned up to 8% in commissions. What advisors can earn from one of these events pays for the meals and more. Picture a scenario where an advisor signs up $500,000 worth of investments with an 8% commission rate; that's a $40,000 payout. The math is very favorable for those who do this regularly, he added.

Meanwhile, invitees feel like the hosts have done something nice for them and there's an implication that they should do something back, Murray noted. "So I think certain people will go to these dinner seminars and almost feel an obligation to work with someone."

They're referred to as "free lunch seminars," said Adam Gana, a securities attorney who worked on Wilson's case. They're common in the industry. But Gana says that when brokerage firms offer them, he tells clients to run the other way.

"We see them all the time," Gana said. "I've represented 3,000 investors over the last 15 years, and in so many of those instances when we're dealing with a horrific product, a non-traded product, a product that's just terrible for investors, it usually starts with a free lunch."

Risky business

After the dinner, Wilson and his ex-wife Jean followed up with Escarcega at his office to discuss alternative investment options.

"We sat down with him, and he went through various opportunities that he could present to us, and we asked for several," Wilson said. "And the one that seemed the most attractive and that he extolled the virtues of the most was GWG. And so we thought about it for several weeks and went back and forth and then ultimately decided to do it."

The products were non-publicly traded so-called LifeNotes, high-yield debt securities that paid a 9% monthly interest rate by GWG Holdings, according to documents viewed by Insider. They were based on life insurance policies purchased on the secondary market, with the expectation that death benefits would be paid to GWG's bondholders when the insured died. One brochure, viewed by Insider, advertised them as a "secured investment backed by a large portfolio of high-quality life insurance policies""

Escarcega had pitched them as a safer alternative to the volatile stock market that could provide steady dividend payouts while preserving the principal investments, Wilson said.

"Of course, we want to leave our equity to our children but have some kind of income coming from it while we're still here," Wilson said. "And so that was very attractive to us, that we preserve our equity."

Wilson initially purchased $180,000 worth of the notes using funds from his IRA, according to documents viewed by Insider. He later reduced his investment to $158,000 and flipped it to GWG preferred stock. For the next few years, things were looking good. Wilson received payouts monthly. In 2017, he decided to renew his investment, according to documents viewed by Insider.

What he didn't know was that by then, Escarcega had been barred from selling securities after misrepresenting investment risks, according to FINRA. So Escarcega used his brother Adrian's license to submit the transactions through AGES Financial Services, according to arbitration documents from Wilson's attorneys. The Escarcegas could not be reached for comment.

It was one of many details Wilson wasn't aware of. Thus far, the payouts had always been timely, he said. So, there was no reason to suspect there were problems. But there were. GWG's balance sheet wasn't adding up. FINRA had determined that it hadn't been profitable in over a decade. The firm had been selling new bonds to pay dividends to existing bondholders. The underlying collateral wasn't generating an income and multiple accounting firms refused to audit it, according to the amended statement of claim.

The doom loop would eventually come to a screeching halt due to GWG's accounting issues, an SEC investigation, and failure to file its annual SEC report. By 2021, it could no longer sell bonds which led to its bankruptcy by 2022 and the halting of dividend payments, according to the amended statement of claim.

Craig McCann, a consultant providing expert testimony in investment cases, including this one, said that GWG's insurance contracts were being overvalued on its balance sheet and the firm was assuming that people would die earlier. As a result, they estimated receiving the death benefits sooner. Simply put, there were not enough benefits being paid on the insurance contracts to cover the interest and principal due.

"There were lots of signals," McCann said. "There were lots of problems with their SEC filings and lots of reasons to believe that it was imminently going to happen, but most investors were very unsophisticated investors."

In 2019, AGES had ended its relationship with GWG due to a change in the company's business model, according to the firm. But Wilson says he was not informed by the firm, preventing him from selling his shares in time (AGES disputes this). An arbitration panel found that the investment scheme was so egregious that they awarded him $267,252.00 in compensation that included emotional distress damages, according to the order. AGES paid $103,000 for all claimants.

Risk reward

Wilson's situation is a cautionary tale. He used his IRA to make the investment, so he's also faced with a required minimum distribution, which includes the amount invested in GWG even though it's nominal. He told Insider he must withdraw from other investments to meet the minimum.

His case isn't an isolated one. There may have been thousands of brokers selling GWG bonds, based on data pulled from ADV filings as reported by McCann. Wilson says he lives with the guilt of advising his ex-wife and a friend who also invested in the bonds and lost their principal.

Truth be told, it's difficult for the average retiree who is not financially savvy to understand the mechanics of many of these alternative investments, even when there are red flags, Murray said. Non-publicly traded investments take time to build capital before generating free cash flow. For those with lower cash reserves, they don't make much sense because they lack liquidity, he added.

But Murray also emphasized that not all alternative investments are bad. He just thinks that if you're considering them, you must be financially savvy and have the ability to dig into offering statements, look at fee structures, and related party transactions. Even then, investors should resort to a second opinion from a fiduciary advisor, a CPA, or an attorney.

Finally, understand that risk and reward are always tied together. Outsized promises of yields that are much higher than, say, the 10-Year Treasury is a red flag and means there's elevated risk, Murray said.