Crazy Shark Dude

"It takes a big man to cry, but an even bigger man to laugh at him." -Jack Handy

I once sat in a man's office to discuss how he was going to accomplish a no-money-down mortgage by fooling the permanent lender (read: fraud), and he received a phone call during which he reprimanded a branch manager for allowing fraud in his office. I lost it when he said, straight-faced, "Well, Bill, fraud affects us all, and you need to ask yourself some soul searching questions."

Fraud… fraud… what is fraud, anyway? Most of us have included some quasi-personal expenses among our business expenses on our tax returns, but is that fraud? Is telling the young lady at the bar that you have a foot-long rooster fraud? Well, enough speculating and philosophical ma$turbating. Here are three cases of insurance fraud that are… amusing:

Insurance Fraud Case 1

Billy Jane (ever wonder why redneck women have men's names?) kept a few cases of aging dynamite in her crawlspace. Unbelievable as this may seem, it didn't even belong to her, but belonged to her boyfriend Arbutus, who used it for fishing. Yes, fishing.

She told her husband they were flares, so one day when the power went out, he went down to the crawlspace, took one out, and lit it. (Aside – to this day we don't know if this outcome was intentional or not.) In a remarkably clever, if wholly despicable, maneuver, she managed to eliminate her husband and claim both the life insurance and homeowner's insurance money, after stating in her claim that her "husband was killed due to a gas leak from the furnace, while lighting his corncob pipe." She then moved in with Arbutus, a wealthy woman, and died later that year under "suspicious circumstances."

Karma, anyone?

Insurance Fraud Case 2

Female (pronounced Fe-mahl-ie – it's a "tribal name," according to her) heated her house with her oven. Anyone who graduated 5th grade knows this is not the wisest thing a person can do, but alas, Female dropped out to run drugs at the ripe age of 11, because her parents thought education was worth less than the $19/day she brought in, but never mind my sociological eyebrow-raising.

When the house inevitably burned down, taking her husband's malnourished pitbull he used for dogfighting with it (a blessing for the pitbull, mind you), she claimed on her insurance that the late dog knocked over her husband's cooking torch, which he was using to cook "crème brulee." Her story was made plausible only by the fact the adjuster wholeheartedly believed her husband had a cooking torch, and decided not to look to closely into what it was used for.

Insurance Fraud Case 3

Paco had 17 people living in a 4-bedroom house, which was essentially the clown car of real estate. Paco didn't have any rental insurance, because the aggregate value of the (17 person) family's personal property was $97.43 (most of which was a giant glass cross hanging on the wall). But his neighbor coveted his glass cross (a "clear" case of irony), and knicked it, only to tie it to the hood of his 1986 Toyota Tercel as an oversized hood ornament, so Paco decided to take action.

And by action, we mean he called INS (from a payphone) on his neighbor, and still didn't get insurance, because why the f@ck would he want to insure the remaining $14 worth of personal property?

Happy Claims-Making!

We interrupt your regularly scheduled Slumlord Humor Blog to bring you this, which just couldn't wait until next week: --------->

I don't know what to make of that. Honestly.

Except for one phrase that my ex-girlfriend's hilariously bitchy mother used to summarize our country's intellectual deficits:

$HITHEAD AMERICA.

It's time, folks. Time for slumlords everywhere to come together under a common flag, and abide by common rules of conduct. A manifesto, if you will, comprised of the Ten Commandments of Slum Landlording.

Commandment 1: Thou Shalt Not Talk about Fight Cl-

Oh crap, too late.

Commandment 2: Thou Shalt Not Pay Utilities. Ever.

Really? You really want to pay for your trailer tenant's Skinemax cable bill? Or their $400 electric bill from cooking all that crack? Ok, that's what I thought.

Commandment 3: Thou Shalt Not Live in the Same Slum as Your Tenants

This one goes out, in particular, to trailer park owners, who just can't stay away from the smell of burnt tires mixed with pig carcass.

Commandment 4: Thou Shalt Not Accept Sex as Rental Income

Times are tough, tenants are defaulting, and offering "alternative" forms of payment. But take it from someone who knows: you WILL go broke doing this.

Commandment 5: Thou Shalt Not Lose Money to Tenant Lawsuits

Welfare queens with 10 kids be damned! When they sue you for their kids being congenitally vegetative, and they win (they always win), don't pay the judgment. If you have to create an irrevocable trust owned through your spouse's grandmother's dog in Tahiti, and earn your income through THAT, then so be it. But don't give in to their opportunistic thieving and encourage their sense of entitlement.

Commandment 6: Thou Shalt Not Offer Free Rent

Tenants will beg you, threaten you, cajole you, and curse you, but don't give them free rent. And I know what you're thinking, and you clearly need to go back and reread Commandment 4. And no, you won't accept payment in drugs, no matter how much you may want to, because they can blackmail you for it later.

Commandment 7: Thou Shalt Not Allow Illegal Activity on the Premises

Unless it involves you, of course. We already covered in Entry 13 some Slow Market Survival techniques, not all of which are, you know, "technically legal," or whatever.

Commandment 8: Thou Shalt Not Visit Your Properties After Dark

You might think that your "camouflage" (which could be literal, in the case of the trailer park) makes you fit in, and that's all well and good. But how badly do you want to test that theory?

Commandment 9: Thou Shalt Not Provide Central Air Conditioning

Remember Entry 1, people.

Commandment 10: Thou Shalt Not Be Ashamed of Your Profession

Everyone loves to hate on slumlords. Liberals accuse you of profiteering, conservatives disdain you. But you know what you can do when someone gives you a hard time? You introduce them to your tenants. At night. In a dark alley.

Slumlords Unite!

Last time around was for the Old Guard, with their shotguns and three-legged dogs. This time, we're going after you New Guard types with your fried chicken and tiny bikes. What did we talk about last time, kids? No ideological whining!

Today we're going to talk about something very serious: victims of the ghetto.

Have you or someone you know ever been beaten with an extension cord? Have you grown suspicious that the ice cream truck always lingers around the same dark alley with the same strung-out streetwalkers, when all you wanted was a Chipwich? Mixed up a jug of Kool-Aid only to discover you don't have enough bags of sugar to make it sweet enough?

If so, you may qualify for President Obama's new social welfare movement: Government Helping Endow Torpid Thugs Opulently.

Now I know what you're thinking: Little Shaniqueashana is already 200% overweight and doesn't need that Chipwich washed down with Kool-Aid. But how do you know the Kool-Aid doesn't disinfect the water supply that's intentionally soiled by the slum landlord? And Chipwiches contain valuable nutrients and minerals, like protein, calcium, and over 400% Daily Value trans fats.

Little Tyrone needs your help. And no, I'm not talking about your kid's missing bike that he got for Christmas, I mean money. And to be fair, we'll make sure some of that money gets watered down through a few dozen bureaucracies before it gets to him, because Lord knows this country needs jobs, right?

So be a good American and vote yes for the G.H.E.T.T.O. initiative, and make the streets a better place for Little Tyrone, Uncle Michael Vick, and the powdered drinks industry nationwide.

Conclusive Note: F@ck it, I'm moving to Europe and chilling in a little Italian villa where they roll barrels of wine down the hill from the town vineyard. You can keep your Hypocritical Right ("Republicans stand for smaller government!" yeah right) and your Protectionist Left ("You don't feel like working? That's ok here's money so you can keep breeding and watering down the collective IQ!"). Enjoy the ever-expanding juggernaut that is the US government, and I'll be thinking about you while I'm sipping chianti.

Landlords (and real estate investors generally) have to make a choice when they choose a contractor: do I use an expensive, licensed professional, or the local Neanderthal handy-man?

This is a no-brainer when adding a pool house to your estate in Santa Barbara, but when you buy a house for $5,000 and need to slap it into shape for a crackwho- I mean chemically-dependent prostitute- tenant to pay you $400/month, the answer’s a little tougher.

As the self-proclaimed authority on slum landlording, I offer the following advice: the answer should depend on both the size of the job and the neighborhood. If a house can be thrown together with some drywall, new carpet, and paint, use Homo Erectus and his hand-axe tool kit. But if your job is big enough that the local bureaucratic stiffs might notice your handiwork, get a contractor with a license and pull a permit (more on permits and all the sleazy, corrupt, bureaucratic bull$hit that accompanies them next time).

A final word of advice: contractors are irresponsible, unreliable, greedy, lazy, and smell like baby powder mixed with snuff. They overwhelmingly have a hand-to-mouth mentality (almost sounds dirty doesn’t it?), meaning that when they have a bill to pay they’re your best friend, and when they think they’re sitting pretty they won’t return your phone calls.

So pay them in small increments, as they actually work, and verify with your own eyes every hole they were supposed to drill, every box they were supposed to nail, and, of course, every nut they were supposed to screw.

PS Yes, that house was built to resemble a toilet.