Live Long and "Prosper"

"Prosper, America's first people-to-people lending marketplace, was created to make consumer lending more financially and socially rewarding for everyone.

The way Prosper works is intuitive to people who have used eBay. Instead of listing and bidding on items, people list and bid on loans using Prosper's online auction platform.

People who want to lend set the minimum interest rate they are willing to earn and bid in increments of $50 to $25,000 on loan listings they select. People who lend can easily diversify using "standing orders", which automatically make many small loans to different borrowers.

In addition to criteria commonly used by institutional lenders, such as credit scores, people who lend can consider borrowers' group affiliations. Groups on Prosper are critical to bringing people together for the common goal of borrowing at better rates. Groups earn reputations according to their members' repayment records. Groups with successful repayment histories should attract more lenders offering lower rates.

Borrowers create loan listings for up to $25,000 and set the maximum rate they are willing to pay a lender. Then the auction begins as people who lend bid down the interest rate. Once the auction ends, Prosper takes the bids with the lowest rates and combines them into one simple loan. Prosper handles all on-going loan administration tasks including loan repayment and collections on behalf of the matched borrower and lenders.

Prosper's rigid privacy policy reflects co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Chris Larsen's longstanding history as an advocate of stringent consumer financial privacy protection laws and practices. Prosper does not sell, rent, or share members' personal information with third party marketers. Prosper members are in control of how much personal information—if any—is revealed on the website and with other members. Prosper's security and identity verification systems are state of the art, and consistent with those used by banks, brokerages and institutional creditors.

Prosper generates revenue by collecting a one-time 1% or 2% fee on funded loans from borrowers, and assessing a 0.5% or 1.0% annual loan servicing fee to lenders. Backed by Accel Partners, Benchmark Capital, Fidelity Ventures, and Omidyar Network, Prosper has raised approximately $20 million. Prosper's marketplace platform is patent pending."


So when Casey Serin talks about a strange $8k loan to a stranger in Dallas, I tend to think that this was the vehicle. Conversely, are some of Prosper's various lenders facilitating the shell corp, cash-back schemes, or penny stock debacle?

Not Suspending Disbelief Just Yet

Fuck. Just getting caught up. Basically sat here all day waiting for a client to make a fucking decision and he calls 1) near the end of the day, 2) kept me on the phone for nearly three hours, 3) making my fuck-all do-nothing Friday actually seem like a lot of work, since I 4) didn't finish until after normal business hours.

All that aside, thank God I'm not Casey Serin.

V-dubs has been broken into and stereo equipment stolen. Sister-in-law Yulia has had it with the deadbeats and says that Casey and Galina Serin have to pony up four months' rent (about $2200, I think?) by May 1 if they want to stay there.

Here's the rub, though...I'm not sure I believe this stuff. Sure, Yulia's got to be sick to death of him, but interesting timing. If he's as insolvent as he claims, where would he come up wtih 2 grand?

Hmmmm...rather curious to have such an eventful day after a week of no blogging. His traffic must be through the roof. Now I'm the disbelieving cynic, wondering if this post isn't just a completely emotional troll that sets the stage for BEG-A-THON NUMBER 2, "GOING FOR THE GOLD!"

After all, Haterz, Casey scored his blood money on a Friday night. He knows that after a hard week of actual work, we like to settle in with a drink or nine and that he can manipulate his way to riches.

He's already batting 1,000 on begging.

More good things to come.......

Out Like A Lamb

While March is considered the month that comes in like a lion and out like a lamb, so too is Casey Serin...just a month later.

We all know by now that Casey Serin isn't very good at doing things in a timely manner, so it's all good.

In case you've forgotten, today is the day that Casey Serin's final property is scheduled for foreclosure. Since Casey Serin has managed to keep himself off of his own blog for a record-setting seven days now, we can only surmise what's happening in the Serin household these days. It can't be pretty. But I'm fairly sure that it's still quite the delusional scene.

Now that Casey Serin will have shed his properties like some mistaken English translation of "spring cleaning", I'm betting that he tries to file bankruptcy to rid himself of the approximately $200,000 in credit card debt that he and Galina still hold.

The idea of shuffling that debt behind some kind of corporate veil doesn't seem to have panned out, as Hammar Investments is currently suspended by the State of California. So with the final property off the books, bankrupcy must look like a mighty fine avenue for the boy to travel next.

"I am facing foreclosure" becomes inaccurate today. As the clipboard hits the top of the trash can, IAFF can be any number of things...I was crushed by foreclosure; I tried to lie, scam, and scheme my way out of foreclosure; I lost all my homes to foreclosure and all I got was one of Nigel Swaby's lousy Haterz t-shirts.....?

The possibilities are endless. What do you recommend IAFF be called now?


Sidenote: Cheers to an "Anon" at ExUrb who pointed out another naive story on Casey Serin.

The Things You Find in Your Blog's Logs...

Most of the time, a blogger's logs are a great tool for gauging the traffic for any given topic about which we may write. To this day, I bemoan the fact that the satiric piece I wrote about Anna Nicole Smith's death got far more pageviews than, say, the piece on the Most Popular Event in the World.

In rare instances, logs reveal more than we might expect. For a couple of weeks, I had noticed some strange Google queries that led someone to my page. I only gave it a cursory look, and didn't think much more of it.

Then Nigel Swaby posted the identities of frequent ExUrbanNation posters on his creepy "don't hate casey" blog. I spent most of the day thinking about how disturbing it was that someone with access to personal financial data had done that.

Later in the evening, I recalled those curious Google searches. I pulled up the logs and took a closer look. And sure enough, queries such as "Where does Aspeth live?" originated from Utah terrorities such as Salt Lake City.

While Nigel Swaby says that he only picked the 'low-lying fruit' through simple searches, there were numerous such queries within a three week period. Nigel Swaby spent a lot of time trying to track down the Haterz.

Some days, there were a dozen or more queries, trying to determine my age, address, phone number...any identifying information that would be useful. And these were just the searches I could see.

I emailed Rob Dawg and we had a brief exchange about Nigel Swaby's latest escapade with Casey Serin's critics. I'm sure that blogs like Housing Panic had similar searches.

Since the Google queries showed that *someone* in Utah (since it can't be proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that it was Nigel Swaby) was also searching for the profiles of folks who had posted here, I made sure that my logs couldn't be accessed without passwords.

Obviously, the queries on those leaving comments here didn't turn up much. By and large, they weren't people who had a deep involvement in Casey Serin's story, or were people with fairly anonymous user names. Still, the creep factor remained.


Conversely, a blog's logs can also make you laugh. Nearly everyday, someone from a mental health facility in Utah Googles Nigel Swaby. This alone raises a world of possibilities.

It's been said before, but I'll reiterate it. Nigel Swaby will give his "expert" real estate and mortgage opinions at the drop of a hat. Personally, if I were a consumer shopping for a mortgage broker, I'd look for one who doesn't spend so much time playing on the internet.

A poster at ExUrb asked how Integrity First Financial's clients would feel about doing business with someone so willing to proffer personal information when he feels wounded. According to Nigel Swaby, when he told his boss about what he had done, his boss laughed and told him "happy traffic."

I guess that answers the question.

More Casey Serin Nigel Swaby Bad Bidness?

Does anyone else find it strange that Nigel Swaby announces he's going on vacation, and at the same time, Casey Serin goes missing?

I'm just saying...the last time both Casey Serin and Nigel Swaby went quiet from the internet, they were trying to set up some shady sweet deals in Salt Lake City.

Let the conspiracy theories commence...