Zaio.com

SCHAEFFER:

Thanks very much for this information... If you or anyone else has anymore or know of additional sources, we would like to hear about them. Most of us watched this for a long time and are curious to see how it all goes down....

It is sort of like the last chapter in a great mystery novel....

;@)

Roast in HELL Zaio!

If an investigation is underway, no doubt dozens of (and subsequently all) zone owners, investors and many observant independents would be notified and could be tapped for possible assistance if this forum, appraisersforum and appraisalscoop (and a few other avenues) had the identity and contact info for those conducting the investigation. Just having "Schaeffer" as a name isn't much to go on in such a situation.

Schaeffer, can you help out?

I was just reading Santiago's last post (31 posts back) and the impression that Inserra can't hold a job long may be very important in regard to how he directed Zaio. Zaio never displayed any hint that it had legitimate business development talent in charge, and the Inserra stage may have been the situation taken to its ultimate conclusion. Zaio wasn't about business development, it was clearly about Ponzi Parachute development. Cash and dash. Nothing more.

******************************************************************************

A large-scale, multi-state investigation of Zaio is well underway.   No help is needed.   We have the goods on these crooks.   Federal and state indictments are forthcoming in the next several weeks.   This blog and the Appraisal Forum have been very instrumental in the process.   It's always nice when representatives of the company speak their minds so freely in writing. 

******************************************************************************

I have no confidence in that statement. "We have the goods on these crooks" is not language authorities would use. It's also apparent both here and at AForum that the vast bulk of posts are from those who are not zone owners or representatives of Zaio.

Another attempt by Zaio to obscure Zaio's failings?

To anyone trying to help out, I can only offer thanks and encouragement. But we're dealing with Zaio. From such a source there have been games before. I searched for news about Zaio today and found nothing about an investigation. Time will tell?

Sq,

I'm not one much inclined to comment on these sites; however I was looking for information regarding Zaio and this place pops up in searches.  Did you really think you'll find Zaio investigation news on the Internet?  Investigations are most always kept close to the vest. I can tell you this, though, Zaio will be brought to justice and that lies in civil actions and GA's, FBI, SEC, Justice, IMET, TSX-V and some state agencies (only three at the time.)

If you have interest, the forums you mention do not offer much substance.  Do you think you I could depone yourself, piglet, tea-bagged (that handle on its own speaks for itself,) or any of the other anonymous posters and have credible information.  Facts, man, just the facts (ones that can be corroborated) count.

So, where do you start?  As always, its "Follow the Money".  Ever wonder how Zaio wound up on the "Top Ten Venture," list. Search "Guide to the TSX Venture Capital Pool Company Program."  Zaio got recognition, not for performance, but for the amount of capital they raised for growth and acquisitions.  Check the people that started Zaio Corp, in Arizona.  Stinson, the ego driven absent minded professor who passes himself off as a CSO, without degrees or doctorates and assumes duties and roles as CEO (who else would take it.)  Mitton, the book cooker, posing as an upstanding CMA but doesn't actually follow all of GAAP guidelines.  Plus a Real Estate Landlord and Used Car Dealer, all with goals not remotely beneficial to the zone owner fledgelings, who invested.  The management they gathered, while viewed by some as more than credible, couldn't keep their hands out of the treasury cookie jar until it was left with crumbs.  More than thirty of them have been interviewed and they couldn't have enough fingers to point blame in a direction other than them.

This investigation is all about money and the misuse and accounting of it.  You see it all of the time; the perps get so full of themselves, they feel untouchable; that is until they screw enough people who take action.  The details are in the forensic applications of an investigation.  That's where this is developing and growing.

Just like appraisers have sources to mine and confirm data, that are exclusive to their industry, we use similar techniques along with personal contact to frame a picture.  This post is to let you know that something IS going on and though it isn't for forum discussion, if you look hard enough, most of the problems are there for examination.

An official investigation should be able to piece it together, but I wonder if investigators are looking at two critical aspects that assist a convincing prosecution: 1 requirements of business functionality and, 2 requirements for appraisal performance and appraisal products. To see zone sales promoted so feverishly, from a company with nothing functional to offer and a track record of perfect failure to start database business with clients year after year, should be followed up with a 360 perspective.

To ONLY watch the money trail and avoid those two other parts of the pie would allow the defence of financial trickery to rest on word games and interpretations to be batted around without being nearly as grounded in solid contextual framework reference as they need to be. Intent, method and accountability need some support.

Appraising issues:

Appraisers here, at appraisalscoop and appraisersforum did a magnificent job in revealing that the Zaio system and 2055 had no hope, as a process and as a product (as presented at various times) of functioning within USPAP guidelines, no hope of selling in enough volume, as an external appraisal, in zones to make the venture worthwhile, and no hope of selling at a price point anywhere near the price mentioned by Zaio, considering the competing products and client market trends. Then of course, the appraiser would only receive 44% of the income; a nonstarter of a proposition in the real world. The intent, the devil, is in the details, but the details have been brought to light many times, especially at appraisersforum.com.

For vast periods of time, Zaio had no database products sold, no considerable number of zones "live", and certainly no testimonials from clients or zone owners. Zaio never did produce a fully functioning test city, no proof of any business model, in fact nothing approaching a proven business model, which requires clients landed, sustained, approval from appraisal authorities and overall system viability. Spokane kept failing and being taken off-line. It seemed Zaio was fully intent on avoiding a start to business! Year after year, failure in city after city. 100% failure to start sustainable volume business with clients. But sell zones, oh, sell, sell, sell!

Outside of Spokane, WA, were there ever any clients? Financial reports indicating $0.00 from database product sales, including all of 2007. No indication that 2008 went any better, or 2006 or 2005 or 2004. Claims by Zaio that cities would soon be "live" were never matched with database completion or financial productivity. What happened to Spokane, Denver, Colorado Springs, St. Louis, San Diego, Orlando, Mesa, Phoenix, or dozens of other cities started? Why no clients? Why $0.00 in database product earnings?

Zaio did make bizarre claims that they had landed clients, but they never showed up in financial reports as database product sales. What gives? The AMC purchases didn't seem to produce anything valuable, but they did allow Zaio to spend money extremely quickly. Feverishly. And why?

Zone sales persisted. Zaio remained entirely hypothetical as a business prospect. Comments from those who attended zone sales meetings included much about the unprofessional, uninformative, deceptive behavior of Zaio. Jim Jones, WACO, Texas and Bernie Madoff come to mind.

Business functionality

Zaio's database creation process, as Zaio set it up, did not seem to have a hope of working. The deeper one dug to understand what was going on, the more convincing it was that it was a completely disfunctional mess, a perfect waste of time and money. So Zaio just moved on to sell zones somewhere else, and all along the way making outlandish claims about how they were of such magnificent benefit to the industry. How many times did we read those Zaio claims! How comical when they were in the present tense!

To see how the photography, geoscoring and maintenance were charted out on a timeline, as they were actually performed, was alarming, as disfunctional in business. To realize that there was no proven test city to guide the process properly and no database product income for zone owners to allow them to do database maintenance work, was just as alarming.

Zone owners were walking into a fly-by-night calamity. The cost to do annual maintenance on one zone was roughly $15,000, that after purchasing a zone for roughly $9000 and spending roughly $12,000 in the first year to create the database, which would require a second full field inspection almost immediately upon being completed, with the real estate market demanding high quality data.

Never forget that Zaio purchased bad property data; Inserra stated that Zaio's property data was roughly 60+% errors when they bought it. That requires a massive expediture of time and professional quality effort to fix. Um, sorry, no way to pay for that, folks. Data of that poor condition means that Zaio zone owners were essentially starting from scratch in geoscoring; extra time and effort required to get back to a level playing field. What sort of garbage data would clients find? Interesting question. Data that was outdated, full of errors and the lenders getting stuck with the difference? No wonder Zaio had no client testimonials from active cities. Oops, no active cities. Spokane was the only attempt and it never truly succeeded in proving the Zaio business model. Late in the game they did try outsourcing data cleanup to India. Teenagers on the other side of the planet. Amazing.

Zaio promotional claims were outlandish and deceptive. Zaio claimed to have 140 million property records, but that was bulk purchase data including the 60+% errors that needed great effort to correct. Zaio needed to gather new property photos and do desktop and field geoscoring before taking any property to market as good data.

Zaio to date has only taken roughly 24 million photos, most of which are of course very out of date and worthless for years now. Zaio has completed geoscoring on a small fraction of the properties where photos had been taken. So the real number of properties Zaio might be able to use in database products was never more than a tiny fraction of the 24 million, a miniscule portion of 140 million. But Zaio consistently promoted the fact they had the 140 million as functional, and left it up to investigators to dig up the real story. Smoke and mirrors.

Concerns of intent and method?

If there is no functional business year after year, what do you have going on? 

Thanks SQ for a formidable job of summarizing.

I have been out of town and missed some of this but I concur.

SCHAEFFER

Forgive us for being skeptical but we have seen alot of funny stuff.

We come on here ananonymous because many of us have been threatened by the Zaioistas personally....

;@) 

It has been a little quiet over here... I guess it is just all so overwhelming.

;@)

GET A LIFE!!!

There's a zone in Arizona for sale on ebay.

The opening bid was 10 cents.  It's all the way up to $125 now.   It might be a nice souvenir for somebody, but I dropped out at $75.

Zaio owes me and I'll see it.

Zaio investigation

http://appraisersforum.com/showthread.php?p=1548523

I'm beginning to think that this Zaio business is nothing but crap.   What are these guys from Zaio, a bunch of crooks?

Don  -   Mobile, Alabama appraiser and zone owner

Don:  you're a fat-headed dumb old bastard.

That flat-top is pretty sweet, though.

Independent journalism takes aim at Zaio and discovers the truth behind the phony front:

http://communicatormagazine.com/page316.aspx

Really.  GET A LIFE!!!

Article is 2 years old.  Not actually Breaking News.

Yes, and two years ago, in the feverish zone sales push when Zaio still had nothing of any business value (since 2003 or since) to offer new zone owners, who were immediately engaged in wasting all their resources on a stupid database creation system that had no hope of working, as evidenced by this report and in observations by hundreds of people over the years (love the blogs and forums). What client would want to be subject to any of the out of sync and outdated Zaio data? According to the report, the zone owners were sold a bluff. The big hurry up and wait while Zaio walks off with the money and the database creation efforts turn to unredeemable garbage data as the months go quickly by. It's nice to find TESTIMONIALS!

No news out of Zaio was ever indicative of realistic business progress relative to database products. Their next quarterly statement should be a real hoot!

Estimated income from database clients> $0.00 (no change there)

Estimated zone sales > 0

Estimated zone owner satisfaction level 2003 - 2009 > 0

Estimated number of Clarus Securities staff who want to invest in Zaio again > 0

Estimated outstanding dispute between Kirchmeyer and Zaio > ?

% of 24 million photos captured retaining any market value > 0

% of geoscoring data retaining any market value > 0

Number of 2055s with sales potential where property value over $200,000 > 0

% of zone owners in Canada and US who profited from database products > 0

% of zone owners in Canada and US who profited through zone sales commissions > ?

Yeah. Right. Sorta sounds like this.

"PREDICTION: Appraising recovers by 2009

PREDICTION: the FBI spends a couple years prosecuting the corrupt AMC/lender crowd with such open vigor that many AMC and lender reputations and businesses are severely thrashed. The process also reveals the high level of incompetence of AVMs. Buyouts, mergers, collapses and splits occur. The story hits news services daily across the country. Throw in some AMC/lender ruined marriages and a few suicides just to keep it real.

Appraising as a profession makes a major recovery as a result of the appraising/lending business having its dirty laundry flown in public for 1 to 2 years solid. Systemic adjustments follow quickly. Legislation and processes adjusted. Full interior appraisal reports become required. Out with AVM's, 2055s, their unquestioned faulty data sources and unprofessional processes, appraiser pressuring and home owner vulnerability. Home buyer "consumer" support groups become much more energized and empowered. Their lobbyists and watchdogs are everywhere.

Appraiser independence from AMCs increases. Appraiser training and support boosted. Appraiser job market, annual income and job security greatly improve.

It's beautiful. It's happening."

GET A LIFE!! 

There's a real world out here and what you got to say doesn't amount to a hill of beans, except with the other messengers in the mailroom.

GET OVER IT!

Cybersmearers almost uniformly claim to be “independent,” “neutral,” and attribute the purpose for the blog as being a “public service,” protection of the “unsuspecting consumer/customer,” concern for “innocent victims” and the like

Cybersmearers categorize their comments as “informational” or “opinion” when in fact, the statements represent propaganda

Regardless of their motives or their targets, cybersmearers share several common characteristics, including:

 **They have a delusional sense of importance as a result of the number of people they can reach via the world wide web.

**They are generally negative people to begin with who hide behind the notion that they are simply expressing their opinions, exchanging ideas or providing a public service.