Casey Serin is coming back. This should be interesting.
I first heard about Casey Serin I believe around March of 2007 from a story titled "The World's Most Hated Blogger." At that point, I still had aspirations of being a "problogger" and making lots of money from blogging. The title of the article intrigued me, so I clicked on the link wondering what it could possibly be about. I read about a person named Casey Serin who spent a bunch of money on real estate "investing" courses and bought a total of eight houses in several different states, maxed out all of the available equity through routine yet illegal means such as "liar loans" and overstating income, then couldn't sell the houses and the entire deal crashed down around him. He started a website, I Am Facing Foreclosure.com, which is no longer available but thanks to the Internet Archive can still be read. For some reason, like a lot of other people, I was intrigued by this guy. A lot of people suspected him of being some kind of viral marketing stunt, as if there is no way what he did could have been possible. Could anyone really be that greedy and stupid? I followed along for months with others watching him borrow more money, take afternoon naps, and pursue more "sweet deals" rather than trying to get a job and provide for his wife. I honestly didn't know what to make of the whole deal. Did he have some kind of personality disorder, or was he brainwashed by too many real estate seminars or "Rich Dad" style motivational books? I don't know.
One of the things that really bugged me about Casey is that everybody who disagreed with him was labeled a "hater", which later came to take a more trademarked style of "haterz." As you can see through political correctness in society, disagreement with a position is often immediately connected to hate. This is a logical fallisy but is highly useful as it has the effect of immediately shouting down the dissenting voices and dismissing any possible points they may have.
Casey had several people along the way who tried to help him. They all attempted to get deals with him, which would give him some productive work to do and give them the chance to capitalize off of his popularity. He always managed to slip out somehow, leaving the other person hanging. Sometimes money and commitments were involved and a lot of feelings were hurt. One person did pursue legal action, but as I remember he was talked out of it.
Like other readers, I tried to leave comments and even sent Casey an occasional email offering prayers and advice.
Casey ran off to Australia on an offer to stay with a fan on really short notice, leaving his wife to deal with the collectors. By the time he came back, his wife had it. He eventually sold his blog and shut the operation down. So far he's popped back up twice, only to dive back into obscurity.
I honestly want the guy to come out of whatever got him into his current mindset and be successful. Honestly, he makes a perfect case study for a Dave Ramsey class: trying to borrow your way to prosperity does not work.
I'll stay tuned. Let's see what develops.
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