Banking Horror Stories and How To Escape the Western Banking System

Since December of last year, my email inbox has been full of inquiries from increasingly worried citizens of the neo-fascist oligarchies to the north. Based on what I’m hearing every day, it’s getting intolerable up there. At the same time, I continually hear the same inaccuracies repeated regarding offshore asset protection, and expatriation.

I also see an almost paralyzing fear of Big Brother in some of my new clients, which is truly sobering. I’m even helping to get one client a visa to Brazil in order to make the great escape.

I know what it’s like. I myself was suffering from prolonged stress back in the ’90s before finally getting out. A Brazilian visa, by the way, is difficult for gringos to obtain. Why? Because the Brazilian government treats US citizens who want to visit Brazil exactly the same way that the US government treats Brazilian citizens who want to travel to the USSA… fingerprints and all. Luckily I’m not a gringo any longer.

Truthfully, I don’t understand why a Brazilian would want to go to the US, when they have a far superior lifestyle here, but that, again, reveals the power of mass misinformation. For example, I keep reading about the Brazilian recession, or even hear the term “free fall”. It reminds me of how dangerous everyone was telling me Medellín was 15-20 years ago. It didn’t matter that I was actually living there, and they had never so much as flown over the country on their way to Perú. They knew more about it than I did. They saw it on the tee vee, so it was a fact.

Suddenly, the Colombian government has become the favored child. After Correa threw the gringos off their Air Force base in Manta, Ecuador, the US government went about looking for another foothold in South America where they could keep a watchful eye over the Venezuelan oil fields. Colombia needed money to counteract the billions of dollars flowing into the country from all the crack heads in the US. Those funds, channeled by the idiotic War on Drugs, were arming the separatists and fueling an insurrection, or that’s how the government saw it. Under the guise of aiding the establishment, Uncle Sam was gradually able to take over the parts of the Colombian government that mattered, using phony paper printed at your expense.

All I see down here are happy, laid back people, going about their daily lives. Based on what I’m hearing from people who are currently living behind the curtain in the US, there are a lot more problems up there. As always, I’m speaking with a number of potential new clients who are revealing some frightening new trends in the US and Canada, as well as in Europe.

I’ll bullet point a few that I can recall off the top of my head (with my response in italics):

• “I tried to do an online transfer to you for the fee, but the Wells Fargo online transfer form doesn’t have the required fields to do so.” – Keep in mind that there is only one way in the entire world to do an international transfer, and that is using standardized SWIFT forms. Wells Fargo doesn’t provide one online?
• “So I had to go into the branch office in Orlando where the bank employee said she also could not figure out how to do it.” – Hint to the wise: When your banker says that they can’t figure out how to complete a standardized SWIFT transfer form, it’s time to take your money and run. In rural South America, it would take two minutes and a smile with the same wiring instructions. “Con mucho gusto don Paul”
• “So I had to contact you, and get some more information, and make a second trip to the Wells Fargo branch in order to complete the wire transfer.” – Once I set you up offshore, you’ll do everything online. No more visits to the office to fill out paper forms… only in Amerika do they kill the rainforest with such inefficient, reckless abandon.
• “When I asked my banker to notarize my utility bill, I was essentially interrogated by the bank management. Even though I’ve banked there for several years, they all but accused me of setting up an offshore bank account in order to launder money.” – It seems that a memo went out, no doubt typed up deep in the bowels of the Treasury in Washington, warning notaries that those wishing to have utility bills and ID’s notarized indicates the establishment of an offshore bank account. Thanks to Treasury propaganda, we know with certainty that the only reason to keep your money out of the reach of such rogue bureaucrats is for illegal tax evasion, or money laundering. Protection from seizure without due process, or bail-ins, isn’t a valid excuse. More scary Big Brother tactics.
• A potential new client in Ontario, Canada this week told me about a local dairy farmer which he and his community are trying to save from rogue bureaucrats. Seems some guy who insists on the freedom to drink the milk his cows produce, in any form he chooses to, is a dire threat to the Canadian public. He’s been arrested several times for consuming and selling raw milk. So his friends, who also want the freedom to drink the milk of their choosing, formed a co-op and bought the farm, relegating the former owner to mere employee. The swat teams are still arriving to throw this guy in jail. This isn’t banking related, but it displays the kind of tyranny that allows bureaucrats to confiscate your assets without due process. Thankfully, in Colombia, when I want milk I go up the hill from the coffee farm to the dairy farm 1,000 meters away, and watch the guy drain a teet into an old plastic Coke bottle. I hand him the equivalent of 65 cents, say gracias, and go back home to heat it well on the stove. Not sure how I’ve survived this long. Nor our ancestors for that matter (mine were dairy farmers in 1800’s upstate NY, and lived into their 90’s, many of them). Man is that full cream delicious. Happy travels in the land of the free.
• “When I asked the notary public to notarize my utility bill she refused, saying it’s an official document, and doesn’t need to be notarized.” – See comments above about the memo from the bowels of Treasury. Since when do notaries decide if a document is worthy of notarization or not? Just take your fee, notarize it, and shut up.
• “I had repeatedly asked my California Wells Fargo wealth manager to get me out of the energy sector stocks he had me so heavily invested in, and that I wanted to liquidate my holdings and move them offshore. He repeatedly refused to follow my verbal instructions, and over the summer I lost about $300,000.” – Make these orders in writing, and get them signed by someone at the bank. Be prepared to camp out in the lobby for days, if necessary, if your banker tries to use such stall tactics as you try to protect your and your families’ futures. The banksters don’t give a damn if you go broke. They care about the assets in their portfolios, and the commissions and bonuses they receive by keeping your money under their management. Hopefully one day soon, we’ll see several members of this collective pond scum doing headers from the top floor.
• “I Went to Bank of America to wire the money and the clerk asked for your address and telephone number. At that time I said “I don’t have it you have all the information you need in order to send the money”, I could tell that she did not know what to do, so I asked for the manager, once the manager came to talk to me she said that due to new regulations (instructions from the Treasury department) they now need the address of the beneficiary. Then she said that all this was for our protection. At that time my husband said, “we don’t need your protection, we are perfectly able to take responsibility for our actions, by the way this is not your money it is ours and you are trying to control as to how we use it” – We need more people taking this kind of stance. You give away your freedom when you comply with ridiculous rules intended to enslave you. Grow a pair like this newly retired couple in California. Please.
• “I’m preparing to leave the US forever, and need some advice on how to establish residency elsewhere so I can take advantage of the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion (FEIE).” You don’t need to establish residency anywhere in order to take advantage of the FEI. You simply need to prudently improve your life dramatically, by never returning behind the curtain. Specifically, you must spend at least 330 days per year in a better place or places. However, your visa status as an expat is irrelevant. You could travel from country to country on tourist visas, and utilize the FEI.
• “My local bank, here in Sweden, where I have to go personally to send you a wire transfer, says they can’t do a 2-bank transfer. Also—Will I be able to spend the money from my offshore account freely, without local merchants tracking my expenditures for the government?” – Capital controls are in full swing in Scandinavia, and Italy as well. Not so well disguised as in the US with FATCA and notaries being trained to not provide the necessary Know Your Cllient (KYC) documents. We’re seeing more and more European clients finding our help useful.
• “Although I’m now also a Canadian citizen, I feel better using my Bulgarian ID, as Canada degrades and becomes more like the Eastern Europe that we fled previously.” – I’m hearing this about Canada all the time now. Uncle Sam’s lap dog to the north. Truly, when you make your escape, you should stay away from all English-speaking countries. Another new client in New Zealand said he doesn’t see a whole lot of difference there from the US he fled.
• “I escaped Croatia after the US led war there, with a single suitcase and about a hundred bucks. Over the past fifteen years I’ve been able to work very hard, and re-build my nest egg, but what I see in Canada right now reminds me exactly of what I saw in Croatia before the war. I need to have my money safely out so that I don’t end up like I was before back home.” – What more can I say?
• “I’ve got my retirement account in an equity and bond fund at Fidelity/BoA/Wells Fargo/State Farm…” – Yikes. What I actually hear is “I’m about to piss away 30-40% of my retirement fund simply because I didn’t know I could do what I wanted to with my own money.” I hear this a few times a week as people are waking up, and getting their retirement nest egg out of the danger of being converted to worthless government bonds. Which is, in effect, a bail-in. People have been brainwashed into believing that they have to tick one of those 3-5 boxes, and put their money in some crap mutual fund in the US stock or bond market, held in shaky financial institutions, and denominated in an about to pop US dollar. Well, guess what? It’s your money, and you can still legally do what you want to with it. The smartest move available is to do a tax-free rollover to a self-directed IRA (SD IRA). We are continually picking up more clients wanting to move their accounts offshore, where they have the ability to invest in virtually anything. Foreign real estate, cryptocurrencies, foreign stocks, forex in foreign currencies, and on and on. The fee for a self-directed IRA of $2,900, which will increase soon, is much less than the taxes and penalties to take it all out, and lose the tax-deferral on profits going forward. It’s a no-brainer. Save the penalties and taxes, and keep your future profits tax-deferred.

The reasons to flee just keep mounting, and yet only a small minority can see the light. Study your history if you want to predict the future. Only a small percentage left Germany prior to the 1939 blitzkrieg. I hope we won’t see people herded into converted K-Marts at gunpoint anytime soon by people who are just following orders.

Step one in preparation is to protect your money. Having funds available outside of a US or European bank account can make all the difference as capital controls increase. Step two, have a second travel document (see more here). The US document isn’t reliable anymore. Ask Mr. Snowden, who refused to follow orders.

If you’d like more information on moving forward with an offshore bank account, corporation, trust or a self-directed IRA you can contact me directly at pseymour@tdvoffshore.com.

A true patriot loves his country always, and his government when it deserves it”—Mark Twain

[Article by Paul Seymour of TDV Offshore]

Originally Appeared At The Dollar Vigilante