Investors in Arlan Galbraith’s alleged pigeon Ponzi scheme fail to show for prosecutor’s meeting

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‘Victim fatigue’ may be one reason only 10 out of a possible 917 people attended a victims’ meeting this week and three of those who did participate were former employees of Pigeon King International

Photo: Arlan Galbraith

Comments

If Galbraith's financial reward was $50,000 annually, his "take" of the $20 million put up by investors, was only about half a million dollars.

In addition, since early investors profited from their investment, while later investors lost theirs, both the victims and the beneficiaries of this Ponzi scheme appeared to be farmers, rather than Galbraith himself.

I'd be thinking that if I was an early investor, and made out like a bandit, while my neighbour, who was a later investor, lost his house, I'd be wanting to stay anonymous too.

Once again, so much for the nonsense that we, in the farm community, are "all in it together".

Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON

Investors i.e. farmers must have had sun in there eyes if they believed that the PKI was a viable , long term venture. I was even more shocked when I seen that some pretty (i assumed) intelligent business men bought into the plan.
Money and greed is what makes ponzi schemes work as everyone hopes there is another sucker too buy into it and if you are early investor the rewards are great

I agree, you can't fix stupid. The author of this post looks quite stupid himself.... spelling and grammar mistakes. And to assume that people didn't know that this wasn't a viable long term venture...no risk, no reward. Life is a gamble, my friend. Oh, and to assume that the were all men? Try again. Intelligent farmers are women as well.

Why is it assumed that investors in Pigeon King International were either greedy or stupid. I can assure the "Can't fix stupid" writer that my wife and I were neither greedy or stupid. We did not enter into this scheme with the intention of getting rich. We researched the claims put forward by Pigeon King, we talked to other farmers. We beleived ... The entire plan by Arlan Gailbraith was cleverly concocted. Many respected and successful neighbours of ours fell victim to this alleged ponzi scheme as well. To determine whether or not Arlan Gailbraith's intentions were pure, you have only to ask yourself, "did he or did he not have a use or end market for these birds"? The answer is very simple, NO,he did NOT. Without a legitimate end market for these pigeons, every dollar he took from new unsuspecting investors was a dollar he KNEW they would NEVER get back. MY PHONE NUMBER:

Comment modified by editors for libel and to delete phone number.

We had several Amish neighbors getting ready to send their life savings or about to get loans to get in on this deal.
Pigion King targeted the Amish in Wi. I am sure they were targeted in other States as well. The Amish won't go to court. Too bad.

of all people I would expect a farmer to know pigeons are not worth hundreds of dollars. Unless these pigeons do something the ones that farmers shoot with their shotguns don't do, there must be a question why? I think part of it is that whether or not the farmer does question why, they assume that public business offerings are honest and legal, and that they can count on the courts to uphold contracts, and insurance and so-forth to protect them, and think that things will go the way they planned, truth is it did go that way for alot of them for a long time. It would take a pretty smart man to come to conclude how Arlan's business functioned, just from the proposition, unless they already had an understanding of the Ponzi Scheme. With updated internet research, and applying basic grade 9 math with 20/20 hindsight vision, the people who fell for it were not necessarily stupid, maybe a little, but we can all be a little stupid in circumstances. The difficult part is that the transfer of wealth is complete and money that has previously been earned fairly in the eyes of the winners is already re-invested or spent, and that is going to be difficult to get transferred back to the losers.

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