The hardest thing for Alfred Madeira to come to terms with is the broken trust: His longtime friend Sean Healy had scammed him out of up to $14 million in less than a year. Instead of investing the money, Healy financed his own lavish playboy lifestyle, Now, Madeira is left bankrupt, working with what attorney Paul Turner calls "tunnel vision" to get back on track. But there's one more thing -- something pretty surprising -- that Madeira can't quite get over:
"If he would've just done the trades, everyone would have made money," the Pennsylvanian chiropractor says.
According to Madeira, the trades Healy suggested were actually sound. At one point, Healy said that oil was going to take off. Madeira was hesitant, but Healy said he was going to invest anyway, and eventually they "both" invested. (In reality, Healy never made any investments, and his sole income was Madeira's money.) Then, the price of oil skyrocketed.
On another would-be trade, Healy and Madeira invested in gold
that, two days later, actually went up about $100. Madeira had been
collecting gold coins before he met Healy. "Add up all the different
gold trades we did and it's like we only lost money on two of the 14,"
Madeira says. "He actually predicted the money before it occurred."
Healy
studied communications at Northeastern University for three years
before transferring to the University of Rhode Island. Healy told
attorneys in a sworn statement last April that he received his degree
from Rhode Island in business administration with a concentration in
business management. However, according to Turner, Healy's subsequent
brokerage work in Long Island was a network of SEC-investigated boiler
rooms, and his Florida energy-drink business was a scam.
Shalese,
Healy's wife, says that Healy kept day trader hours, waking up at 4
a.m. and working all day in his office, with the market up on one of
the room's two flat-screen TVs. Madeira says that he could call Healy at
4:30 a.m. and "he'd be wide awake, already looking at what happened
the previous night. He would tell me strategies for the day.
"It's
the stupidest thing in the world. If he had just taken the money and
bought gold alone, gold went up 80 to 90 percent that year," Madeira
says. "I studied gold for three years, knowing it was going to go up
that year. Unfortunately, Sean called me during that year."
