The Iced Coffee Hour - We Almost Got Scammed

Episode Date: April 22, 2021

On this weeks episode we have Craig Kimmel on the podcast. Craig talks about his multimillion dollar business suing companies that use robocalls and how you could potentially get up to $1500 per call. He also explains lemon law and how he used his love for cars to start one of the biggest lemon law firms in the country. Craigs Links: https://www.LemonLaw.com​ http://www.CreditLaw.com​ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/MrLemonLaw​ Add us on Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/jlsselby​ https://www.instagram.com/gpstephan​ GET YOUR FREE STOCK WORTH UP TO $50 ON PUBLIC & SEE MY STOCK TRADES: http://www.public.com/graham​  Join the 2x weekly mentorship group: https://tinyurl.com/yaexko4o​ The Equipment used: https://tinyurl.com/y78py5g2​ Audio Equipment Used In Podcast: Rode NT1, Rodecaster Pro The YouTube Creator Academy:   Learn EXACTLY how to get your first 1000 subscribers on YouTube, rank videos on the front page of searches, grow your following, and turn that into another income source: https://bit.ly/2STxofv​ $100 OFF WITH CODE 100OFF  For Podcast Inquiries, please contact [e-mail] *Some of the links and other products that appear on this video are from companies which Graham Stephan will earn an affiliate commission or referral bonus. Graham Stephan is part of an affiliate network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites. The content in this video is accurate as of the posting date. Some of the offers mentioned may no longer be available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome back to the 49th ever episode of the iced coffee hour. I'm Craig. And to date, this podcast has made $55,706.93. Oh, my God. That was great. That was incredible. Thank you so much, Craig. Craig, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

This is going to be a really fun episode because I feel like this is one of the few episodes that we've had someone on the podcast who's not on YouTube. Is this the first one we've done for the... Oh, my gosh. It just might be. Christine. Christine is not on YouTube. Oh, but she's on TV. But she's like a public figure, right?

She's on TV. This is our first. Well, does it count if my daughter has a YouTube channel? She's got, I think, 100 subscribers. There we go. That's pretty good. Nice. Diamonds for Kim.

Everybody check her out. Nice. I feel like we should probably get this out of the way, but how did you two meet exactly? And what sparked your interest so much that you would like to extend an invitation for him to come on the podcast? Yeah, this is unusual, by the way. Usually, we reach out to other people to have on the podcast. And it's us actively thinking, oh, who would be great for, you know, who would be great to have on? Oh, we haven't had Nate O'Brien on in a while.

Let's get him on her. So this came about when I posted that I bought the Ford GT. And you sent me an Instagram message. And I don't, did I respond to you before? Was this like a no? Because my, my Instagram DMs get flooded. And I think that sometimes I just sort by most recent and yours happened to come up and you had a few pictures up there.

Right. And so I looked at the pictures. I think I was with Jack at the time. And I was telling you, dude, look at his collection. So you have basically the same Ford G-T that I do. I did. I bought it 2005, 2006. And it had my vanity

played on it, which is L-E-M-N-L-A-W. That was it. Yeah. So I sent it to you right away and I said, Graham, you're going to love your car. I loved mine. Here's a picture. Yeah. And you were one of you Yeah. Under your name, got right back to me.

And I said, oh, you like that. Let me show you some of the other cars that have worn this plate. And I think I flooded your box after that. Can we share some of those pictures on here? Sure. Okay, yeah. And I remember seeing these pictures and being like, this is insane.

The car collection that you have had over the last, I don't know how many years, was incredible. I mean, this is like a dream garage that I feel like every teenager would want the cars that you now have. But yeah, but you sent all these pictures. I was shown Jack. and then you responded back with, this is what I do for a living.

If you ever want to have me on the podcast, let me know. I thought it was just so interesting because it was so different than everyone else that we have on the channel of just like, oh yeah, I know I do YouTube. I'm in personal finance. I'm investing.

This for us is such just a different perspective that I think is so important to have. But this is a fun episode, I think, because one, you have a legal background and you own the largest lemon, law practice, correct? Yes, I'm consumer attorney. We have the largest automobile warranty practice, Lemon Law, in the nation for the last 30-plus years. And I also do a lot of telephone Consumer Protection Act cases, which involve robocalls. And how much can you collect per call?

Is it $1,500 you can make per phone call? $500 to $1,500 per call. Federal law, you can also make a lot more than that in certain states like Texas, Virginia, Missouri, which have separate state loss. Wow. Could you tell us about that really quickly? So those are the, my auto warranties expired. I can't get them to stop calling me. They're calling me all the time. I could get them to pay me 500 to $500. So right. The types of calls we're talking about, there's a couple different types under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. The first one is the one that you're referencing, which we're called do not call cases. You've put your name on the do not call registry with the FCC and you have, at the FTC rather, and you have told them, I don't.

don't want to get these calls. And still, companies use random dialers and they just keep calling numbers one after the next and oftentimes you get a robocall. Since you never gave your consent for those calls, they're unlawful under the federal law. Between $500 and $1,500 per call, you're entitled to for each of those calls. Now, the reason why it's this way is because you never agreed to those calls and because these companies are doing this thousands of times a day. Each company, some of them to sell solar panels, automobile warranties, insurance, you name it. If they can sell it using a phone, they're trying to do so. And oftentimes you pick up the phone and then you're asked to wait or you hear a noise and you're waiting for somebody to pick up the phone, whether in this country or some other

country, and it's just a process by which they try to wear you down and keep calling you until you buy their product. Wow. How do you actually collect money? I feel like these businesses are structured in such a way where it's a shell company within a shell company and a trust and an offshore account and they're routing phone calls from like different IP addresses. How do you actually locate who's calling you? Okay. So like you, I do this for a living. So we know a lot of the bad actors. There's always more every day. But there are certainly occasions where we have to do a lot of investigation. Most of those overseas companies that call you are actually working for a company in the United States. Sometimes they're direct hires and they're working overseas. Sometimes they are subcontracted parties, what they call

marketing affiliates, which is a fancy way of saying we're having them break the law for us. And then the primary company claims, well, we didn't make the calls, we're not responsible. So that we have to prove that they are in fact responsible. They knew what this company was doing. Or maybe if their contracts said they're not supposed to be doing it, the lead company understands that the parent company is going to tolerate it because it's going to help the bottom line. Wow.

Why are we receiving so many of those auto warranty calls right now? Because like what you do for a living, it makes sense. money. And if it makes money, companies are going to do it until the cost of violating the law exceeds the money that they're making. For example, the average warranty company will make about $5 million a year in telephone calls. Wow. So if they have to pay out $500,000 in violations, they don't love it, but they do it. Wow. I don't even understand like what are they selling? Because I don't, I don't receive any of these calls. Well, you should feel fortunate. You don't? I mean, I get tons of calls from like Kelly Bluebook who calls me all the time.

I have a totally random number that's not associated with me at all. It's just like a burner phone basically. I receive phone calls on that number. I'm not on any list at all. What is it like? What do they do? We want to let you know your auto warranty is expiring. Please press zero to be connected with an auto.

That's pretty much it. So basically Graham would approach you and he'd say like, hey, I got a phone call from like a robo caller trying to take, you know, money from me for an auto warranty. Can you get me $1,500? Is that how it works? It's so much easier than that. It could be a call or a text. Do you ever get these crazy texts? Matthew McConnell, he says, he's not going to marry her. And then there's a link. And you click on the link and it goes to some company that's trying to sell you some rewards product. Let me see really quick if I could find a thing. Let's see. Renew your warranty before we close the file. Yes. If you're interested in renewing your

auto warranty now, please press five now, or press nine to be removed from our list. Oh, wow. See? And I've heard, by the way, that if you pick up, then you're on a separate list of people who actually pick up the phone. Is that true?

Well, it's different companies do things different ways. It depends on how the computer is programmed. Generally speaking, they will call until they take you off a list. So, you're in there. And if you get a call, you're going to continue to get calls unless you're removed from the list. The way that happens normally, in our cases, when we sue, we demand that the client's phone number is taken off the list.

In some cases, we know the company, and we don't put that in the release because we know they're going to call again, and we just file a second claim. Do you have to prove that they have called you multiple times and you've asked to be removed from the list, but they continue to call you? Like, how do you delineate between like, okay, you can charge $1,500 from these people and give it to you versus, no, you can't. They're not breaking the law yet. That's a great question. So typically speaking, the first call is free or the first text is free. Some companies have adapted to being sued by only sending one text, but they'll send you one text a variety of different times

and are a variety of different messages. And they're hoping you don't take action. Other companies are just looking at the model. We make $5 million a year. We pay $500,000 in settlements. Let's keep doing it until it's no longer profitable. And I tell these companies up front, listen, I'm a consumer lawyer and I want to protect my client from these calls,

but I understand your business reason for calling these people. You're making money. Understand that like a posted stamp or some other feed that a business incurs is overhead, I'm part of the overhead if you're going to do that. Is this something that a person can do on their own, or is this something where you need to hire an attorney to represent you? The answer to that question is a lot of people are doing this on their own, and they're successful.

I know people who have made hundreds of thousands of dollars doing this on their own. Wow. Either with help from companies that are providing packages that they sell for $40, $50. to help inform people and equip them to go after the callers or the texters. And I belong to a number of groups where we discuss, you know, what are you seeing with this company? What are you seeing with that company? I'm dealing with such and such.

Is that a legitimate person? What do you think I should recover? So we do share that information because even though these are not my clients, I want to help them get their recoveries. Now, is this something where somebody could almost entrap some of these people in the sense that you get like a new phone number and you purpose? put your number out there as much as possible and then receive these calls in and just be like, I'm soon you, you, you, you, can you do that?

There are absolutely those people out there. There's a lot of successful people at that. We try to filter out those cases coming into our firm because what we try to do is we try to help victims turn something that's really upsetting them into something that has at least been worth their while to pursue and to stop. For people who go out of their way to create phone numbers, I know people have many phone numbers, So, yes, there are people who have done that very, very successfully. Small percentage of people.

The vast number of people are not those types of people. Oh, Jack, you can't do that. I know. That was sounding like a good business opportunity. This would be a great side hustle. Like things you could do on a weekend. It's just go get a phone, get a phone number, like a Google voice number. Start raking in the calls.

You know, you don't have to. That's the whole point. We're all getting these robocalls, right? So if you just make it, instead of a side hustle, if you just make it like a in my way hustle, you know, this is getting in my way. I'm going to take action. I'll do it a couple times, get used to it. Every time I get a call, I'm going to go after these people.

It will definitely profit you, and it will be legitimate. You don't have to make anything up to turn along to your favor. Could you, like, mediate, right? Because I obviously am not an attorney, but what if they call me and I say, like, and I get into contact with them? And I say, look, can we mediate and you give me $750 instead of me getting a lawyer and then we charge you, like, $1,500? Or did they never do that? And you always have to utilize a lawyer to actually, like, sue them. Okay.

So it's like going to the bar and asking somebody if you can buy them a drink. You don't know your answer you're going to get unless you ask, right? You never succeed anytime you don't do something. But if you try, you might get what you want. Some people are very successful at getting reduced recoveries. Some companies will. Some companies won't. And you never know until you ask.

It does happen, though. And how many, what percentage of these companies are U.S.-based? The vast majority of them. Really? Yeah, the vast majority of them. Like 98%. Wow. So let's just run through like a scenario, right? So I get a phone call and it says scam likely. And then I answer it. And then it's like a robocolor. Like what do I do from there? Well, there's a variety of things. There's technologies fortunately on every cell phone that allow you to record screenshots of text, let's say, or record conversations using an app. And you might say, well, wait a second. A lot of states don't let me do that. You have to get somebody's permission to record. Generally speaking, not if the call is coming into you. you because it's an unsolicited sales call and you're trying to identify the caller. Your purpose

is legitimate to record. You're like, look, I've gotten calls from this company before. I want to find how to who they are. They never tell me who they are. And I'm doing this for forensic reasons to identify the company because they, by the way, they will always deny that they called you if you don't have proof. Always. So if you get a call and you send a letter and you don't have proof, a screenshot, which could be spoofed or a recording, they're going to just deny it. And so what we can do as lawyers that the individual can't do is to forensically trace where that calls come from. Right. So basically you get the call and then you have to send a letter to the company? Yes. Okay. So I didn't answer your question. I'll get to it now. Yes. So if you can identify the company, let's say it's John's warranty company.

You say, John, I'd like to talk to you about this warranty that you're calling me about. Can you give me more information? And they're really, they're experts at not giving you the information. They know what you're thinking perhaps. So sometimes what you do is you buy the product. You buy the $600 warranty. And I'll tell you a way to do that and not get hurt. But let's say you buy that. And you're like, wait a second, I just drop $600 on this. Once you buy that warranty, you know who sold it to you. It's on your credit card.

Now you might say, but I don't have the opportunity to spend all this money on these calls for people knowing my credit card information. There are apps available. One is called the cash app where you can have a zero balance but still have the card. So when they try to charge the purchase and it doesn't go through, you still get the information of the company that tried to charge the card. Genius. What was that sponsor we did for that? Privacy.

Privacy. Guys, if you haven't already, sign up for privacy.com. It's an amazing service. Are they sponsoring this? No. Oh, darn. They're a great service. I know they are.

Like, I use them all the time. So it's actually an amazing service. It should have been such a great plug for that because you're able to create these, these basically one-off numbers. It's a burner, it's basically a burner debit card. And you can create like 15 of them a month.

Sure. And then you could just cancel it with the click of a button. Set transaction limits and do all that. That's exactly the type of service we're talking about. Wow. It turns the tables on the people who think that they're immune from being responsible. And when you turn the tables on them, they pay.

They know because the last thing they want is to shut down the machine that's making them all these millions of dollars a year. Are these warranties actually legitimate or are they all just scams? That's what I was wondering. Like what actually happens when you buy it? What if it's a great product? Yeah. Like it saves you so much. Is it usually an auto warranty?

Yes. And an answer to your question, in my experience, this is the part of my practice where I can answer definitively as an expert. These warranties really are not that great. Okay. Most of them, they'll say whatever they need to say to you on the phone to sell you the warranty, but when you get the information sent to you after you buy the warranty, it's lots of disclaimers and lots of limitations. Now, the good part about it is under federal law. If you're not provided a copy of what you're buying before the transaction goes through, none of the

limitations are enforceable. So if I sell you a warranty, and I've promised you all these different things, or even if I haven't, but I told you it's a full warranty. And then you pay for it, you get the warranty in the mail, or it's sent to you online, and you see all these limitations, all those limitations are ineffective because you were not provided the right to see what the limitations were before you made the purchase. So what if they call Graham and they're like, hey, you know, we want to sell you a warranty for your car, $600. And Graham's like, oh, okay.

And then he does it for his 4GT. And then he crashes his 4GT. Well, it wouldn't be a warranty. That would be an insurance issue. It would be like if the engine breaks. So what is it? What does a warranty even mean? It's actually not a warranty.

Under federal law, it's really a service contract. Hmm. They call it a warranty because everybody knows what a warranty. is. Very few people know what a service contract is. Under the law, service contract is like toilet paper compared to the finest Egyptian thread towel of a warranty. There's an analogy again. I love this. We got to get better at these analogies. I know. Yeah. So to basically, service contracts are not what people want to buy. Usually subprime lenders and subprime buyers are the ones who are most victimized by these service contracts because they really believe

they're buying insurance. They're buying some type of protection. And the vast majority of cases when they have a claim, it's a big game. Allegedly you're calling the administrator of the warranty to have your claim covered. All the administrator is doing is calling back the dealership that sold you the warranty

or the company that sold you the warranty and asking them what they want you to do. And then they trickle the communication back to you and say, oh, I'm sorry, it's been denied, but they'll pay you something. And then the person takes whatever's offered. So it's a big scam. Wow.

It's pretty much like a vast majority of them are just scams. I use the word scam to say that what you think you're buying and what you're actually sold or two different things. So in that definition, that's what I'm going to say. Do they sell you something? Yes. It's a very lawyer thing to say. You have a lot of followers.

People are going to be watching this. And I don't want them to get the wrong impression. I understand. So they are selling you something. What they're selling you, you don't know until you get the terms. Has there ever been thought about doing like a class action, getting everyone together? Like I've seen those, I can never pronounce this. mesothelium, I can't, I can never say it. Yes, mesotheloma. Yes. For asbestos. Right.

Has there ever been somebody who would do something like this for a commercial saying, if you've received these, you know, robocalls, please call us. We want to know your information. Could we do? So with methamethelioma, there's actually, I almost did it myself. Yeah. There's, there's a fund that was created many, many years ago by the courts, by which claimants who meet certain standards can get a recovery from the fund that's been established. For these types of cases, these are really based upon pursuing claim. thinking that the company you're suing is going to have the resources to pay the result. So recently there was a case that was finally upheld at the highest level that involved direct TV

that had made, I think it was something like $750 million worth of penalties in the TCPA. They were sued for a class action. They were trying to avoid liability. They're trying to blame the insurance company. They were trying to do a bunch of different things. And ultimately they said, hey, this is just too much for the harm that we caused. The statute is unconstitutional. And the court said, no.

you know, you've done this, you'll pay. Now, DirecTV has the money. They're owned by AT&T now, they sure do. But the average company will have far more liability dollars at stake than they have resources to pay. What they often do, I know of one company, I just took a $100,000 default judgment

against one of these warranty companies last week. I'll send you a copy where the company, all they do is they change names of the company and they go back into business under a different name. This particular company is owned by somebody who has a very checkered history, criminal history of people around this person, and there's a lot of question marks about this person, but it's a big moneymaker. Yeah, who starts these up?

People want to make money and don't want to do it the way that perhaps you want to do it and the way I want to do it. Wow. They want to get as much as they can, spend as low as possible, and not let anything get in their way unless somebody stops them. Interesting. So you're telling me, if I receive a phone call asking for an auto warranty, all I have to do is call you and then you can bring me money. Well, had you been listening to me and my great

analogies, you would have known that what I said is you have to make a recording of these calls, document these calls. I'm not trying to chastise you. I'm just trying to be clear. It's not as easy as all that. If you have documentation or call us and we'll tell you what we need from you, and we've had clients who we've sent back to get this information and they've contacted us again a month or two later and gotten that's exactly what we needed. Yes. The answer is yes. We tell people, if you're going to get a text message, please, before that message expires, hit the record button on your screen if it's an iPhone, for example, or use an Android app. There's a couple of them out there. Record yourself pressing the button

on that link. See where it goes to. It's going to be a different company. It's going to be a different entity. Scroll down to the bottom slowly and show me the name of the company at the bottom of that message. Then yes, the answer is yes. I can help you. I wish I'm going to get one of these calls during the podcast. I would love that. That would make the episode. If I'm putting it out in the universe right now, if we could receive a call like that during this episode,

I will be so happy. Hey, the statute really does things more than just give people money that they think that they're getting something for nothing. I've had clients who have received so many of these calls. And of course, these are the extreme cases. But I've had a client who actually went off of government assistance. got a new house and got a ramp because they were handicapped, got a ramp to their house because I got them so much money.

Wow. I hope that's not one now. But yes, it does happen. And for those stories, you really are so happy because their lives are different than what yours is and what mine is. And you know you've made a difference. It really is a nice thing to be able to take such a horrible set of circumstances being bombarded by collection calls for a medical problem that wasn't your fault

and be able to turn that all around and put something. into their own position of owning their house that's accessible for them that they don't know anybody any money for they're not going to be on the government assistance anymore and they're moving forward with their life that's incredible it really was a great story for us and we have a couple of them like that a lot of these cases i will say a lot of these cases do arise from medical debt and so people who get themselves in a situation either because they had a medical problem or maybe an employment problem they lost their job they can't pay their bills anymore they're getting these calls they've told the company to stop calling and they continue to call them

Got it. How did you get involved in this? So like I said earlier, I had a saline Mustang that I bought and probably paid every penny that I should have or more to buy this car as my first new vehicle. Which year was it? It was 1989. Is that the one with the bar, the roll cage bar over the top? Oh, man.

Sticker on the side. Yeah. I love those. It was a great car. And I was in law school. And Ford had a paint process back then where they decided. to skip the primer to save money and they thought this will be great yeah you can save all this saline jean so the stickers came off the car the paint came off the car i had them repainted they were glad to do it

fine yeah the second time that they returned that they didn't fix it properly and the paint was still coming off i reached out and i said you need to buy this car back they said oh this is a lease vehicle pennsylvania doesn't cover leases and anyway we've already tried to fix it forget about it so i got the name of the person i was dealing with i will only say his first name was drew He's probably watching because he's retired now. Hey, Drew. Drew, make sure to hit the like button if you haven't done that already. And get your free stock down below in the description.

It's worth all the way up to $50. You may as well do it. It's free money. There you go, Drew. I gave you something back. Savage. You know what? We got to do via the glasses.

Oh, yeah. So I told Drew, I said, Drew, here's my name. I'm in law school. You're going to remember my name in the future. And I graduated law school. I opened my own practice shortly thereafter. And I started taking lemon law cases. And Drew was somebody I have deposed probably 100 times over the years.

No way. You owe a lot to Drew. Thank you, Drew. Drew took care of me. I took care of Drew. But it was never voluntarily. What is depose? Depose means I took his deposition under oath, his sworn testimony about.

Oh, wow. Yeah. So if a client had a car problem, the manufacturer would appoint an expert or a representative to talk about it and to tell you why it's not a lemon. And because I'm a car guy, I've worked as a mechanic. I've been a car guy my whole life like you. I knew when somebody was telling me something that wasn't true and I could dissect it and turn it around on them,

which was pretty novel back then because most lawyers are not car people. So we were able to call them out on their answers and win cases. As a matter of fact, it took the better part of 10 years before I lost my first lemon low case. But that's how it all started. And because the law allows the manufacturer,

forces the manufacturer to pay attorney's fees, my marketing concept, everybody's got a marketing concept, was, hey, consumer, if I can't help you, I'm not going to get paid. But if I can help you, you're going to get your money back. You're not going to pay me anything.

And so I wrote a radio advertisement shortly thereafter on a sports radio station in Philadelphia. And I listened to that first advertisement air with my partner, Bob, Bob Silverman. And before the advertising, ended. This is back in the early 1990s. We got our first call before the ad ended. And we had 40 cases after the first month. Wow. We had a lot more cases after six months. And we very quickly became the largest in the United States. I, at the inception of the internet, I bought lemon law.com

and 1-800 lemon law is our phone number. Wow. And we have been, you know, I guess I'm to do my own horn, too, too, we have been the largest lemon law. practice in the country ever since. I feel like we should also explain Lemon Law. So a Lemon Law is basically you bought a car and the car has a warranty. We've had that word before. And the car is not repaired under warranty

within a reasonable period of time. Every state has a lemon law. Some are better than others. Generally speaking, if the manufacturer through its authorized dealership has not resolved the problems within a certain period of time or a certain number of repair attempts,

or even if the parts are on order and haven't yet arrived, the clock ticks against the manufacturer. And you can assert a claim either for a full refund minus a small offset for use, or you can ask for a new car, your choice, and get a brand new car. And so what we can do is help people get what they paid for.

That's what it's all about. I bought this great car with this great warranty. In some cases, like somebody's Korean manufacturers are offering 10-year warranties. And in year eight, they're getting a claim because they've consistently had these problems with the car and the manufacturers, hey, this is an eight-year-old car. We're not paying any illegal claim.

And we respond with, yeah, but you should attend your warranty. And all these claims have been covered under warranty. You haven't fixed this car throughout that whole period of time. We've got the client a new car for a refund. That's incredible. My initial understanding of Lemon Law was that if you have the same issue three times, or if the car has been in the service shop for so many days, then it qualifies. Is it a rule of thumb like that?

So your reading is correct. However, I want to be very clear on this. It's not the same problem. It's the same complaint. Dealers and manufacturers are trained to write repair invoices to avoid Lemon Law liability. They might call it something different each time you bring it in. And yet you've complained of the same problem. So the repair invoice may not bear a resemblance to what you've actually told them.

And they're trying to avoid the liability. So I tell people, if you said my car doesn't shift right, three times. And one time they write test drove car, car operating specifications. Second one, test drove, car, they all operate that way. Third one, car is shifted normally. It's all the same complaint. What the dealer does to address the problem is what the warranty is providing you the right to have done. So if they choose not to do anything other than test drive the car, that's on the dealer and the manufacturer. They could have put the car on the lift. They could have pulled parts apart. They could have investigated it because you have the right to it under the warranty.

But they don't because the monetary compensation for a dealership is not there unless they find the problem. If they can't find the problem in a certain period of time, they're not going to get paid. What do you think the dealer is going to do? Or they know that a car has a problem that's common to all these vehicles or most of them, and there's no fix. So they'll send you on your way saying there's nothing wrong with your car or they're all operating the same way or the manufacturer is aware of the problem.

How does that resolve your problem? The law steps in and says, no, you can't, you can't respond that way to people. They paid for something. You issued a warranty. You failed. Give them a new car or refund their choice. And you have to pay attorney's fees manufacturer because you're not really stepping up for these people. What made you so uniquely successful above all other lemon law practices?

Well, like you and like Graham, I love what I do. I could talk cars all day long. I usually do to a fault. and much to my family's dismay. I love cars, anything with an engine, mostly cars, motorcycles. And so when you have a passion for something, and you've heard this before,

when you have a passion for something, whether it be real estate or cars or something else, it's really not work. If somebody presents you with a Rubik's Cube problem and says, can you fix this? And you love doing it. There's an analogy, by the way. So you do the Rubik's cube.

Check note of this. This is good. So that's what it is. I just love what I do. do. And so does my partner. He's fantastic at it. And so was our staff, our entire staff. We have about 50 people working for us. We cover about 48 states, the United States. And that's what we'd love to do. We love to tell the manufacturers why they're wrong. And we love to explain it to the judges. How did you get into law in the first place? Did you always know you

wanted to be a lawyer? Absolutely not. Did you always know you wanted to be a YouTuber? No. No. But you fell into it. We love it. Right. So you could probably see it in my eyes. Now you're getting me started. Basically, it started with my father, mother, who felt that I was really good at presenting myself and really bad at accepting no for an answer, much like you, I'm sure. And they said, you really should go to law school. And it had never hit my radar. I wanted to go to Wall Street. I wanted to do something along financial lines. And this is the mid-1980s. So a decision had to be made. And my parents said, listen, go to law school. Don't practice if you don't want to. It's good to have graduated law school and have on your resume, wherever you go, whatever you do.

So I did. And I had been married previously. My wife at the time had gotten pregnant around the time I was graduating law school. And so guess what? I was not going to be a working lawyer. I had to pay some bills. And I found Lemon Law through my experience in law school. And I thought, nobody's doing this.

There was no internet, by the way, for you to. There actually was a time before internet. And the world was a crazy place. Listen, if we wanted to watch a movie, you had to go down to a little. store. Blockbuster. Yes. Yeah.

Yes. And that was in the advanced times. That's when it was easy to do. Right. Something I haven't mentioned to you, I actually wrote the nation's first computer Lemon Law Bill in 1999. Hmm. And Microsoft came in and killed it in our Pennsylvania House of Representatives.

What were you trying to accomplish? Like a computer has an issue. It's not fixed. They're taking too long. They'd give you another computer. There was a company back then called Gateway. I don't know if you remember it. Yes.

We used to have one of those Gateway. We had the big thing on the floor and then the big, you know, computer. They were very successful, very quickly. Remember that. They were primarily competitors with Dell and Compact. And although Dell had one too, Gateway had an arbitration provision in their agreements with consumers that was so burdensome and so onerous as to what you had to do to get relief from the company if you weren't happy with them fixing your computer, that I decided to write a bill for the House of Representatives in Pennsylvania that forced them to do better than what their arbitration

procedures forced consumers to do. You had to go to a certain place. I think it was Illinois to file a claim. It didn't matter where you were from. You had to file it in Illinois, appear in Illinois, pay $2,500 for the right to have your claim heard. You couldn't file in court. It was an arbitration provision, which is one of the reasons why attorneys hate arbitration provisions. Plaintiff's lawyers. And that's why it was written. It got introduced. Microsoft appeared with some other companies and squashed it. They spent way too much money. They knew what was going to happen if this first law got passed. But at the time on the west coast there were companies there was a cable show called silicon spin on tech

TV and john devouric who was a computer world or um reporter he was the host of the show and he got wind of what i had introduced and he started inviting me out monthly as the expert on law and computers this is you know brand new stuff at the time nobody really had done it so i had been on the night show probably 10 or 15 times before it finally went off the air. We just couldn't get that computer Lemon Law off the ground. Fortunately, there are other laws, federal laws, the Magnus and Moss Warranty Act for warranties, which we use with Lemon Law, which you can use for any product over $25. And you can enforce warranties that way through lawsuits under federal law. That's incredible. Where are you investing all of this money as you're making it? Well, up until about 10 years ago,

went to divorce. That changed things. But in the last 10 or 12 years, I am, like you, I'm a big advocate of tech. And I try to seek out things that I really love and invest in them. I've been a huge supporter and a stockholder of, well, not huge for them, huge for me in Tesla and Apple, which are my two biggies that I love. Okay. I feel that what Elon has done with the company, and listen, we sue We sue Tesla every now and then. So, you know, for me to invest, I believe in that company. Okay. They're not a bad company.

They're a little new to the game, but they're not really a car company. They're a tech company. So just fascinated with the whole idea, taking what is impossible and what people tell you you can't do, which is what I faced for many years, and turning it into something that has value to people in revolutionizing the world, which is what Tesla is done. When did you start investing in Tesla? 2013 or 14 I guess it was so like right after they went public yes yes I bought a little bit and I wasn't sure and then I got one of their cars I got the model S the P90D yeah and love the car

bought more um then in 2017 I was a little concerned it was going back and forth quite a bit so I divested myself of it for a time and I got back in about three months later and I've I've held on to it since. How's that been for you? I'm not complaining. Jack wants to know what your percentage gain is. I could already tell. And Jack is going to tell you about his Dogecoin experience.

Well, I think Dogecoin probably did better for you. A lot better. Yeah. Yeah. But who would you rather have in the long term? Dogecoin. No, I'm kidding. Tesla. Just watch Dogecoin outperform, though.

We could look back at this in five years. Maybe Dogecoin is like $10. And Tesla is like $1,500. I'm like 8,000% in like six months. That is amazing, and those stories happen all the time. It's a question of identifying which ones, right? Would you sell? If you're up 8,000% in Dogequin, would you sell it?

Well, at my age, I'm not your age. So if it's putting me in a position where life is going to change by selling it, I probably would consider selling it. But I'm not in that position right now where I feel that I'm ready to retire, that I want to retire. So to me, it's just having confidence in the company and watching what they do and watching how they perform. They're still on paper probably six years ahead of everybody else from what I'm reading. And when you're that much ahead in an emerging technology that people are have accepted and are moving forward with, sure, some cars might drive different. People prefer that.

But overall, what the company has done is tremendous. And to convert it to roof installations and to sell the energy back to the grid and to deliver cable and Internet and SpaceX. And on and on it goes. Who knows if a boring company is going to be successful, but you never bet against Elon. Yeah. I hope it is. They're coming out with that loop here in Vegas. Have you seen that? I've heard about it. I don't know much about it. You got to watch. They have like a two-minute commercial. It's like a new segment where they're starting at the Las Vegas Convention Center and basically creating this whole loop around the Las Vegas strip where you could get in your car. Right now somebody's driving the car. But you'll get in a car like a taxi. It goes underground. And you would have this 20-minute drive with traffic that's done in like two minutes. Right. I heard about in California, the way that Tesla was going to do it is primarily offered to Tesla owners first, where you would drive your Tesla into this tube and it would take you wherever you were supposed to go. But if they open it up to other cars, I can see why that would be really, really successful.

Right. Yeah. I was disappointed. So they tried that, they tried the loop initially in, or the boring company in Hawthorne. And then he wanted permission from the city of Los Angeles to put it underneath the 405 freeway starting in Culver City. I was so excited because where this loop would start was like two minutes away from a house that I own right there. And I was so excited that like, wow, my place is going to be right in the middle of like where all of this is going. Los Angeles shut it down. They did not want him going underneath the 405 freeway. And that would have been huge. I mean, this was like the part of Los Angeles and throw up one of these, one of these clips here. If you type in 405 freeway traffic, like Thanksgiving, you'll see this whole thing. It's a sea of just red from all the taillights. He wanted to go underneath that and create this just incredible tunnel that would save everybody probably an hour. And they said no. The great thing about Tesla is they're in a position that most innovators throughout history or not.

and that is innovators are usually opposed by the establishment almost always and they don't have the resources to fight if Elon wants to make an issue of something he's so ingrained himself in our culture and in his finances and his capital that he could he could change his mind if he wanted to what do you think about Tesla investing in bitcoin I thought it was genius actually I watched your video on that a few months ago what it's done is two things first of all it's legitimized something which a lot of people have such as myself has I was, you know, been interested in, but kind of stayed away from because I don't understand it as well as I need to to make a significant splash in it. I'm not really, you know, I really concern myself with $1,000 and $2,000 investment.

So, like, if I was going to do what, I would do it significantly. And I don't know enough. I want to do it. I will do it. But what Elon did was basically legitimized the concept. And by putting Tesla in it, what he said is we are so vested in it for ourselves and for the future. that everybody who likes Tesla is probably going to like the idea too because they tend to do what Elon wants.

So I thought it was genius. And sure enough, it went up right away, didn't it? Yeah, I would almost recommend, almost not, I don't want to say I would recommend everybody, but I see the potential in having like one, two, three percent of a portfolio on Bitcoin. So far I've had a fantastic experience of that. Now, obviously it's going to go down at some point

and then maybe it doesn't look so good. But I don't know. I am always willing to take the risk for one to two percent. that it turns out huge. And even if I lose 2%, so be it. But I'd rather be in it than out of it at this point. I actually agree. I saw your video a couple, I guess it was a month or so ago now.

And you really, what I like about your videos and what I like about your content is that it gets me thinking and looking at the next level that I need to investigate to consider what you've come up with. And I agree with you. Certainly every portfolio needs diversification and what can be more diverse than something as high risk, high reward is that. I also, though, however, at least historically have been concerned about making sure that I don't make a foolish investment. And so I've come around to the idea. I just have to decide where I want to put it. Yeah. The one guest who I most identify with.

Tell me it's me, Kevin. I wish it was you. Okay. What I really identify with is James from Stradman. Yeah. Because he loves what he does. and he's a nicer guy than I'll ever be, but he loves what he does,

and he's incredibly successful because his love shines through on everything that he does in his videos. That's somewhat akin to what I feel about Lemon Law and my other consumer practices, which is I've always defended the little guy, I always fight for the underdog. It gives me great satisfaction

to say to a company that tells me, you know, we're not going to do this or we're not going to honor that, to force them to. Yeah. And I think that when you love something, it comes across, it comes through. It certainly does with Stradman.

It certainly does with you. I mean, your videos are always produced and detailed in a way that you get so much content in such a short period of time that if you finish watching the video and move on to the next while thinking about what really happened and writing something down, you're not giving it the credit it's due

because it really can be life-changing to adjust yourself. As a matter of fact, where I really started enjoying your videos, my son was graduating law school a couple of years ago, and I sent him a link to one of your videos. I said, this is a guy who's not that much older than you that I want you to pay attention to because he's got the right ideas. And instead of buying the biggest, the best, the fanciest, you know, the most flashy,

think about that $4 cup of coffee being, you know, $600 in a few years that you're giving up by having that cup of coffee. Yeah. And he has. He's done that. And I think that's what you really do for a lot of younger people is that you provide them a way to have accessible information on a different thought process than what the Instagram world currently wants people to think.

What would your advice be for me? I'm curious. Well, I know you enjoy life, and I know that you enjoy life a lot, and the Ford GT certainly, I think, is your toe in the water on something that you really enjoy and you're allowing yourself, perhaps reluctantly allowing yourself for yourself.

There are so many opportunities with cars where you can do something that's similar, own something, and pay virtually nothing for it, because when you're done with it, it can sell for a significant amount of what you've paid, if not more. Your car, a Ferrari 8, 12, super fast, something like that,

where the investment is similar, the joy you can have for it is great. You don't have to write it off. You don't have to do anything with it. But when you sell it, it's going to cost you less money than it would own, you know, a brand new small sport utility vehicle

that has heavy depreciation. Why not, if you're a car person? Why not do that more if that's what gives you pleasure? Right. So that would be my first piece of advice. The other one is, how old are you now, Graham? 30.

Okay. I'm 57. Literally, like that, you're going to be my age. And you think, you're going to laugh at it right now. I believe it. It happens. Yeah, I believe it. Yeah.

Whatever life has in store for you, you're going to snap your fingers. You're going to be my age. You'll be too old for some things and not ready for others. And you want to make sure that you've enjoyed life to the fullest. And whatever that means for you, do it now because you don't know what's going to happen in the future. know who's going to be around you. You don't know what life's going to present to you. If you love cars, make it a bigger part of your life. Give yourself that time to yourself because it will charge

up what you do behind the camera and in front of the camera. Yeah. I think that was the aquarium for me. That was something that I've wanted to do for like 15 years, set up an aquarium like that. If that's the pleasure that you get from it, absolutely. I mean, you have the resources, of course, to do whatever you want to do, whether it's climb Mount Everest or get a fish tank. You know, whatever it is you'd like to do. But do it. In my life, I've gotten my black belt in martial arts as a challenge. I've become a deep-seat diver as a challenge.

I've jumped out of airplanes as a challenge. I got my pilots license. I think the challenges are so important because you've achieved a level of success where if you don't keep your edge and you don't always have something out there that's challenging you in a different way, you may find yourself becoming stale. You may find yourself looking at it as a job when really it's not a job. It's your passion. It's just you're doing it every day.

You need something to kind of break it up a little bit. Yeah, that's been challenging for me to keep up the same schedule and not feel like I'm falling behind on that. Especially with the YouTube algorithm, I feel like it really rewards consistency and like putting out more content. Even last night, we had a guy's night where we went to the casino. Jack won some money. I won some money. Alex once that was the first night that we've really gone out, at least for me, like three weeks. four weeks.

And how did it feel? It was fun. It was fun, but I was ready to get back and be like, you know, getting early, more early nights, like midnight, getting early nights and, you know, start today. Okay, so you did that last night. You're at it again early today. To my point, it kind of cleanses your soul a little bit and gets you back to what you like with a fresh slate.

You're not looking at it as, you know, lifting heavy weight. You're looking at it as something I'm ready for. I can do this. It's going to be fun. From the heart, I can tell you, I really identify with what you're doing on this channel and your other channels. I so admire you for what you're doing at such a young age.

I know you've had big people on, big guests and small guests and other guests. Keep doing what you're doing. You're on the right track. I'm really happy to have met you and I'm really excited and thankful that you've invited me on.

Of course. To that end, I actually have something for you today. Oh, yes. And I don't know where it is. Oh, you know what? I left it in the kitchen. Let me grab it. Wow. That's so neat.

Around the world in a Ford GT almost. And then Ford GT, the complete owner's experience. This is perfect. Thank you so much. My pleasure. Wow. Oh, I love this. That's really cool.

Yeah. Oh, gosh. Thank you so much. You have to take it to heart. If you're going to travel with the Ford GT, make it part of your life. Pick a place and go there. Wow.

And don't be afraid about the car getting damaged or, you know, flex of pain coming off. Just enjoy the car. that's hard for me to do. I am so careful with that thing, like every little bit. And I've yet to drive it, by the way. Okay, so second piece of advice. I've not driven it, yeah.

Well, that's probably not a bad thing sometimes. But piece of advice, I've had so many cars. That's not a brag. That's a statement. And the reason I'm telling you that is because at the end of the day, unless it's truly a museum piece, which I've had, use them. They run better when you use them. They give you more pleasure when you use them.

And they can always be repaired if there's a problem. you're going to get such a small percentage of joy out of it by letting it sit compared to what you're going to get by enjoying it. And you've got the car. You've got a great investment there and it's going to be fun to drive. Use it. It's an easy car to drive long distance too. It's not a bad car for that.

I was going to take it out tomorrow morning. There you go. So that'll be my first time driving it. So with that said, you guys, thank you so much for watching. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for coming on. This is a fun episode. So if you guys like this episode, want to see more like it, make sure to destroy the like button.

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And until next time, go out. Welcome back to the 49th ever episode of the iced coffee hour.