By the way, in the article I linked to above it references a failed project back in 2010. It almost ruined me financially (a far bigger hit than Gene has ever claimed, and mine was real). I didn’t beg people for money. I didn’t blame anyone other than myself. I didn’t keep repeating my errors. I picked myself up, learned from my mistakes, and worked hard to rebuild. And I did. So I both know what Gene claims to be going through, and I know how you get yourself out of it. I tried to explain that to him more than once. It never worked.
Gene's fixation on the money he allegedly 'lost' to his sister-in-law's family has not served him well. And I find he is not very coherent on the topic.
First he claims he lent them $200,000 because they were family and it was the right thing to do. From everything I know of Gene, it's pretty impossible to imagine he ever amassed that much money.
Next though, he claims that some of the loans he later defaulted on were to help his sister-in-law's family. So - did he have $200K, or did he borrow it? (The distinction here matters because it's hardly "your life savings" you are lending someone if you had to borrow much of the money you lent.)
Finally, he says supporting his in-laws was the right thing to do, but at the same time he clearly expected to be repaid with interest. Like it was some investment, or (perhaps more accurately in hindsight) a gamble.
If it was the right thing to do, I'd argue it was the right thing to do whether you expected to be repaid or not. Expecting to be repaid or even to profit on a deal is not helping out your family because that is the right thing to do; indeed it's what banks or other commercial lenders do (just, I doubt they would've done so in the case of Gene's clearly high risk in-laws).
It's easy for me to say "get over it" with regard to the myth of Gene's lost fortune, but, it's rather unbelievable to me how he keeps trying to trade in on that hard-to-follow story.
(The story as I understand it: His brother-in-law was the target of an unfair lawsuit... that somehow was keeping him from a big cash settlement... once the settlement arrived everything would be great... but then he developed cancer and died... his estate apparently let the whole (fictional) matter drop... so Gene is now out the money he lent them. And this had to be what 10 years ago or more? (Am I wrong?) But it's still, when he can be bothered, part of the backstory for his begging routine.)
From my own careful observations of Gene over the last year or so, I've seen him outright lie or wildly exaggerate many times. With that in mind, I just have a really hard time swallowing the whole "Gene's poor because he generously gave his life savings when his sister-in-law's family was in need" story. It stinks. And even if it were true, I still have the above problems with the continued begging on the back of that tale.
