Investment losses hard to swallow
People such as Freddie Wright, Judith Baron and Nelia Raber say they thought their money was safe in the now-troubled Paso lender
Freddie Wright has been living for years in San Luis Obispo in an old orange Ford van, a choice he makes to save money.
In 2006, a longtime friend told Wright about the thousands of dollars he had earned by investing through Estate Financial Inc., a Paso Robles lender that pools investors’ money to make high-interest loans to real estate projects.
Based on his friend’s experience, and after meeting with the firm’s president, Karen Guth, Wright invested his life savings of $38,000 in Estate Financial’s lending fund that September.