How I Thought I Made $200,000,000.00, but Instead, Got Scammed
The hard-to-believe, but true story about brokering PPE deals during the COVID-19 pandemic.
When the Covid-19 pandemic hit and we got locked down, businesses closed, and people panicked because they didn’t know how they would feed their families. While I have no dependents aside from my dog, I was still very concerned.
I had 3 businesses shut down and lost 90% of my income. How I would pay my bills was a mystery.
Over time, it became clear that there were certain products people were willing to pay high amounts for. Some included toilet paper, sanitizer, alcohol, and PPE.
PPE was selling like crazy as everyone wanted to protect themselves, and businesses wanted to ensure they had the equipment required to stay open.
An opportunity presented itself, and I got involved in the crazy world of PPE sales.
This is the story about how I thought I made $200,000,000.00, but instead, got scammed.
How I got involved in the PPE business
Before I get into the details, I should give you a little background story of how I got involved in the business to begin with.
In February 2020, as COVID-19 started spreading through China, the manufacturer I used for the underwear company I used to own (Unity Underwear Co.) reached out to me. They let me know they are now focusing their efforts on selling masks and asked if I wanted to represent them in Canada.
I politely and arrogantly let them know that COVID wasn’t going to hit Canada and I wasn’t worried.
Sure enough, a couple of months later after my businesses shut down, they reached out to me again…
“Are you sure you don’t want to sell masks?”
So, I contacted some of my old business partners to ask if they knew anyone who would want masks. It turned out that a lot of people needed these products.
Within a week, I launched a new company and applied to get the licensing required to import medical equipment. A few days later, I made an order for 10,000 masks from my underwear manufacturer and started learning about the business.
Once the product arrived, I started selling to dental clinics and retailers.
However, other people in the industry heard I had masks available and reached out to me.
“Hey Nik, I heard you’re in the PPE industry now. Any chance you can get your hand on 35 million boxes of N95 masks? The government of the Philippines is in need.”
Now, I didn’t know where I could get that, but I started making some calls.
It turned out it was impossible to get it directly from any manufacturer, but one of my business partners had a friend in China who owned very large manufacturing facilities. He had great connections and could access these products.
Okay! Back in business.
It didn’t take long before we were in talks with numerous government agencies across the world trying to close deals for up to 250 million boxes of masks. Essentially, they wanted to stock up for a couple of years and no one knew how many they would really need.
Unfortunately, none of the deals closed because not one of them was willing to trust our friend in China simply because he was Chinese. They didn’t care that he had a multi-billion dollar company that had been in manufacturing for the past 35 years and a great reputation.
It was clear we had to move on and find a new seller that could supply these products because we had buyers ready to go.
The $200,000,000.00 juggernaut.
It’s absolutely crazy how fast you meet people in an emerging industry when you tell people you have someone ready to spend billions of dollars.
I can’t name everyone who I had conversations with over the year I was in this industry because we had NCNDAs signed, but let’s just say they were some big players.
At night I would have phone calls with people from Australia and Singapore, early in the morning with people from Dubai and all day with people from North America and Europe.
Those 12 months I got anywhere from 0-5 hours of sleep a night. Most of those nights would be 2 hours here, and 1 hour there. That meant I was never really getting any REM sleep, which was rough.
The bright side was that the hard work was starting to pay off!
I had built up a database of over 500 people either trying to buy or sell products, but 60% of them were trying to scam you.
There were so many people pretending to have a buyer, or have the product, so that they could get to your source, and then cut you out of the deal. On top of that, some of them thought they were dealing with a buyer or seller directly, but they were getting lied to as well!
I got cut out of deals numerous times.
On one occasion after introducing a broker to one of my clients, I got cut out of a deal that would have earned me $16,000,000.00 in total commissions.
That was just the beginning though.
After a while, I was able to narrow down who I communicated with and eliminated a lot of the scammers. Others in the industry realized how many people in the industry were lying, and trying to scam.
A few of us decided to make a team.
There was myself from Canada, two guys from LA, and another from Houston. Every day we talked, tried to close deals and eliminated scammers from our networks.
This team was excellent. We were able to get things moving at a much better pace and we kept getting closer and closer.
A couple of us closed deals, but never any that paid more than $1,000,000.00 at once.
Just when I was ready to give up, I managed to line up a big one.
I met a man who represented a large company out of Asia (I won’t get specific because of NCNDAs) that owned hospitals and care homes around the world. Within a couple of weeks of meeting him, he verified the company’s funds with a reputable bank in the USA.
This guy was legit, had access to a ridiculous amount of funds, and wanted a lot of product on a 3-year contract. This deal was worth billions. My commission was set to be just over $200,000,000.00.
We were able to connect him with a supplier very quickly. The supplier was out of the US and had a lawyer representing him who was introduced to me by a contact of mine.
The deal was moving smoothly.
Both parties signed agreements, and I signed commission agreements and talked to a paymaster in NYC who would ensure my team got paid, as well as a couple of others on the deal.
The buyer transferred the first portion of the payment from a Swiss bank to a bank in the USA to help the deal move forward and that’s when I got the greatest phone call of my life from my partner on the deal.
“Nik, we did it. This deal is going through. The seller is ready and thanked us for doing such a good job. When this is all over, you’re coming to New York to sit down with all of us. How does it feel to be $200,000,000.00 richer?”
And that’s when all hell broke loose.
The collapse
The following day they had a meeting scheduled to view the first portion of the product. The buyer was going to the US, to go to the warehouse to do a quality check.
That night I celebrated.
I thought the deal was a sure thing. Foolishly, I went out with drinks, drank more than any human should drink, bought drinks for many others and had a fantastic time.
Just imagine how hard you would celebrate if you thought you had just made $200,000,000.00 after losing 3 businesses, losing nearly all your income, and being locked alone in your house for a year, only to be on the phone non-stop trying to close massive deals…
The next morning at 9 am I woke up to a phone call from one of my partners on the deal.
“Unfortunately, the bank called our buyer and let him know that the lawyer that is representing the seller is blacklisted. He is under investigation for fraud…”
Yup, fraud.
It turned out he was lying, signing his name attesting that his client had the product when in fact he did not.
His hope was that by the time the deal closed, he would be able to locate the product, finish the sale and pocket a lot of money. The lawyer was also a scammer!
My client, the buyer, had already transferred his money to the bank in the US, and of course, paying fees for a very large amount of money.
He no longer trusted me and stopped working with me.
The dream was over.
The whole PPE industry was a rollercoaster over the course of that year. I have never seen anything like it in my life.
After the deal collapsed, my client stopped working with me. I decided it was time to give up, move on, and get back to my “regular” life.
So unfortunately, I didn’t make $200,000,000.00 and was stuck with a giant bill from celebrating the night before.
Moral of the story
I’m sharing this interesting yet somewhat embarrassing story with you because I have a goal of normalizing talking about failure.
We’ve all made mistakes, and failed, and will continue to in the future. What matters is how you learn from the failures, and if you can get back up.
I learned how to connect with people from all over the world, how to work with teams internationally, how to talk to billionaires, and to be careful of who you trust.
However, the biggest lesson of all… don’t celebrate a deal closing until the money is in your account, and your clients are satisfied because sometimes, it’s just too good to be true.
Thanks for reading
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