EB-5 Fraud (Eb-5欺诈, EB-5詐欺, Eb-5 사기)

Recently, I started helping my relatives in China with an EB-5 matter that's becoming increasingly common nowadays: EB-5 fraud, where an EB-5 company takes money from Chinese clients for an investment like building a bridge or a building and promising a return plus getting a green card to the U.S. years in the future......and then never delivers the funds, or embezzles the funds, claiming the investment just didn't pan out and the money's now gone, conveniently. There are so many scams out there now like Bitcoin scams, mysterious messages saying that I owe money for running a toll that I never used, etc., but the EB-5 scam is kind of a classic one of getting investors to invest with promises of high returns but not delivering, much like the pyramid schemes and Ponzi schemes of the early 20th century or even closer to the Bernie Madoff schemes in the 2000s. Unfortunately, it's common because Chinese investors don't know the law here in America, they make the investment without fully appreciating the risk, figuring it's worth it to take the risk if they get a green card in the end. (I guess the green card for permanent residence in America, as much as current residents complain about it here, is still worth something to America, often a LOT of money like $500,000 per green card). Plus there's a language barrier, a culture barrier, the EB5 company holds all the cards because they receive the money and the investors don't know what legal channels to pursue, etc. Oh and then there's the matter of a lot of Chinese people coming into great wealth in the last 20 years or so, and they gotta put their money somewhere, so they want to come to America! For any future investors: don't be like my relatives, not consulting an attorney before investing, but once there are signs of trouble, finally consulting attorneys to see what can be done. Know all the risks BEFORE you put the money in. My relatives also have the mistaken assumption that all attorneys in America can handle pretty much everything (I guess attorneys have this reputation in America too as most don't understand what attorneys do). Just like you wouldn't go to a dermatologist or psychiatrist to handle your open heart surgery, you can't just go to any attorney for any legal problem. There are specialties, especially differences between litigation and transactional, criminal law and civil law, Intellectual property versus family law, etc. It's not a one-size-fits-all profession, but alas that's one of the downsides of going to law school and becoming a lawyer: all friends and family now just assume you know every law there is (lawyers don't know every single law out there, we learn how to interpret the law and argue about the law to help the client), how to handle any type of legal situation, what to do if they end up in jail and need to be bailed out. Through questions from distant relatives I've learned quite a lot about trademark law and immigration cases and now EB-5 fraud, which I'm happy to volunteer to do, but I know for sure I'm not providing the best legal representation out there. I'm just a normal dude with "Esq" at the end of his title and a State of California Bar number.

Bodies of Water (水体, 水域, 수역)

There are too many bodies of water in the world. Too many gulfs, too many straits, too many rivers, too many estuaries, too many seas, too many channels, too many sluices, too many oxbow lakes. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate all the physical bodies of water, they're the life blood of the earth (although some would argue their rising sea levels is causing land to disappear and bad for the overall health of the world) but there are too many NAMES of bodies of water that we need to know about, like every body of water has to have a name. There's recently the big controversy about the Gulf of Mexico being called the Gulf of America, a silly debate really about names and labels and symbolism of American strength.....that gulf, whatever you want to call it, is important because it has large chunks of America and Mexico bordering it, and is a huge body of water flowing into the Caribbean Sea with all those islands. The Great Lakes are named the great lakes for a season: they're so big and take up so much of the mass of North America that you have to get to know them, which states they border, etc. But do we really need to know GREEN BAY is part of Lake Michigan, that tiny sliver of Lake Michigan bordering Wisconsin (I know, coming from someone who grew up in Illinois this seems biased at best). Do we really need another name when it's all connected? I probably have tons of logical fallacies in this argument, and honestly geography is one of my favorite categories, but how many people in the world really need to know about Baffin Bay, or McMurdo Sound, or the Weddell Sea? Those are places that a tiny sliver of people working in extremely cold places only need to know, and even they proably get confused where the Ross Sea starts and the McMurdo Sound begins. Some of these bodies of water seem like downright plant-flagging, like hey I did something great or I claimed this land, I need my name on it, like the Magellan Strait, "world-renowned" for connecting the Atlantic Ocean and Pacific Ocean in southern Chile near Tierra del Fuego? Really, is it that important? It's not as great as the Panama Canal cutting through 2 big continents, you could just sail a little further south of Chile and go around that way if you really wanted to get through. (I'm probably just upset the other day I got Strait of Magellan mixed up with the other strait named for a famous explorer, the Cook Strait in New Zealand). I think some of this obscure geography facts does make non-trivia people roll their eyes, and the geographic stuff is easy and fun to write questinos about, but really difficult to find a use for in America on questions about the Gulf of Aqaba (you really going the Sinai Peninsula after you visit Egypt?) or the shrinking Sea of Azov. Sure, a sea is shrinking and might shrivel up. But that seems like a problem half a mile away. Other trivia categories seem.... a little more practical, or at least interesting. Every movie, book, song, or TV show tells some sort of story that is dynamic, with characters and plot and it changes, so people are interested about what happened and the conflict that people face. History is very useful about what the earth has gone through. Cars, corporations, fashion, food.......all every day uses, even if a little "corporatized" making it sound like an ad every time they promote a Blizzard from Dairy Queen or McFlurry from McDonald's. Anatomy and medicines/diseases are probably the most useful trivia of the bunch. But weird obscure places in the world very few people ever go to or care about? Hard sell, which is why nature documentaries have to put animals in them otherwise people tune out.

Tires ( 轮胎, タイヤ, 타이어)

Today I got all 4 tires on my Honda Accord replaced because....it was time. 8 years, 80,000 miles, those tires had seen a lot, and maybe on some level I could feel it. A lot of things in life happen gradually without us noticing, and it just gradually makes small changes incrementally, like gaslighting or the famous boiling frog story of the temperature of boiling water gradually increasing while the frog is in it leading to negative consequences as eventually the frog will be boiled alive. I couldn't really tell if anything was seriously wrong with the tires. Eventually, I felt like my tires would grind down to such a level that they wouldn't be road worthy, or they would just burst while driving, so I decided to make a change. After getting it done, the driving felt......smoother. The car still reacted to bumps and potholes, of course, but on flat land it felt a little smoother, and on turns there wasn't as much friction. The wheels feel nice, like I'm wearing a new T-shirt that doesn't have the sweat stains or marks from various previous incidents. A lot of facets are like this, incremental changes: shoes getting worn down every time you walk around in them so that the tread wears off and you don't get the traction (this is the most analogous to tires), dust piles up in the home until it becomes a thick layer coating the whole area, battery life on Apple iPhone goes down gradually as Apple tries to get you to buy the newest model by making their older phones run out of battery faster, and the human body obviously: gradually our bodies get older and everything is less tight, we get flabby. Oh and also I have a knot in my back that formed gradually because of bad posture and not sitting up straight until one day it just became a strain no my whole body; now I feel it all the time and can't get out of it. These are all tiny little things that aren't noticeable like bananas turning ripe, but eventually they become glaring problems. Does the boiling frog metaphor work the other way though? Do certain things get incrementally better without us noticing, until one day we've just become unwittingly a huge success? Not as much, because as human beings we're quick to celebrate the happy things in our life that make us feel good, like checking my bank account (hey there's more there now this Friday! Yay!) or winning sports games, there are various scores and numbers to tell us how we are doing, and we pay attention to those like a hawk, never letting them just go on unchecked, so very few things "suprise" us after long periods of neglect. (Hey suddenly I'm married and have 3 kids!) We usually notice all the good things, except maybe the rewards points I get on credit cards and Chipotle purchases. The other day I realized I got had more than a THOUSAND Chipotle points! That must get me something good, right? Nope, 1600 points is needed for an entree, the simplest burrito. Darn. Trivia, I'm hoping, works this way, where one day I just wake up really good not realizing I've mastered all the major things to know in trivia (no one knows everything of course, it's an infinite field of knowledge). Maybe some karma points, like donating blood/platelets eventually builds up to something and we don't even know it? An immunity to chronic diseases later in life? A "free blood transfusion card" for when us blood donors actually need blood to use it when we need it? Not sure that's how it works. No, I think the positive inverse of the boiling frog analogy is probably what I mentioned, the intangible love and trust and goodwill that you "bank" time and time again without noticing you're doing so, until one day you realize you're in a loving relationship with parents, wife, child, or friend. Suddenly I've been friends with someone for 30+ years! I know everything about them. That sort of thing, you know like important stuff.