Caribbean Secrets

Land Fraud, misreprensentation

1st of Mar, 2012 by Jchristian70

This is my website: http://panamascams.com

The Following is my story

To let you know a little about me. I have been travelling to Panama since the summer of 2000. In the last decade I have been to Panama at least 15 times so I know Panama well and have traveled through many parts of the country. Spanish was the main language at my house growing up so it was not difficult to understand people in Panama except for the slang and the accent. I am a very weary of central and South American countries having visited Peru many times as a child and traveling to many countries throughout. Panama is a very beautiful country and overall fairly safe but has its fair share of scams and pitfalls. I was unfortunate to meet Juan Antonio Marquez during one of my visits to Panama. Who is he?

JUAN ANTONIO MARQUEZ IS A SCAMMER!!!

He delibertly conned us into buying a property that will never be put into our name. The reason was to make a quick dollar off of a family member that trusted him. He works for and is part owner of:

CARIBBEAN SECRETS. (UPDATE:Their website has been taken down because of the panama scams website!) HOORAY!! Its archive can be seen here www.caribbeansecrets.com) .

JUAN is the man handling all of the real estate dealings this company is associated with in PANAMA. If you are involved with this company I would highly reccommend requesting a refund because you are taking an enormous risk with this individual managing any real estate dealings for you in Panama. This company is owned by:

DWAIN ANDERSON

EVALENE ANDERSON and

JUAN ANTONIO MARQUEZ.

Click here to see their Incorporation in Panama : CARIBEAN SECRETS, S.A.

In CANADA DWAIN is CEO of Anderson Builders Group 1989 Inc. and can be found here: ANDERSON BUILDERS GROUP

This company is also run by STEVE MATHEWS who are both from Edson, Alberta Canada. After they read this site they decided that it would be better to hide instead of deal with this problem!

I met Juan Antonio Marquez and his family years ago traveling to a small town called Montijo. He is my father-in-laws nephew and is a charismatic man that speaks English welll as well as his native Spanish. When I first met him he was an English professor in Panama. When I met up with him again in 2009 he had changed his career to Real Estate investment/Acquisitions working with a company called Caribbean Secrets . Apparently, he was very enthusiastic of a large purchase that his company made on the Veraguas coast not too far from a town called Calovebora. He told me a story about how a Canadian man approached him and offered him a job to search for and acquire beach front property for investment and possible development. Juan told me he took the job and later found a large 3km beach front property that the company purchased for 40,000 USD. He also said that he worked the deal so he would not have to pay the local farmer the full amount until title was secured! He showed me pictures of the land and it was beautiful. Caribbean Secrets has their own website and currently this land has been sectioned off into about 40 different lots that you can own starting at only 70,000 USD!

I had been actively looking for property and was very interested in purchasing land or some kind of real estate in Panama so when he told me this story I mentioned to Juan if he found other opportunities that I would be interested in investing. I figured that he had the know how and connections to make things happen. I had the desire and some savings that could be used to purchase something so we had a sit down meeting in Santiago Panama with an associate of Juan named Alberto Manzane and started a partnership. I would provide funds and Juan and Alberto from Caribbean Secrets would handle all dealings with the sellers, my lawyer, and would take the land through the Titling process. Once the property was sold in the future the initial investment would be returned and any profit would be split 50-50. Juan is a close family member and I have known him for years, this was his business and he had the experience. I thought to myself, how could this go wrong?

There were many times during my travels to Panama that I almost bought property only to back away because honestly I was scared to take the risk. I have heard of so many scams and defaults by builders and Agents and sellers that I would shy away from deals that would present themselves. But this time I thought that I had a winning combination. Unfortunately, I think you already know how it has turned out because you found this site!

Juan Antonio found a property that I agreed to buy. Contracts were made up and a 50% deposit was paid to the seller in the amount of 14,000 USD. Once we had all the paperwork done and my lawyer presented it to the Deeds and Records division in Panama. The original plan was to have the right of possession put into my name and then we could move forward with applying for title. This was put into the system in July 2009. I was told this might take a while so I decided to be patient and see what happens. During our wait I was told that we needed to put up a fence, have a survey made up, clean up the property for future inspections and so on that in the end cost me another 4 thousand dollars.

Months went by so I started making some calls in December 2009 to find out the laws on titling property in Panama where changing in favor of our purchase. I thought that this was good news but I was not sure what needed to be done to move forward? No need to worry I was told, it was all under control. In February I got an email asking for another 600 USD because they need to go to the property and have the seller sign some paper. No explanation of what this paper was about and I realized that something wasn't right. Why do we need a paper singed all of the sudden and is this thing ever going to be in my name or what? I responded with an email for clarification that was ignored. Now I was nervous. Another month passed by so I sent up a follow up email to see how things where. The response was not to worry, that he had spoke with the sellers and everything was OK!

I slowly began to realize that I had been stringed along this whole time and something was not right. I kept trying to get information but unfortunately was a bit ignorant to what needed to be done and my hands where basically tied being in the US. I decided I would work things out when I would travel to Panama in June 2010.

End of June I try calling Juan Antonio to see if we can meet up. He ends up blowing me off many times. I decide to find outside help from a guy that has a lot of experience buying property in Panama and connections in the government. He quickly found a few problems with my deal and tells me that what I have bought may not even be allowed to be purchased. He also finds that I have a bogus survey that I spent 600 USD on and that the basic application for titling the property did not exist. I had been waiting for over a year and the paperwork I had was basically worthless and I was currently out of 18,000 USD by this point.

We drove to Santiago on July 6th 2010 to meet with Juan Antonio to get his version of the story. When directly asked about the application for title his response was "I was planning on doing that". When asked about the survey that was done on the land his response was "that survey was old and he knew that it need to be updated"(first time I had heard that). He then decided to tell us the original colorful story of how he met the Canadian and the purchase of this beautiful beachfront property to change the subject.

After reviewing all my options I decided to go after a refund. Juan Antonio always stated that the seller would be willing to give me my money back if it was requested. To this day I have not even received a response from Juan nor the sellers. Juan Antonio refuses to answer my emails and even refuses to talk to my in-laws to resolve this issue. He has also lied to his family and told them he was doing me a favor by handling the transacition. This guy is a real con and steals from family and even Scams his own Canadian partners by getting bogus services done and charging his partners for it. There is nothing like family! There may be readers that say that this is an isolated incident but if you speak to locals in the country you will find that it is no secret. Take a look at the Real Estate and Other Scams for proof. There is a rampant problem with builders, real estate agents, sellers all scamming each other and foreigners out of their hard earned money. The government knows that this is a huge problem and is also involved in scams. Most of the laws there to protect investors are not enforced. On paper they say that you will be protected but I say buyer beware!

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