‘Millionaire Maker’ of Old Still Paying for His Past

It’s been a while since “Millionaire Maker” Ed Beckley advised customers to take cash advances on as many as 200 credit cards and invest the money in short term, low-risk, high-yield opportunities.

These days, Beckley’s moneymaking ventures are a lot less grandiose--selling distributorships for sunglasses, gum ball machines and grocery coupons, among other products--but no less interesting to the Iowa attorney general’s office.

“I would not call it an active investigation,” said Bob Brammer, a spokesman for the attorney general’s office. “But we are keeping an eye on what he’s doing.”

Beckley can’t understand why--and says it’s unfair.

“I’m mad. I’m real mad about this,” he said. “We’re doing everything we can to keep our nose clean. Why are they doing this? I was punished enough.”

It goes back to 1986, when the state attorney general’s office effectively shut down Beckley’s former company, the Beckley Group. The attorney general sued Beckley for $2.8 million on behalf of some 8,000 customers who had plunked down $295 apiece for home-study investment programs.

Beckley couldn’t come up with the money under his six-month, unconditional money-back guarantee. The two sides agreed to a $2.4-million settlement, which went to customers who bought “The Credit Card Millionaire System and No Down-Payment Real Estate Seminar.”

Beckley filed for bankruptcy, lost $1.8 million of his own money and his 19-year marriage and disappeared from the TV “infomercials” he had pioneered--and which made him famous--a few years earlier.

Now he’s back in Fairfield, operating his new Home Business Technologies Inc., along with partner Steve Winn, who was with him at the Beckley Group.

“We’ve focused in on little cash-flow, home-business opportunities,” Beckley said. “We’re not looking to make people rich overnight. I’m just trying to get away from the ‘get-rich shtick.’ ”

Since HBT was founded about a year ago, Beckley said, more than 50,000 people have attended seminars learning how to supplement their income by paying $295 and becoming distributors of a wide range of products and services such as finding college loans and reduced rates on airline travel, hotels and rental cars.

Beckley has stacks of testimonials from satisfied customers, including Tim Green of Davison, Mich., who said he’s made money hawking grocery coupons.

“I think it’s a good, solid program. I think Ed Beckley is sincerely there to try to help people to become successful if they want to,” said Green, who also owns a restaurant.

Beckley can’t escape his past, however. The state attorney’s office and Better Business Bureau are advising potential customers who call to beware.

Beckley said the attorney general’s office is going out of its way to harm HBT.

“They haven’t done anything yet, but they’re rattling their sabers all the time, and they’ve injured my business--grievously, in my opinion,” Beckley said.

Beckley, 48, born in San Rafael, Calif., said he earned a bachelor’s degree in economics and a master’s equivalency in business from San Francisco State University. After finishing graduate school in 1972, Beckley taught business subjects to high school students.

Beckley said he was “making a decent salary” but not enough to put a down payment on a house, so he began reading about people who had made money in real estate.

“I started figuring out that you didn’t necessarily need money to buy real estate. You needed ideas. You needed knowledge,” he said.

With that in mind, Beckley said , he began attending seminars and reading how-to books and began buying property, first in Quincy, Calif., and later in Lake Tahoe and Sacramento.

In 1978, he quit his teaching job because “I had more income from real estate investments than I did from teaching.”

Beckley said he began branching out, becoming a part-time independent loan broker who helped people who needed loans for housing, buildings and resorts.

In 1981, he wrote a book, “No Down Payment Formulas,” which became the cornerstone of his “Millionaire Maker” television seminars.

He moved to Fairfield in 1984, drawn to the southeast Iowa town of 9,400 people so he could practice transcendental meditation at Maharishi International University, now named the Maharishi University of Management.

His friends say Beckley was always money-driven.

“When we were in high school, we’d always sit in his bedroom talking about things we were going to do. He said he always wanted to make a million dollars,” said Ron Banks, who’s known Beckley since seventh grade.

Frank Krzesowiak, another former classmate and close friend, says Beckley “has always been driven.”

“I can remember he always had a fascination for people with money. I had a couple of uncles who were well off . . . and he used to grill me on my uncles and how they made their money, what they did with it and stuff.

“He always wanted to make money from the beginning. He never doubted that he would some day.”

Beckley said his financial trouble in the 1980s was “a big glitch in a four-, five-month period” but that “there were a lot of people who got wealthy.”

The key flaw was the six-month unconditional money-back guarantee, he said. The money from the sale of the programs was plowed back into expansion, leaving the Beckley Group unprepared to handle the demands for refunds.

“That was stupid on my part. I kick myself in the butt over that. What happened was, from November 1985 to May ‘86, we had a flood of returns. It was a real dramatic marketing error on my part,” he said.

Refund policy at HBT is far less outlandish, 10 or 12 days, and there’s a special account earmarked for refunds, Beckley said.

“Our position is to try to keep the customer happy,” Beckley said.

Brammer, however, said the attorney general’s office is fielding enough inquiries to keep them interested in HBT.

“He’s not being unfairly targeted. We try to keep an eye on anything where there’s a major operation operating out of Iowa and where we got lots of inquiries from Iowa or around the country,” he said.

“There were very serious problems in the past, so that would be a reason that we would keep an eye on it,” Brammer said.