Sorting Things Out, Litigiously, With The FBI and a Few Strong Drinks On Me

MY STOCKBROKER, a good friend of mine, recommended and participated with me in an investment which produced disastrous results, due to lack of knowledge on his part. I don't have much money, but half of what I had, I lost. His corporate employer found out about it, tried to penalize him, and he resigned to pursue his career elsewhere, with another financial services firm. The criminal with whom we disastrously invested is now in court, under indictment for multiple felonies, and will go to prison, like Bernie Madoff, because he did the same thing to many people, Madoff style. (He and Madoff "made off" with other people's money....sorry, bad joke). I, angry, wrote a letter to my broker's former firm, which by now had assigned me a new broker, introducing myself to my new broker, and expressing dismay at my sad misfortune. A venting, if you will. I assumed my new broker would write back and respond to my personal letter, telling how sorry he was, that he couldn't change the past, but that he would be glad to work with me in the future. This only made matters worse for my friend and former broker, because he got more heat from his former employer and certain regulatory agencies, due to my letter, which I of course never intended. I had no desire for my friend to experience trouble, notwithstanding his incompetence in losing my money to a criminal. Trouble for him doesn't help me get my money back. I, like my broker, was ignorant of certain realities within the financial services industry. the criminal ho stole our money stole over a half million dollars from other people, which makes it a federal crime, and I had an interesting adventure talking to attorneys, prosecutors, and the FBI, which has a special place on my list of people with whom I have had interesting adventures. Hint; if you walk into an FBI office, you will push a big red ominous looking buzzer beneath a sign with an ominous message engraved in steel just above it, pass through a two feet thick steel, then a metal detector, then you will approach a six inch glass window in a room decorate in a very severe decor, black and steel, deadly serious and decidedly not with the approval of Martha Stewart. On the other side of the thick glass will be a young stern looking lady attired in all black, remindful of women in the nineteen nineties, but without shoulder pads. She will look at you with apparent contempt, as you what you want, and she will not smile laugh when you try to break the ice (glass?) with a few clever quips about your being sorry to have appeared in an FBI office wearing sweats. Note to self: never make attempts a humor or warmth with an FBI employee. they don't smile, laugh, nor exchange pleasantries of any sort. They mean business. The good new is that I hired an attorney, and we are going to sue the financial firm for whom my friend and broker originally worked, and it doing so will evidently do no further damage to my friend and broker. My attorney requires no money up front, but will work on contingency, taking one third do whatever damages I get, if any. if I get anything, drinks are on me, but please promise me that if I start talking about some investment that simply cannot miss, you will remind me what an FBI office is like, and that should be enough to dissuade me from further financial folly. One can hope.