“Edwards sold nearly 50,000 payphones on this basis, many of them in deals of over $100,000.”
ETS Payphones sold phones at five to seven thousand dollars each with an $83 monthly lease, and insurance agents steered over $300 million into it from 1996 to 2000. ETS had never been profitable and paid old investors with new money. Charles Edwards got thirteen years, and Pantheon ran the same pitch with $18,000 internet kiosks. Passive income usually comes out of someone else’s pocket.