Anthony Farrer of The Timepiece Gentleman's Arrest: Insights and Reflections

Breaking News:  Anthony Farrer of the Timepiece Gentleman has been arrested by the FBI and is currently held without bail. IRS Criminal Investigations and Beverly Hills Police Department are also involved.

Here's a video where I share my thoughts and insights on how we got here with Anthony's rise and ultimate fall from being on top of the grey market luxury watch world.

The Timepiece Gentleman Backstory:

Some of you might be wondering why this is such a big deal to me, thinking that I'm just making these videos just for the views.

Well, I want you to know that I made my first Anthony Farrer, Timepiece, Gentlemen, video on July 9th, 2021. That was about two and a half years ago. I'm not some Johnny come lately, grifting for views. My video at the time was titled, "A Business Analysis of the Timepiece Gentlemen." I made the video because I was an avid watcher of the channel. I was a big fan and I always thought luxury watches were cool.

Back then, let's call it blackout 1.0, they appeared to essentially shut down their business overnight, shutting off their social media, vacating the retail office space, scratching their name off their door, and they stopped answering their phone.

I thought for sure they pulled a runner and I figured, you know what? I've got this new YouTube channel. Let's liven it up with a video about this guy's business and talk about all the things I see wrong with it from a rational, business person's point of view.

The video went viral and blew up my channel. In hindsight, they were likely pulling scams back then. They probably ran out of Ponzi money but got a last-minute bailout from their investor.

That's what I think happened.

As you probably know, they came back and called it a publicity stunt. No one with half a brain believed them.

Fast forward to today, the jig is up. Justice, surprisingly, is moving swiftly in this case. Anthony Farrer has been arrested by the FBI. IRS Criminal Investigations and the Beverly Hills Police Department are also investigating this matter. He's currently being held at the LA Metropolitan Detention Center without bail.

Let's read some of this Press Release from The United States Attorney's Office Central District of California.

"Anthony Farrer, 35, who until recently lived in downtown Los Angeles, was charged in a federal criminal complaint filed Monday with wire fraud, a felony that carries a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison."

Okay, all you guys who said this was a civil case and that he wouldn't get any jail time, you were all wrong. They can always get you on wire fraud or mail fraud and possibly even tax fraud.

Continuing on,

"Farrer, who also was known as “The Timepiece Gentleman,” was arrested without incident at a storage facility in Venice and was held in federal custody overnight.

...The complaint alleges that Farrer defrauded victims beginning in late 2022 until the summer of 2023, when he promised customers he would sell their luxury watches on consignment. Rather than remitting funds back to the customers less the commission, he kept the proceeds for himself. Farrer lived in a luxury rental property and was known to drive a Lamborghini and Ducati motorcycles.

...The complaint further alleges that Farrer operated a scheme in a similar manner to a Ponzi scheme and would lull victims into a sense of security by engaging in smaller successful transactions prior to requesting or engaging in significantly larger transactions."

That's right, a Ponzi scheme. I was one of the first people to call it a Ponzi scheme, and I got a lot of flack for it. Now, admittedly, it wasn't a straight-up Ponzi scheme, but it clearly had strong Ponzi scheme elements. Let's continue.

"Multiple victims contacted law enforcement to report that they wired funds to Farrer for the purchase of a watch, or mailed him a watch to consign for sale, but were never paid for the watch or never received their watch back. To date, law enforcement estimates that victim losses currently total approximately $3 million. The investigation is ongoing and law enforcement is in the process of identifying additional victims."

Let's not forget that Anthony Farrer is innocent until proven guilty, but it's not looking good for him. And once the justice system has their meat hooks in you, they've got like a 90% conviction rate or something like that.

I would be remiss not to talk about the involvement with IRS Criminal Investigations. To me, this is even bigger than wire fraud charges.

So what could the IRS be looking into?

• Tax Evasion. 

The big one, I think, is tax evasion. I seriously doubt Anthony filed his business and personal tax returns recently. This is just a guess, but he has said on video that he doesn't pay taxes.

Also, the IRS can go back as many years as they want to, especially if fraud is involved. They could even go back to the days in Dallas with Marco and look at those for potential tax issues.

• Disguised Wages.

I had no hard and fast facts, but from what I gathered from his videos, it appeared he had been paying his employees with Gifts: Rolex watches, Corvette lease payments for Darby, and paying their rent for their L.A. beachfront apartment.

The IRS Criminal Investigations Division is responsible for investigating potential criminal activities, including tax fraud, tax evasion, money laundering, basically violations of the US tax code and related financial crimes.

Investigations start with an examination of financial data and tax returns. If there's enough evidence of potential criminal activity, the case can be referred for prosecution. In this case, it seems prosecution is likely.

Cases pursued by IRS criminal investigations can result in significant penalties, including fines and imprisonment.

Please don't think I'm trying to kick a man while he's down. I like to think that I stand for honesty and integrity.

There's a lot of lessons to be learned here.

One of them is to not let yourself get seduced by charismatic personality types. I hear about it all the time, especially from some of my elderly clients. One that I'm thinking of got duped of over $200,000 from a financial person who scammed her. He gained her trust with his fancy clothes, nice car, good looks, and smooth talking. Sound familiar?

What you see is not always what you get.

So that's about it. I hope you learned something. Thanks for Reading and See you in my next blog!