Ник Попович - Человек, Чья Профессия Угонять Самолеты
Спонсор месяца - Вылечи свои финансы. GlavMed поможет.
Сайт дня (как попасть) - http://chtochto.ru/
Классная статья про чувака, который изымает самолеты за долги. Мне понравилась.
It was snowing hard when the bank called Nick Popovich. They needed to grab a Gulfstream in South Carolina now. Not tomorrow. Tonight.
All commercial and private planes were grounded, but Nick Popovich wasn't one to turn down a job. So he waited for the storm to clear long enough to charter a Hawker jet from Chicago into South Carolina. There was just one detail: No one had told Popovich about the heavily armed white supremacist militia that would be guarding the aircraft when he arrived.
But then again, no one had told the militia about Popovich, a brawny and intimidating man who has been jailed and shot at and has faced down more angry men than a prison warden. When Popovich and two of his colleagues arrived that evening at a South Carolina airfield, they were met by a bunch of nasty-looking thugs with cocked shotguns. "They had someone in the parking lot with binoculars," Popovich says, recalling the incident. "When we went to grab the plane, one of them came out with his weapon drawn and tells us we better get out of there." Undeterred, Popovich continued toward the plane until he felt a gun resting on his temple.
"You move another inch and I'll blow your fucking head off," the gravel-and-nicotine voice told Popovich.
"Well, you better go ahead and shoot, 'cause I'm grabbing that plane."
A shot was discharged in the air.
The gravel-and-nicotine voice again. "I'm not kidding."
"Then do it already."
Popovich's first rule of firearms is pretty simple: The man who tells you he's going to shoot you will not shoot you. So without so much as looking back, he got on the plane and flew it right to Chicago. "My job is to grab that plane," Popovich says. "And if you haven't paid for it, then it's mine. And I don't like to lose."
Nick Popovich is a repo man, but not the kind that spirits away Hyundais from suburban driveways. Popovich is a super repo man, one of a handful of specialists who get the call when a bank wants back its Gulfstream II jet from, say, a small army of neo-Nazi freaks.
For the past three decades, Popovich has been one of a secret tribe of big game hunters who specialize in stealing jets from the jungle hideouts of corrupt landowners in Colombia, Mexico and Brazil and swiping go-fast boats from Wall Street titans in Miami and East Hampton. Super repos have been known to hire swat teams, hijack supertankers and fly off with eastern bloc military helicopters. For a cut of the overall value, they'll repossess anything.
But Popovich is the most renowned of them all -- the Ernest Hemingway of super repo men. "Nick is the best of the best," says Doug Lipke, head of the bankruptcy group for the law firm Vedder Price, who has called Popovich on numerous occasions to retrieve jumbo jets from fat cats with thinning balance sheets. One time, Lipke needed a plane repo-ed from Michigan and flown to Chicago. "All the electrical went out on the plane and Nick was flying at night," he says. "He flew that plane back with zero electricity -- no lights, nothing. There aren't many guys that would be able to do that."
Today Popovich, 56, is co-partner of Sage-Popovich, a repossession firm. (Sage is his wife, Pat, also the firm's president.) Their clients include Citibank, Transamerica and Credit Suisse, and the firm annually earns, Popovich says, "into the low-to-mid seven figures." That estimate isn't ridiculous when you consider that the most difficult jobs can net Popovich anywhere from $600,000 to $900,000. Popovich's specialty is big planes, jumbo jets, mostly; he's repo-ed 1,300 of them in his career. And that's just the solo gigs. Throw in the 65 repo men who work for him, and the number reaches closer to 2,000.
His mandate is simple. Someone misses a few payments. The bank wants to recover its plane. There will be an attempt to set up some kind of debt payment plan. Failing that, collateral has to be ponied up. If there is none, then an account executive reaches out to Popovich. But Jumbo Jets are expensive -- a 747 will run you anywhere from $125 million to $260 million -- and people who try to acquire such toys are loath to give them back. If the deadbeat ...read more.
Бизнес-идеи: от кризисных экскурсий до свежей пиццы из вендингового автомата
Микро форекс - решешие или проблема?
Почему, когда нет оригинальной бизнес-идеи — нет денег?
Борис, ты не прав. Как переубедить оппонента?
Спонсор месяца - Вылечи свои финансы. GlavMed поможет.
Сайт дня (как попасть) - http://chtochto.ru/
Классная статья про чувака, который изымает самолеты за долги. Мне понравилась.
It was snowing hard when the bank called Nick Popovich. They needed to grab a Gulfstream in South Carolina now. Not tomorrow. Tonight.
All commercial and private planes were grounded, but Nick Popovich wasn't one to turn down a job. So he waited for the storm to clear long enough to charter a Hawker jet from Chicago into South Carolina. There was just one detail: No one had told Popovich about the heavily armed white supremacist militia that would be guarding the aircraft when he arrived.
But then again, no one had told the militia about Popovich, a brawny and intimidating man who has been jailed and shot at and has faced down more angry men than a prison warden. When Popovich and two of his colleagues arrived that evening at a South Carolina airfield, they were met by a bunch of nasty-looking thugs with cocked shotguns. "They had someone in the parking lot with binoculars," Popovich says, recalling the incident. "When we went to grab the plane, one of them came out with his weapon drawn and tells us we better get out of there." Undeterred, Popovich continued toward the plane until he felt a gun resting on his temple.
"You move another inch and I'll blow your fucking head off," the gravel-and-nicotine voice told Popovich.
"Well, you better go ahead and shoot, 'cause I'm grabbing that plane."
A shot was discharged in the air.
The gravel-and-nicotine voice again. "I'm not kidding."
"Then do it already."
Popovich's first rule of firearms is pretty simple: The man who tells you he's going to shoot you will not shoot you. So without so much as looking back, he got on the plane and flew it right to Chicago. "My job is to grab that plane," Popovich says. "And if you haven't paid for it, then it's mine. And I don't like to lose."
Nick Popovich is a repo man, but not the kind that spirits away Hyundais from suburban driveways. Popovich is a super repo man, one of a handful of specialists who get the call when a bank wants back its Gulfstream II jet from, say, a small army of neo-Nazi freaks.
For the past three decades, Popovich has been one of a secret tribe of big game hunters who specialize in stealing jets from the jungle hideouts of corrupt landowners in Colombia, Mexico and Brazil and swiping go-fast boats from Wall Street titans in Miami and East Hampton. Super repos have been known to hire swat teams, hijack supertankers and fly off with eastern bloc military helicopters. For a cut of the overall value, they'll repossess anything.
But Popovich is the most renowned of them all -- the Ernest Hemingway of super repo men. "Nick is the best of the best," says Doug Lipke, head of the bankruptcy group for the law firm Vedder Price, who has called Popovich on numerous occasions to retrieve jumbo jets from fat cats with thinning balance sheets. One time, Lipke needed a plane repo-ed from Michigan and flown to Chicago. "All the electrical went out on the plane and Nick was flying at night," he says. "He flew that plane back with zero electricity -- no lights, nothing. There aren't many guys that would be able to do that."
Today Popovich, 56, is co-partner of Sage-Popovich, a repossession firm. (Sage is his wife, Pat, also the firm's president.) Their clients include Citibank, Transamerica and Credit Suisse, and the firm annually earns, Popovich says, "into the low-to-mid seven figures." That estimate isn't ridiculous when you consider that the most difficult jobs can net Popovich anywhere from $600,000 to $900,000. Popovich's specialty is big planes, jumbo jets, mostly; he's repo-ed 1,300 of them in his career. And that's just the solo gigs. Throw in the 65 repo men who work for him, and the number reaches closer to 2,000.
His mandate is simple. Someone misses a few payments. The bank wants to recover its plane. There will be an attempt to set up some kind of debt payment plan. Failing that, collateral has to be ponied up. If there is none, then an account executive reaches out to Popovich. But Jumbo Jets are expensive -- a 747 will run you anywhere from $125 million to $260 million -- and people who try to acquire such toys are loath to give them back. If the deadbeat ...read more.
Бизнес-идеи: от кризисных экскурсий до свежей пиццы из вендингового автомата
Микро форекс - решешие или проблема?
Почему, когда нет оригинальной бизнес-идеи — нет денег?
Борис, ты не прав. Как переубедить оппонента?
Спонсор месяца - Вылечи свои финансы. GlavMed поможет.
posted by UncommonBusiness at 1:28 AM
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Давыдов кагбэ намекает нам, что давно пора учить английский.
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