![]() “With the rough childhood that I’ve had, it’s made me a strong person,” she says. Provence thought of herself as skeptical, even suspicious. And he promised a 5% bonus on top of her initial investment just for signing up. By depositing her money into five categories of investment-Treasuries, third-party life insurance settlements, fixed index and what he called Investors Business Daily Formula and, separately, Value/Dividends-he could get her a 5% annual return, he explained. Gallagher told Provence about his Diversified Growth & Income (DGI) program. “He was very charismatic,” Provence says. He was broad-shouldered, with a sweep of thick silver hair and the ghost of a Boston brogue. A former high school basketball player, Gallagher, then in his mid-70s, had taken up swimming and marathons later in life. An acquaintance from her church endorsed him, too.Īfter attending one of the free informational dinners Gallagher held at local restaurants, Provence went to see him at his office. A friend at the senior center mentioned that she and her husband had invested with Gallagher. Provence had never paid him much attention, but his name soon seemed to echo in her ears. He also had a long-running show on Christian radio. William Neil Gallagher, the owner of Gallagher Financial Group Inc., a financial planning firm, had an office in Hurst, practically down the road from her home. “Have you heard of Doc Gallagher?” the preparer asked. One day she mentioned this to a local tax preparer. Provence decided that having her investments all in one place, earning the same interest rate, would be easier to manage. But her money was growing slowly, and she wanted to help her children and grandchildren. In her spare time, she enjoys country-western dancing at a local senior centre, and her bucket list includes seeing honky-tonk legend Dwight Yoakam in concert. She kept some of the money at Wells Fargo, where her relatives had banked, and distributed the rest among investment accounts at Chase Bank, Allstate and Thrivent, a Christian nonprofit. Photographer: Jake Dockins for Bloomberg BusinessweekĪround 2008, Provence learned that her aunt and uncle had left her an inheritance of about $350,000-a fortune, to her thinking. “I was proud of myself for that,” she tells me on a recent visit. She took jobs at Dillard’s, as a cashier, and with Citigroup Inc., in customer service, where she worked for 18 years, paying off the house and her Honda. In 1992, after her husband ran off with a high school sweetheart, Provence was left with a lien on the house and crushing credit card debt. When she was 12, she came to live in Fort Worth with her aunt, a nurse, and uncle, a milkman. It’s said that Fort Worth is where the West begins, and these images-like the lasso hung decoratively over the couch and the bucking bronco sculpture on the mantle-speak to the ethos of self-reliance that’s especially cherished in this part of the state. On the wood-panelled walls of her living room hang black-and-white photos of her mother and father, who abandoned her as an infant, and of a company of Texas Rangers, circa 1887, in wide-brimmed hats with long guns. ![]() Linda Provence has lived in the same neat brick ranch house in Bedford, Texas, just outside Fort Worth, for more than 50 years.
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