Getting money for investments would be no problem. Slick said we could borrow money from our 401(k) plans and later pay it back with interest that would increase the savings value. He didn't mention that many plans don't allow you to make additional contributions until your loan is repaid, which would cause you to miss out on your employer's matching contributions. Nor did he detail the very stringent rules on 401(k) loans or the fact that the money you borrowed would be taxed twice: once on the after-tax money to repay the loan and then again when you withdraw it at retirement.

Slick then suggested an alternative financing method -- that investors could get adjustable-rate mortgages, or ARMs, and enjoy low rates with little risk since these properties would only be held for the short term. But you'd have to have lived in a cave for the past year to be oblivious to the pitfalls of ARMs. They are partly to blame for the meltdown in real estate and involve a high level of risk, as many homeowners can attest, especially in a real estate market that has virtually ground to a halt.

Undaunted by current market conditions, Slick promised that the real estate payoffs would be huge. Some offered a guaranteed 25 percent return, he exclaimed. Some even averaged a 50 percent return. He showed that a few thousand dollars would compound to millions over 15 years.

I don't doubt his math and I'm sure opportunities exist like those he described. There are a few people who have amassed fortunes in real estate. But is this easy, are the opportunities for great gains plentiful and can this be done with little or no risk? No.

Make a mint in the stock market
Then Slick turned to the subject of the stock market. That 50 percent return on real estate paled in comparison to what you could make in the stock market if you could take advantage of technical analysis, puts, calls and options.

"Volatility is simply opportunity," Slick told the audience. "It's not risk."

He went on to say that we had a great advantage over professional traders because we can trade faster. (This was news to me.) The best strategy, Slick said, was to buy and sell, not hold. He gave an example of a series of buy and sell tactics, combined with charting, that he had used with a stock. He made well over 50 percent in just six months, he said.

Near the end Slick repeated that he was doing this only to help other people learn how to get rich. This free lecture would be followed by an opportunity to attend any of a number of follow-up courses -- each of which cost thousands of dollars. These courses cover a number of aspects of real estate investments and such things as foreign trade and options trading.

To Slick's credit, he did not apply a lot of pressure on everyone to sign up for the courses. He knew he had planted seeds of 25 percent-plus returns, and that these would germinate in the minds of many of the attendees in the audience.