Complaint Review: Dale Hensel

Picking up the pieces after being taken down by a business con artist

Dozens of people have fallen for the visions of grandeur concocted by a business con man named Dale Hensel. At last count, millions of dollars evaporated into mismanagement, and tens of thousands disappeared into embezzlement over the span of fifteen years and at least four separate partnerships. Dozens of people have been scammed, only a handful have stepped forward to publicly denounce him, some have gone so far as to sue him.

At the time of publishing this the following lawsuits are active and name Dale Hensel individually, Leiberknight FLP and KLH7, LLC all entities Dale Hensel conducted business under or with his wife Teresa Lieberknight.

The Following case was found online:

• Axel Fire, LLC et al. vs. Dale Hensel et al. - D-1329-CV-2017-01977

He’s currently the subject of an investigation by the New Mexico Securities Division.

Dale has fled the United States, and is currently residing in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico. He’s believed to be running an Airbnb scam at this time and likely to be seeking other real estate scams to perpetrate.

This is a collaborative piece by many individual victims, and because of the active litigation or business deals where people are trying to recover their investments involving them, none were willing to be identified individually. But all felt the need to collaborate to prevent others from sharing their same fate.

Dale has a knack for exciting and energizing entrepreneurs. He acts as a catalyst to attract talent, forge a new business venture, raises money or sell just enough services to get it started. But Dale has no money to properly capitalize the venture himself. Nor any business acumen to complete a vision. He overwhelms his partners with ‘shiny object syndrome’. He mismanages, co-mingles and spends his way through the money quicker than the product can be delivered or the profit can be realized. Then he leaves his partners hanging or in the position where they MUST kick him out. Afterwards, his former partners take the heat from his actions, because they invested in the project and seek to protect their investments as well. Thus far no investors or past business clients can be identified that can share success stories about Dale. Only failures.

However after investigating Dale online, one individual victim has been quite vocal against Dale Hensel. Ronnie Boyd.

Ronnie has also logged complaints against Dale wherever Dale’s podcasts public speaking has occurred. In the lawsuits named above, several individuals and investors claim Dale was responsible for defrauding them of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Dale had a unique story and one he weaves to great effect when soliciting business partners and investors to his projects. Supposedly he came from a modest background, dropped out of school, went hitch-hiking across the country and ended up at one point in Alaska working at the docks and eventually earning a spot fishing on crab boats. He’d later spend time fishing for abalone and sea cucumbers off the ocean floor.

Fast forward a decade or two. He did invest in some education — Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP). Dale spent lots of time in Dallas and training under NLP experts to learn the “science and art of persuasion.” This is where his time and training really caused harm to others.

Dale is polarizing, which in this internet politically correct day and age where 99% of communication is desensitized and extremes are removed, created a “zero sh*ts given” aura around him that some people loved and others hated.

The part of NLP that he practiced over and over was the technique called “soliciting criteria”, and telling stories using metaphors with a hook into something he wants. “Soliciting criteria” is a technique where the NLP practitioner uses a series of questions in a conversational manner to ask people what they want, why they want it, what that means to them and then he would validate people by repeating it back to them in a slightly different way and tie their wants and desires to whatever project he was working on at the time or try to squeeze some money out of them with some crazy hourly consulting. He was quite talented at it.

At some point in the 90’s Dale and Idaho friend “Troy” took over a large unit apartment complex in Dallas. Sounds impressive right? The reality is Dale and Troy got it from Troy’s uncle who was trying to get rid of it because it was planned to be demolished by the city because it was a blight.

Dale’s strategy for acquiring real estate was to outbid anyone else and try to get it owner financing because he never had good credit nor did he ever save any money. Pretty easy to buy real estate when you overpay for it.

His next step was to buy pools of mortgages. Dale teamed up with Troy and others to acquire some loans from the Money Store, and made some money at it but nothing major. Disagreements between him and his partners would begin the cycle of hate/hate relationships he’d get from every partnership then on. Dale would raise money and then spend that money on expenses that could be classified as business expenses but not in alignment with the company’s goals. It was this grey area that Dale lived in his whole business life.

Dale’s next endeavor was MAC Mortgage Assistance Company and was traded publicly on the OTC exchange. He loved to refer to himself as the “former CEO of a publicly traded company” to anyone that would listen.

What we’ve been able to uncover interviewing people in Dallas around him during this time was that Dale spent $400,000 to Clark Nichols to purchase a publicly traded shell and use stock to raise money to acquire distressed mortgage pools of loans. Multiple times Dale would get bad deals like the $1m home in Salina Texas he lost to the bank in a short sale for $750k.

We suspect he was run out of the company because he is a habitual liar, cheater and thief. This cycle would repeat itself a decade later, when faced with no other options he was kicked out of Axelfire who’s remaining partner sued him, locked him out of the building, blew the whistle of his mismanagement to investors who in turn sued everyone involved.

Dale would blame his partners and move on. He'd say over and over that he was betrayed, kicked out, or that his partners defrauded/ousted him. Other times Dale would say one of the partners went to jail.

Dale usually finds online communities to perpetrate his fraud. In 2011 on the fastlaneforum.com, he was quite active. It’s a forum for readers of MJ Demarco’s book, The Millionaire Fastlane, gather. It’s a book about how the true path to financial success and freedom is businesses, not stocks and savings.

Dale was later on a podcast with his buddy Brad Costanzo and talk about how to turn “down on their luck” entrepreneurs into CEO’s of new businesses where Dale had equity in their businesses. He had a whole plan for doing that.

The next community Dale Hensel moved to was Bigger Pockets. His story about apartment units fails to mention how nearly no money was ever made and but the scope of his failure was limited to Troy’s uncle. The Bigger Pocket's podcast attracted enough attention that several of the investors that sued him were form that one podcast alone.

Dale can now be seen in Millennial Entrepreneur Community.

Beware of Dale Hensel. If you are an investor he’s talking to, or an entrepreneur he’s soliciting to do

If you rant and rave about “Uncle Dale”, then you are among many others. But ask the folks on thefastlaneforum what they think about “Zendolphin” and see what they say…