David S. Srail
All you need to know to not get taken for a ride
Captured & Released
In April 2013, Dave Srail was arrested (on a warrant from 2007) in San Antonio, Texas. He pleaded guilty to theft and served 6 months in Travis County Jail (Austin, Texas). As of mid-October, 2013, however, he was released and because he had no ties in Texas. In 2021 he was known to be gutting fish up in Alaska.
If you have seen him or know where he is, please contact us.
CONTACTThe Story
If you've found this website, it's probably because you've met him and suspected something wasn't quite right,and you are most likely correct. Here's his story:
From 2003 to 2005, Dave Srail worked with my daughter and son-in-law at a local Mortgage lending bank in the Ft. Lauderdale area. Over time he gained their confidence and that of many other co-workers. In total, he conned them out of nearly $300,000. He left, under cover of darkness, and nobody knew where he went with the money. They tried to get the police to look at it as a criminal matter, but the police refused, saying instead that it was a civil matter.
So, I put up this website to forewarn other potential victims. Periodically I’d get huge spikes of visitors to the website, and then we’d get news of him running his scam on other people. He was sighted in Arizona, Nebraska, Indiana, and Washington state, but he’d left by the time people read this website and contacted us.
Back in 2007 he scammed a nice guy named Juan González in Austin, Texas, who convinced a detective from the Austin Police Department that there was a pattern that crossed state lines and went on for years with multiple victims. The detective issued a warrant for Dave’s arrest.
Again, we had multiple sightings, but it wasn’t until Monday April 22, 2013, that someone actually CALLED THE POLICE AND TURNED HIM IN.
As luck would have it, Dave’s new job involved traveling all over the country.
They happened to be in Texas when the curious new boss thought, “Dave doesn’t fit the profile of my regular crew members. They are usually young, tattooed, and rough around the edges. This guy is in his 40s, well-spoken, professional.” He even thought Dave might be an undercover boss!
So he “Googled” him to find out his background, and instead found www.DaveSrail.com. He called the Austin Police Department from a small municipal airport in San Antonio and told them what he suspected, and that they would be boarding a plane in 30 min. The San Antonio police were there to arrest him in 20 minutes! Dave was very surprised! And all of us who have been tracking him for years were elated and thankful Dave’s boss did the right thing!
…and Dave, if you’re reading this, this site was created by your former best friend’s mother in Ft. Lauderdale.I KNEW that someday, somewhere, we would get you …and we DID!
And this, from the detective at the Austin Police Department who issued the warrant for Dave’s arrest:
“Thanks Jacira.Without your hard work he would still be victimizing people today and probably on a much grander scale.You kept the pressure on with that website.– Detective B.”
The Scam
Here below is the original intro to this website. I'm leaving it up so people can learn how to avoid falling for this type of long scam.
Before you do business with this man, or hire him to work for your company, you should definitely invest a bit of time reading what we have placed here on this site. If you are still willing to do business with this man after reading our site, then I have a bridge I’d like to sell you.
Don’t get me wrong. Plenty of very cautious and investment-savvy people have fallen prey to his con game. That does not make them bad people … it makes Dave Srail a very good con artist, a crook, and an unscrupulous bastard who took people’s hard-earned money and gambled it all away.
As of October 2013, our best estimate was that he had absconded with LOTS of other people’s hard-earned cash: In Ohio, over $100,000. In Florida, over $300,000 and in the Austin/San Antonio area an unknown amount.
In south Florida in 2005, he did it under the ruse of buying antiques and antique stamps at auction and then selling them for a substantial profit. He promised great profits in a very short time. He went to elaborate lengths to create seemingly legitimate business transactions, when in reality, he was at the race track every weekend.
Prior to this, back in 1998, he admits to having scammed his own parents and others in the Cleveland, Ohio area.
In the San Antonio/Austin area in 2007 he conned people into investing in a warehouse scam. Again, he was really at his favorite place: The racetrack. These are only two of the scams he uses to trick people into “loaning” him thousands of dollars in hopes of a high return on their “investment”. In mid-2007 he skipped town overnight – just up and disappeared with thousands of dollars given to him in good faith by hard working people who thought he was their friend.
In March of 2008 Dave was in Seattle, Washington where he allegedly pulled a knife on his roommates after they read this site and tried to confront him. The roommates contacted us here, and said they were going to file charges, but to our knowledge, never followed through.
In July of 2008 he was in Lincoln, Nebraska where he met a woman while they were both participating in a drug trial. He also participated in a drug trial in San Antonio, so this is one of the ways he has of scouting out his victims.
As of February 2009, he was in Evansville, Indiana. Srail frequented a small town north of there called Haubstadt. He was trying to ingratiate himself with a company to assist with fundraising in the local community.
If you have additional information on con games this man has played on people, please SEND IT TO US . You may request your name or any other personally identifying information to be deleted from what we post here and your request will be respected.
The page entitled, “Letters” (In His Own Words) are pictures of his handwritten statement, in a letter to a friend, of how he scams people, his (sorry) excuses, and various explanations as to why he screwed the people he supposedly cared about. This is just an example of how he screwed NUMEROUS people in the south Florida area.
It appears he may be planning to use a similar scam in the future, but the likelihood of his conscience biting him on the butt is not very great. This is a man who openly admits to having no scruples.
Remember the old adage: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.