They just need to listen to common sense.
If you have no clue what to do with your money, take that money to a big house like Morgan Stanley or the like, they have wealth management for clients, let them know what your risk tolerance is, and let them take it from there.
Had he done that he would have whatever he had at the time plus probably at least a 10 to 15% return over that time per year
You say that; but half these players go broke from getting robbed by people and firms just like that.
No they don't, they go broke trying to support everyone around them.
Places like Morgan Stanley would be out of business if half their clients lost money
Dude, the research is out there. Big time financial firms get shut down all of the **** time for fraud, embezzlement, larceny, etc.
You should NEVER trust ANYONE but yourself with YOUR money. Period.
You're not correct here about the big firms.
You just have a generalized suspicion of "big firms" like Fidelity, Morgan Stanley, etc., without even understanding what they do and how they run their Wealth Management departments. So just stop. You don't get it.
I'll state it again, had he gone to one of these firms, instead of giving his money to one of these hucksters, whatever amount he had on hand to invest, let's say $20 million, he'd still have every penny of it.
And assuming this was like ten years ago, if they had convinced him to approve a semi-aggressive portfolio allocation leaning more heavily to the market, his money would have at least doubled. Had he gone super conservative, he'd still have all his original investment, plus at least another 4-5 million.