I've been a member for slightly over a year (still waiting for Sam to teach me how to trade profitably, it's really frustrating), and he charges my credit card $26.00 a month each and every month for the Omnovia conference room that we meet in every day. He swore to me and every other member of Edge Traders/trading Zoo that he doesn't make one red cent from this and simply passes the charges he gets from Omnovia directly to us. Well, nothing could be further from the truth.

A conversation with Omnovia confirms he was getting a special low rate by prepaying which averaged anywhere between $10-$13 per person.

So, not only did he lie through his teeth about passing along the fees, he also had the audacity to make a handsome 100% profit of his students--ones who had already paid him $6000 to learn to trade. The man has zero integrity and probably not much money either--at least not from trading his own account. Why would he need to rip us off for small bucks?

For the sake of argument, let's say he has 100 room members and is making a $13.00 a month profit from them. That's $1, 300 a month and $15, 600 a year for simply marking up another service and giving us, the members, no additional value.

So we circle back to the same question which has been raised by others: If he is making so much money trading his own account, why does he need to cheat us members and make us pay double what Omnovia charges him for the lousy conference room. D**n, there are plenty of FREE room providers he could use. He runs this business like a tool booth on the NJ turnpike, taking more money from his students every step of the way.

In Yiddish, there's a word for people like him. It's goniff. Stay away from Sam Baum. He can't be trusted.