www.raleysexposed.com - TOM RALEY, 1972 BEE ARTICLE

Tom Raley - 1972 Bee article

This page represents an article that The Sacramento Bee published in October of 1972. It featured Tom Raley and told his story about his shoestring beginnings and how he was able to open his first grocery store in Placerville. I have to wonder how much fraud was going on at Raley's when this Bee article came out in '72?

Tom Raley was interviewed by the Sacramento Bee in 1972. This paragraph states that Mr. Raley owns the whole ball of wax. And that's probably all that Mr. Raley really owned back in 1973-a ball of wax. It may have been even ear wax...

In the above paragraph (October of 1972), Tom Raley is sitting in Raley's office building located at 1515 20th street in Sacramento. Not less than a year later, you couldn't find Raley at this same office building when Charles Nordby was hired. I think in 1973, Raley was courting his second wife Joan, a woman who apparently was a real estate broker.

Tom Raley received credit and was able to get it when he listed the chairman of the board of Safeway.

Mr. Raley states in this article that he had one thing going for him and that was he knew how to run a grocery store. Mr. Raley didn't have a clue on how to run a grocery store. I wonder how much credit Mr. Raley was receiving in order to open his stores before the Eagle Thrifty Stores were obtained in June of 1973?

Read the paragraph below and see how Raley describes his point of difference. The biggest point of difference that existed at his Raley's stores was the ability his suppliers, employee's, and his clientele (shoplifters) were easily able to rip him and his stores off. In truth, Raley's biggest point of difference came less than a year after this article was written when a grocery consultant by the name of Charles Nordby was hired.

A man whom Tom Raley claimed he never knew.

If Mr. Raley is so bought on the idea of giving trading stamps to his customers in October of 1972, why did Raley's discontinue the trading stamps in the first part of the new year in 1974?

Mr. Raley acknowledges that trading stamps add slightly to cost of groceries, but Mr. Raley thinks that housewives like them, and so he gives them stamps. If the housewives like trading stamps, why did Raley's discontinue these stamps about fifteen months after this interview? Mr. Raley was really impressed with his corn fed beef. This is the same beef Charles Nordby witnessed browning in Mr. Raley's stores in 1973.

Read the paragraphs below and see where Tom Raley indicates that he is proud of the organization that he has built up over the years and also stating that the stores almost run by themselves. When Charles Nordby was hired less than ten months after this article was written, Tom Raley's stores looked like they were being run by themselves. Raley's stores were a total mess. Who is Raley trying to deceive in his 1972 article?

Wow, Raley is talking about going public. Yeah, Frank (golf ball in the mouth) McMinn was telling Nordby when he was hired that he would receive some stock when Raley's went public. Raley indicates in this article he wants to expand in a couple of years. In two years, Raley thinks his sales should be around $100 million. Instead, for some reason, less than eight months later, in June of 1973, with annual sales being around $75 million he decided to buy a chain of stores in Nevada that are losing money called Eagle Thrifty. Yeah Right

Why did Tom Raley promote Charles Collings to be president of his stores and not his son-in-law Jim Teel? Was it because Raley needed a real sharp con man to deceive everybody in town? Based on the amount of theft that Nordby uncovered and going undetected throughout the entire Raley's grocery store operation, there is no way that Raley's company in 1972 could have been "doing very well" as Raley stated in one of the above paragraphs.

While Raley wants to talk about his produce suppliers and his produce warehouse, Nordby exposed Raley's produce suppliers to how they were cleverly overcharging Raley's stores whenever a buyer at Raley's ordered produce over the phone with their produce suppliers. Raley's invoices didn't show the same price that was given over the telephone.

Mr. Raley's people simply weren't prepared to operate any kind of business back in 1972. This is the last paragraph that was reported by the Sacramento Bee newspaper back in October of 1972!

This article states that the purchase was in cash. Yeah right...This article was just designed to deceive Raley's creditors, Raley's employee's, and the community into believing that everything was OK at Raley's. They could go out and buy a chain of stores with cash...yeah right! Not what Raley's history book states.

Raley's history book, in 1989, stated it took Raley's three (3) years to pay off the purchase of the Eagle Thrifty stores. So why is this 1973 article (above), stating Raley's paid for it with cash? Because they were lying and trying to make it appear Raley's had money. A homeless man with 10 cents in his pocket had more value than Raley's at this time.

This kind of dishonesty was going on at Tom Raley's company. Tom Raley was not doing well during the time that this article was being written in October of 1972.

A tremendous amount of stealing was going on at all of the Raley's stores in 1972. There is no possible way for Tom Raley to have stated he was doing well during this time period and be honest about it. Unless Raley himself was being misled by Collings too. After all, Collings and Teel were running the show (circus) in 1972.

Plus, with all of this dishonesty going on at the time, undetected, Raley couldn't have had the $3.5 million necessary to buy a chain of stores in Nevada that were losing money.

Raley's didn't even have any money to purchase Nordby's security windows in 1973.

Raley's was just a den of thieves when this October, 1972 article ran in the Sacramento Bee.