Phantom Dividends
Unpacking Teddy Comer’s wet-vac criminal enterprise; EUNS turns one
“I knew this kid named Teddy Comer, and he was in the construction business. Well, really, he was in the subcontracting business. His racket was HVAC. And that’s not all.
“The first time I worked with Teddy, things were normal. We did a building or two, sure. Now, Teddy’s crew was small, but they all seemed like they knew what was up—maybe they knew too much what was up, if you catch my drift—and they ran ducts and conduits and hooked everything up to compressors and la-tee-da.
“But hold on. Next time around was when I got the hint: Teddy Comer was doing more than just piping projects to keep people cool.
“What happened was that his wet vac died. Now, these things take a shitload of abuse, and whatever they’re sucking up doesn’t do them no favors, anyway. That being said, the only detail about this particular wet vac going kaputz on that job was that the unit was pretty new. They usually don’t just die like that, a couple of weeks outta the dealership.
“Anyway, second job—same thing happens. Teddy Comer’s crew comes in, saws and pipes, plugs, connects; you know, the usual process. And then his wet vac dies. Now, I’m not saying I asked about the wet vac dying right then, but I remembered that it happened. I remember shit like that.
“About a year later, I’m on a job uptown. It’s this twenty-five-story situation, and, yep, there’s Teddy and the team—bigger crew now—and they’re running their usual program. And don’t you know it: The wet vac dies. So, we’re finishing up one night, and I says to Teddy: ‘Why do you guys keep blowing through wet vacs on these jobs?’ He turns to me, and he says: ‘Don’t think we do.’ And that’s it. At least, for the time being, it was.
“So, Teddy’s got this friend—Bikey. This guy lives upstate. He does small to medium-sized equipment jobs. Smaller engines, hardware motors, engine fans, power packs, cords, connectors, shielding rigs, whatever. Guy used to be a messenger or some shit downtown. Now, he’s upstate and doing small-equipment repairs. Turns out, Bikey’s been part of this wet-vac thing with Teddy the whole time. Teddy buys a brand-new wet vac on credit from the dealer and runs it like normal for about two months. Then he brings the unit up to Bikey. Wet vac comes back. Wet vac dies.
“Teddy brings the broken wet vac back to the dealer. Dealer says they’ll replace the motor—their bad, how embarrassing, sorry-sorry, etcetera. No, Teddy says, he’s got a guy who can replace the motor, fine, but he wants a loaner replacement while his defective one is getting fixed. His guys gotta keep working, la tee da. Why don’t they just do it off the books and have it all work out friendly?
“In this case, the place does the deal Teddy’s way because it keeps the breakdown off the books, keeps the margin on Teddy’s purchase intact, and an off-the-record loaner means the dealership doesn’t even have to plug the broken unit into their repair queue. And if you know these guys, they fucking hate the repair queue. Every day of the year. Hate it. And so, Teddy walks out with a new wet vac on loan while the six-month unit is getting ‘fixed’ by Bikey upstate.
“Yeah. So, upstate, Bikey pulls the brand-new loaner wet-vac motor. He plops the already-fucked-with six-month-old engine into the brand-new machine that Teddy just got on loan. And then, Teddy turns around and sells the brand-new first-day motor that Bikey yanked on the secondary market. Now, he can’t sell it for one hundred percent, but he can sell it for a decent amount. It’s a shelf-new engine, right?
“He unloads it for about seventy bucks. The original purchase price of the original wet vac—let’s say it’s a sixteen-gallon jobber at about four hundred dollars, all in. Teddy’s back up seventy on the sale, so that brings his initial investment in the original wet vac down to about three hundred thirty.
“The next thing Teddy does is wait a couple of days. Like two days. No more than three. The brand-new wet vac on loan, the one with the sabotaged motor that Bikey just swapped into it … now that breaks down because it’s running on Bikey’s deadbeat gear. So, it fries, and Teddy takes the now-dead loaner unit back to the dealer and says something like, ‘Hey, what gives, my brother; this one broke too? What kind of equipment are you selling me … dot-dot-dot?’
“At this point, the dealer is suspicious. But he’s also in kind of a bind. See, he did this sideways loaner with Teddy, and now he’s got it coming back to him as a broken unit, but it was never logged as leaving the shop in the first place. That would introduce a real fucking problem between Teddy’s dealer and Teddy’s dealer’s boss. I mean, probably. But under stress, the dealer sees it as almost for sure.
“‘So,’ Teddy says, ‘I already paid you four hundred bucks for the first wet-vac you sold me that broke after two months. Then you give me this loaner that breaks after just two days. Here’s what you’re gonna do. You’re gonna plop a new motor in this bum loaner, which was supposed to be perfectly brand new, and I’ll pay you, let’s say, a hundred bucks for the whole disaster.’ Dealer hates the squeeze, but he’s gotta say yes for two reasons: He doesn’t want the situation getting back to his boss and—this is the hilarious part—he actually wants to keep Teddy Comer’s business. He actually believes the first unit broke. It’s a real fuckin psy-op.
“Teddy walks away with the new unit, which now houses a dealer-replaced brand-new motor. And remember, he’s also walking away with the six-month-old rigged engine that the dealer returns to him when they yank it out of the ‘broken’ loaner. There’s no evidence of the swap at the dealer’s shop, and Teddy hasn’t got any reason to complain about the wet vacs he got sold.
“Teddy brings the brand-new unit with the brand-new motor back up to Bikey. The dude yanks and sells the brand-new engine for another seventy bucks. Now Teddy’s cut his original investment on the first vac to about two sixty. Account for the hundred bucks he just laid down for the brand-new loaner vac he just bought, and his total investment, minus the recoup already on those two sold motor returns, comes to about three hundred sixty dollars. Forty short of his original wet-vac purchase. It’s like he bought the first damned unit for three hundred sixty bucks, not four hundred!
“That’s not bad, but Teddy ain’t done yet. Bikey puts the six-month-old, messed-with engine in the new wet-vac housing, and they sell the whole thing as new for about market price, maybe like three-ninety all told. And that means Teddy Comer just made a thirty-dollar profit on that first four hundred he spent. He comes out at four thirty! The only thing left to do is find a different dealer and start the whole racket again.
“Anyways, Teddy eventually got caught, but I saw it all go down. And Teddy Comer loved that scheme, man. He really loved it. To the point it was almost touching, you know? He said it never really made him much cash, only about thirty or forty bucks at a time, but he said it paid him ‘phantom dividends.’”
— Willard Fink’s Oral History of Unusual Crime, “Teddy Comer,” ed. Fink, Hollis, and Scrum (Forced Light Press, 2022)
Gentle reader: A note of celebration; EUNS turns one today.
For the past year, this little adventure has paid its share of phantom dividends to be sure. “Phantom,” meaning the non-monetary kind, the kind that fills up the old soul-account.
That’s been (more than) enough. But it’s maybe not quite enough, or so the accountant tells EUNS, which is part of why—as of today, which is this lil’ newsletter’s first anniversary—Everything Is Useless And Nothing Is Solved is introducing paid subscription tiers.
Every article will remain free for all to read, as always, and then here’s how to get even more EUNS:
$5/month — Access to EUNS TV, a new video series launching June 3. Exclusive to paid subscribers.
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$150 founding membership [10-member limit] — EUNS TV + mug + a signed, personalized copy of the EUNS 2025 Yearbook, shipping this month, and available nowhere else at this time.
And so, if you, gentle reader, have been reading this thing and you think it’s worth something, now’s your chance to make it official.
Here’s the link (and below the link, a peek at the EUNS mug and EUNS yearbook):
