I am not sure scamming Costco is a sacrifice, haha.

What I dont know is, what all could go wrong, and how could I, or someone, be scammed or ripped off in one of these types of deals?

I've been devoting most of my free time learning as much as I can in general business and real estate. 

I am really devoted to learn all I can this year and build the connections needed to make a good investment next year.

Any scary scam story about private lending out there .......

I do feel if I hadn’t devoted a larger percentage to real estate these past two years I wouldn’t be about half way to attaining financial freedom.

E.g. see the top trending discussion right now re: a turnkey scam - only possible when people take operators at face value...

We both have some time outside of our primary careers, which we devote to real estate investing.

If you don't need the income, the just devote all the net cash flow to paying down the properties more quickly - you'd be surprised how quickly that snowball builds up and how quickly you can have free and clear properties under your belt. 

The only thing I'd do differently is devote more time to this deal (and maybe let some other deals go) when I was going through everything.