A friendly warning!

Thanks for sharing. OMG that is terrible.

ladybug

These companies are getting ridiculous. This is the second or third incident I have read about in the forum today. I wonder how much money they are stealing from unsuspecting victims...Some people are very trusting (i.e. me until I joined this forum) and are very desperate to get out of a sticky situation. Also, these crooks are very smooth talking in some instances and some even go so far as to have valid looking websites.

There was a bogus company doing this same sort of thing out of Jamaica -- they'd get customers to believe they were going to get a $10K loan, but all they needed to do was wire $800-1000 "deposit" up-front via Western Union.

It was weird because I was getting a whole bunch of calls at my work - angry people that were PO'd at me for taking their money. I'd say "hold on a second, are you sure your trying to reach (my company)?" And then I'd have to spend 10 mins explaining how I never took their money and somehow they got scammed.

Next thing I know, I got a letter from the IL Attorney General, who was investigating a bunch of theft/deception claims from this. They sent a copy of a letter that this bogus company sent out -- and it had our logo on it!

Turns out the bogus company went to my company's website, downloaded our logo, and then started scamming people using our company's name.

I handed it over to our corporate attorney, so he could respond back to the AG. I'm not sure whatever came of it, but we never heard from the AG again.

OMG that is horrible. What will people think of next :twisted:

ladybug

Wow, that's not cool! The company I was referring to in this case had 3 addresses. One on their site directing you to a non-existant address in Ontario, fax forms addressed to Jamaica, and a whois.net domain registration in Toronto. It just SCREAMED scam!

*UPDATED* I have reported this "company" to the FTC with every phone number I have for them.

If I had the money to give them up front, I wouldn't need the loan, those dumbasses.

How horrible!! 'Second Chance Finance'......a 'second chance' at ..what?? Getting more in debt??? WOW!! Peopl will go so low!! I ahd an e-mail, this AM, about a Lottery I SUPPOSELY won. According to the letter, this lottery was out of British Columbia, and I had to "verify my winnings" with them.How..you may ask??.........By calling a certain number, they had in the letter and "verifing my bank account so a direct deposit can be made." Good grief!! Of course, i reported this e-mail to 'spam'.

they keep calling me with a woman who has a thick Indian accent that can not answer my questions. I finally broke down and asked her how they wanted the $900 deposit. As soon as the words "Western Union" came out of her mouth I began laughing.

Now another person is calling me from this company stating that he has no knowledge of this woman OR any of the fraudulent requests that she has been making and still wants to give me a $8000 loan for only $800 "insurance fee". He's supposed to be emailing me all the info first thing tomorrow. I'll keep you updated on how that turns out. ;)

When you recieved the call, were you able to gt a number ( if u have Caller ID)? "Insurance Fee?" ...good grief! People will go to 'great lengths'...won't they? If you DO have a number, this company is calling from, can you give it to me? Just curious what it is. Thanks.

Upon checking the caller ID to get that number for you I noticed that the last number that called here was from the initial woman who was demanding $900 "camille brown". My husband then informed me that the phone conversation he had with the new guy who knew nothing of this woman "chris johnson" was initiated by my husband.

The number my husband called was 1.888.718.5740, which is also on their website at secondchancegrp dot com

When he was speaking with "camille brown" he was given 2 completely different numbers to call, one of which is a cell phone number. I did a reverse phone look up for the 2 numbers given to us by "camille" and both of them came up with no reults. Also, the address the company has listed on it's site & the addresses given to us in the forms are different, but I have yet to find anything that shows these addresses as existant.

I mentioned before that I am in process of obtaining my private investigator license (only 9 lessons left out of the 24), so I am definitely a professional skeptic. We've been burned by an advance fee lender before (last year) but that was due to a classifieds ad that my hubby responded to. He was so proud of himself for obtaining this loan that he wanted to surprise me with it, so the research didn't get done. It cost us $125 plus the western union fees to learn to do the research first!

after he sent the money out, he never heard anything back. when he tried to call them back he got a machine (as he did the first time apparently) and so I did a reverse phone/address look up to find there was no results for the number and the address that the western union form had on it lead to a dead end street in texas with no homes or businesses on it, and the address itself didn't exist. (hooray for google!)

we learned a valuable lesson.. thank goodness it was less than $200 and not this $900 scam.. dirtbags.. preying on the desperate!

Two things I will say:

1) Double and triple research companies that you deal with. Stick to companies that are known!

2) Do not send money upfront for a loan!

Thanks for the advice. I do have a question about a 'reverse look-up', on Google ( if anyone can answer it). My phone number is 'Unlisted' ( not in the phone book OR directory). However.....I did a 'reverse look-up' on Google and the number came right up. How can that happen, if I have a Private number?

Well it happens because you gave your phone # to a company and they sold it to somebody. Companies love to sell email and phone databases to advertising agencies :)

[font=Arial][/font][color=Blue][/color][size=6][/size]Thank you so much for posting this information...I have just applied w/this company and they have emailed me 2 times, I have yet to respond as I wanted to do some investigating on company first (yes, have learned lesson to investigate FIRST now!!) But thank you so much for sharing your information!

One more thing to learn to do: document everything! Write down names, numbers dates, request confirmations in writing, via mail or email. It will save you lots of hassle :)

same with silverstar lending...we filled out an online app...got a approval for 70,000 dollars and they wanted a collateral payment of 3,500 on it...my husband is a very big skeptic...didnt go for it at all!

excellent ace dog.that is a scam and that is alot of money to lose.glad you didn't fall for it.