Be very careful if you are looking for funding for your project & are dealing with Clarkson Investments who supposedly have offices in England & Poland. They appear to just want a small upfront fee ($900 or so) & then make a ridiculous claim that after you pay the upfront fee that they will fund your project in just 5-6 days. I must be fair though & say that even though they seem very shady i didnt pay them any money so i didnt actually get ripped off by them But here is my story & then you can judge for yourself if you think they are legitimate.
I am a loan consultant who has many clients looking for funding for their projects. I posted 1 of my clients project on a website. My clients project was a $15 million project to purchase land to build a manufacturing plant to produce a high end super healthy salad dressing to market. It is a good concept & project but the business plan isnt so great.
Anyway 3 weeks ago i got an E-mail from Ray Clarkson who is the president of Clarkson Ventures. I wrote back to him asking him questions such as are they direct lenders & what are the fees. I also asked him if he would protect my fee that i am charging the client into the loan. He told me they are the ones who write the check & the fee is only $900. He also said that he would lock in my fee & pay me another $1000 -$2000 fee for any project that i bring him that he funds. He then asked me to send the business plan and info for the $15 mill project.
4 -5 days later he wrote to me saying that he apologizes for the delay in getting back to me & that his funding department approved this project & he wanted more info about my client such as my clients name, address bank info & project type. Right away that raised a couple of red flags because for 1 it takes most legitimate funders more then 4-5 days to review a $15 Mill project so his apologizing for taking so long to review it doesn't make any sense.
Plus he wouldn't have asked about the project type if he actually read the business plan he would have known the answer to that. So if he didn't know what type of project it was then how can he approve it. Plus my client only gave a PO box as his address & no legitimate funder would accept just a PO box as an address. Any legitimate funder would also want a physical street address of either the Clients home or office.
Mr. Clarkson thanked me for sending the requested info from my client & said he would be sending over a funding mandate soon & that once i received it to please send $900 right away since time is of the essence because his company only has a short list of projects that they are going to fund by the end of the year. Most legitmate funders first send over a term sheet or pre approval before they send over a funding mandate or commitment letter.
So i wrote back to him asking him questions like what are the terms & conditions of the investment & what is the interest rate, repayment terms, how much equity his company would take in my clients project & what other fees are there besides the $900 fee for "diligence" He didn't really address my questions other then that there will be no other fees besides $900 & then he asked me to send over my phone number & my fax number so he can fax me the funding mandate.
Then a couple of days later on a Sunday at 7pm my time he actually called me from Poland. He said it was real early in the morning there & just wanted to touch base with me since time was of the essence & he wanted to let me know that as soon as he got into his office he will be sending the funding mandate & payment instructions. It was a bad phone connection (prob because he was using a pre paid cell phone) so i asked a couple of questions & then thanked him for the call.
Then at a little after midnight my time (prob 8am or so his time) he called me again & told me to check my fax since he just sent the funding mandate & to check my E-mail since he just sent the payment instructions. I told him that i did receive both.in his payment instructions he included a link to western unions website & told me that i should just wire the money my self to save time.
On the phone he again stressed how urgent it was for him to receive the $900 in 48 hours or the file would be closed. He stressed how that once he receives the $900 he will then wire the $15 million to my client in 5-6 business days. I then asked him what are the terms of the loan & he said once the $900 is paid then he will get with the client to finalize all that. He then said he would not only pay me $2000 when this project gets funded he would then also pay me back the $900 if i pay it right away. He then asked me if i could go onto the internet to the western union website & pay the $900 right now. I told him it was late here. Then he asked if i could pay it as soon as i woke up & i told him i will see.
No legitimate lender is that pressed for $900. So that raised another red flag. Plus the president of an investment firm wouldn't be calling me himself (especially not at 2 or 3 am his time) to chase $900 & he wouldnt send the funding mandate & payment instructions himself. That's what his staff is for. Plus his funding mandate was 1 page & very generic & it basically said that the $900 fee had to be paid in 48 hours & then once the fee was paid the funds would be wired with in 5-6 business days. No legitimate investor that i know of is going to wire $15 million in 5-6 days after just reviewing a business plan for 3-4 days, with out doing due diligence to make sure that this project is viable & so on. Plus the 2 phone numbers listed at the bottom of his funding mandate didn't have the same amount of digits. One either had to many numbers or the other didn't have enough. That was very unprofessional.
Anyway the next morning i did some research & looked at his website. His website doesn't look professional. It looks very amateurish & like someone threw it together in 15 minutes. Plus the 1 link in his website to a clients website that he supposedly funded looked worse. That website looked like it was done by a 12 year old. Plus on his website he listed 2 phone numbers for his England office & listed his Poland office as his main branch but had no phone number.
When i tried to call the 2 numbers listed on the website i got the recorded message from the operator saying "this number is not available/not in service now so please try again later. I then called the international operator & had her look up their phone number & Clarkson Investments had no number listed in Poland or England. I gave her the 2 numbers listed on the website & she said they were cell phones. So he is probably using prepaid cell phones since they are practically untraceable.
From somebody who said that he was contaced my Clarkson Investments & wanted to know if they were legit. He was contacted by someone named Mark Roy though & not by Mr. Clarkson himself. That is all i could find so i didnt find anybody who claims that they were actually ripped off by them.
Anyway after i did my research i wrote back to Mr. Clarkson & told him my concerns & also told him to go to the young entrepreneur website to see what is being said about him. My main concern was that i dont know of any real investor who would basically blindly wire $15 million in 5-6 days with out doing their proper due diligence to make sure this is a viable project. Most investors would want to do a site visit to examine the property that my client wants to build the plant on, & would want some sort of appraisal on the land & would want to see a purchase contract to see that my client actually has a contract to buy that property. Plus they may want some sort of feasibility study on the project. All that takes way more time then a 1 week or so review of a business plan & then another 5-6 business days after receiving $900.
Show me an investor who quickly invests in many projects with out taking the time to do due diligence then i will show you an investor who will soon be broke. So i asked how he could agree to wire $15 mill with out doing the proper Due diligence. I also asked him what the $900 was for & why does he need $900 if he can really fund this in 5-6 days. $900 barely even cover the cost of international phone calls & comes no where even close to covering the cost of the wiring fees to wire $15 Million internationally. Plus i asked him how can he agree to wire that money with out even presenting any term sheet to show the interest rate & so on in order to make sure the client agrees to his terms. I then raised the phone number issue. I also raised the issue about what i saw on the
He then wrote back to me saying how he appreciates my response & so on. Then he explained that Mark Roy doesnt work for him firm & is just a fraud who is trying to say he works for Clarkson just to take umoney from clients. That may or may not be true but i wouodnt be suprised if Mr. Clarkson also uses the name of Mark Roy as an alias. He then gave me a new number to contact him & i am guessing its probably another cell phone.
However he didn't even address the issue about the phone numbers on his website not being valid. Plus he didn't even address the issue of how he can agree to wire $15 million in 5 days with out taking the proper time to do the due diligence. He said some BS about he rather show me what he can do then explain things & about sometimes taking a chance & so on. He also said that if a client pays a small fee then it would show he is committed. How does only $900 show that a client is committed for a $15 Million project. Plus if i pay the fee then how does that show my clients commitment.
He then said to earn my trust he would reduce the fee down to $600 & then once he wires the money i could pay him the remaining $300. This all made no sense because if he was really going to wire the money then he would just take the $300 out of the $1000 or so he said he would pay me for sending him the deal. Plus if he can reduce the fee down by 1/3 then why cant he wave it for the first deal if he really wanted to fund this deal. I am sure he is reducing the fee to show that he is willing to work with me but its been my experience that when someone reduces the fee like that are just trying to get what ever they can from you.
I wrote back to him & told him that he still didn't address a few issues & that before i send any money for my client i would need to have a working office number & not a cell phone, plus i would need to know how he could wire $15 mill in 6 days with out taking the proper time for due diligence. I also said i would need to know the terms of the loan to make sure my client even agrees to them or there is no point in paying for them.
Since he said he wanted to prove himself to be by lowering the fee & showing what he can do i then offered him a proposal. I asked him if he could wave the fee completely for this 1st deal since he already just reduced the fee by 1/3. I told him that if he waves the fee & then funds this deal then i would be happy to send him projects from my other clients & that i would make sure his $900 fee got paid for all the projects he approved.
That was 3 days ago & i havent heard from him since then & i dont expect to hear from him again, since he now probably realizes that i am on tohim & that i am not going to pay him any money upfront & that i know how the funding process works & that i know that nobody is going to wire $15 Million to a client in just 5-6 days.
So that's my story. Plus think about this. What real investor has the time to search the internet looking for projects to fund. Most legitimate investors/lenders are to busy to search the internet for projects to fund. Plus most legitimate / investors are have so many burrowers & brokers bringing them funding request that they dont need to search out for projects. Plus most investors dont want projects that are listed on the internet because those projects are being shopped around.
Also i dont know of any president of any Investment firm that has the time to personally E-mail people to solicit for new projects to fund. So you wont get any responses from direct investors The only responses you will get from posting a project is from scam artists or other brokers. However some of the brokers who respond might be legitimate & might really know some real funders & might really be able to help someone find funding.
So that's why i think this might be a scam to get money. If he takes $900 for 1000 people then he just made $90,000. Most scam artists ask for relatively small amounts because they know it would cost the borrower more in time & legal fees to go after them then it would just to right it off as a loss.
So i advise anybody who is in contact with Calrkson investments to proceed with extreme caution & question them thoroughly before sending them any money.
If anybody is dealing with them then please feel free to contact me with any questions & i will be happy to discuss my experiences with them further.
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