This is a scam. "Jimmy" called a good friend of mine in Virginia who is in the builder finance division of a large bank thinking he did mortgages. He didn't really know what they were talking about and referred them to me, which is the only reason I talked to them.
"Steve Scotts" called and claimed to be the Division Manager of the marketing arm of Money Tree Funding based in CA. They only do loans in CA and CO, but they pay $250,000 a month in advertising on google to drive traffic to their site. They have leads from all over the country, so they offered exclusive TX leads to me for $35 each. They're selling the leads in an effort to recoup the enormous amount of money they spend on search engine marketing. They said leads were "double-verified". He also made a point to tell me they were not a lead company. He wanted to sell me 40 leads for $35 each, but said they normally come in 100 lead lots. He also claimed that the average closing ratios for their affiliates is 25% to 42%, which I questioned.
They were very good on the phone, and I almost fell for it, but "Steve" who I spoke with first called back the next day as "Steve" in the morning, but I was busy. He called back in the afternoon as "Daniel", but I recognized his voice and said, "I thought you were Steve?" He muttered something about maybe I spoke with Daniel earlier. That raised a red flag so I googled them while I was talking to "Steve" and saw all of the negative info.
I told "Steve" that I was reading usacomplaints.com right now and that there were 25 pages about them. He tried a rebuttal, but I told him I knew this was a scam, but that he was an excellent salesman. I kept complimenting his sales ability, told him I actually had my credit card in my hand to move forward with this, and kept joking about what a great scam it was. He finally broke down and started laughing, and said "Maybe I can come sell mortgages for you." I told him to bring some of those awesome leads he has and he laughed even more.
Luckily I researched it first.
Did he use this line on anyone else?"Look, I walk into a very nice building we own to come to work, and I want to keep doing so for a long time... So I'll [/insert b.S. Promise here]
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