First off, I just want to let you all know that Liberty Financial Advisors is a real company. They are real people. You can call them on the phone and talk to them, you can send them emails, and you can send them faxes. They even answer the phones, send emails in response and fax paper work back to you. However, that is where the legitimacy of this company stops, and the ripoff begins.
You see, my wife and I were looking to take out a $5000 loan to help us move out of our home and into a new place. I've had to recently file bankruptcy because we were being foreclosed on by the mortgage company after my wife had to leave work due to being disabled, and I was laid off back in February. So we started to search the internet for companies that we could possible take out a loan with. We came across Liberty Financial Advisors, and my wife put in an application with them.
After a few weeks of being turned down by companies because of credit scores, or current debt, and other random reasons, we finally received a response from LFA stating that she had been approved. She immediately started to work with the person who was handling her application, a guy named Evan, on securing the loan. The first few phone calls were very rocky and frustrating to say the least. I even spoke to a gentleman who claimed that he was the head honcho, and he wanted to give me a speech about how sorry he was that I was poor and didn't own anything worth while. Which of course, I gave him a few choice words, and then hung up on him. After all of this finally calmed down, my wife worked everything out with Evan. They told us that they required one of two things to secure the loan: Collateral, which had to be a 2006 model or newer car worth at least $60,000, and it had to be paid off, free and clear, or we had to pay insurance fees of $750.
Evan faxed us the loan documents and my wife filled them out and sent them back as soon as we had acquired the funds that they were asking for. She waited about an hour, and then called Evan to make sure that he had received her email containing the completed documents. He stated that he had received them, and that everything was good to go and that she needed to contact their "Wiring Department" in order to set up our payment to secure the loan. After trying to contact that department usuccessfully for a few days, my wife realized that she had received an email stating that the email she sent to Evan had never gone through and was actually sent back to her. Now, we've had this problem in the past where an email was actually received by the intended party, yet we received an email saying that it had not gone through as it was supposed to. So, we pretty much just ignored that email.
Well, the proverbial Sh*t hit the fan this afternoon. She was finally able to get the lady with the Wiring Department on the phone, and she identified herself as Barbara. Barbara informed my wife that we needed to go to Wal-Mart and send a Money Gram to a chick named Cindy Mills, who is in Richmond, Ontario, Canada and when the money was received, the loan would be transferred to our bank account. My wife questioned this, and informed Barbara that this kind of practice is illegal, not only a federal level, but according tot he Illinois Attorney General as well. Barbara simply responded by telling her to decide what she was going to do about the loan and then call her back.
Since that time, which was only a little bit ago, I have looked the company up on the BBB, which I had done once before, however they are not BBB accredited so I cannot contact the BBB about them. I did, however, send an email to the Illinois Attorney General, and I'm going to send one soon to the North Carolina Attorney General, because I live in well, yeah, North Carolina.
I warn you all, this company is not what it seems. They will use every tactic known to man, and then some, in order to get you to follow through with remitting payment to them to secure a loan. I caution you though, do not go through with it. Having somebody send or wire money to Canada to secure a loan is illegal. It is also illegal to ask a person to pay any kind of fees, or give any kind of collateral, up front, in order to secure a loan.
0 comments