I was contacted via a fax advertisement looking for agents in my area to purchase home insurance leads from CitiWide Lending Group for new loans and refinance loans that they were now writing in my area.
I contacted there office and spoke to David Hume. He told me that CitiWide had recently starting mortgage loans in our area and they wanted exclusive agents to refer to for the required homeowners insurance. He assured me that I could purchase 6 $10 leads to try out his quality of leads.
I was asked to sign an agreement and fax a check for $400 to his office. The check would be used to set up future monthly automatic withdrawals of $400, the minimum amount of leads I needed to purchase. The seemed reasonable to me as if I sold 5 out of 40 monthly home leads I would at least make my money back.
The leads started to come in the following week. I contacted the first 6 that were sent to me. All of the people I spoke to were not refinancing their home or purchasing a home. No one had even heard of CitiWide Lending Group. The leads were completely false. I'm not sure how they got the names and phone #'s but it they were completely fake.
CitiWide did use my deposit check as an electronic check and cashed it for $400. I know, your thinking "stupid agent" but I did do a Google search for their company name first. I must have typed it in incorrectly because nothing turned up in my intial search.
I had to close my business checking account and start all over. This took a lot of work and some expense and lost time. I did request a refund from CitiWide Lending but heard nothing back from them.
Oddly enough a couple of weeks later someone else from CitiWide called me and asked me if I would be willing to be their exclusive agent in my local zipcodes... Funny huh!!!
Please stay away from these crooks.
Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.
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