On November 30, Company Funds, Inc. Called my business address to offer grant assistance to small businesses. I told them that I didn't think my company would be interested; however, I personally was involved with a community theatre who was considering making a move to our own facility and we could use some assistance in grant money. Candy Baum got on the phone and asked a lot of pertinent questions about our financial situation, etc. I didn't give her any account numbers or anything that would identify our company. I asked that she fax me information about her company and she said she would. She said that Company Funds, Inc. Was the "middleman" who found investors who wanted to grant money from President Obama's stimulus package to small businesses to stimulate the economy. I told her that we were a totally volunteer, non-profit, tax exempt corporation and did not hire anyone. So, we wouldn't be stimulating the economy by offering jobs per se. She said that it didn't matter—our corporation sounded just like the kind of company that large businesses would want to help. She did say that about 80% of the businesses that applied for these grants were turned down.
I asked what the fee for this service was and she said $7,000, but only if we were approved for the grant. I told her that I was the treasurer of the corporation but that I would have to take this proposal to our board of directors on Monday, December 7th, and I wouldn't have any answer until after that meeting.
The next day, December 1, I was called by a man from Company Funds, Inc. (didn't give me his name), and he said right off the bat that we were approved for $112,000. I told him that I was still waiting for the fax to come from Candy Baum and that I couldn't make any decision until our board meeting on December 7th. He said he would call on December 8th to get our answer.
When I got home that evening, I had a voice mail message waiting for me from Company Funds, Inc., asking me to call them back about our grant that had been approved. I called them back right away and AGAIN reminded them that I couldn't make any decision until December 7th, and I asked that they not call me again until after December 7th.
The next day, December2, Candy Baum called again and asked if we had gotten the okay to go ahead with the grant. I reminded her for the third time that I still hadn't gotten anything from her via fax that I could take to our board meeting, and to please stop calling me. I told her that I had received a call the day before from a man in her company who told me that we had been approved for $112,000. I told her that I didn't know her company at all, she didn't know me, and how would the money change hands? How did I know when, and if, we sent our check for $7,000, that we would indeed receive $112,000 in the mail? And, if they were going to send us the money first, how did they know that we would indeed come through with our $7,000? She waffled and said that I could check the Secretary of State and other government agencies if I had questions. She didn't answer my question about the transfer of funds.
Within a few minutes, I did receive 11 pages of a fax giving me information about Company Funds, Inc. I sent the faxed pages to our research analyst, and within 15 minutes, he sent me back email after email of reports from people who had been scammed by this company.
I'm just glad that I didn't give out any account numbers or that I didn't just blindly send her a check without thoroughly checking out this company.
On Tuesday, December 8th, I got a call from Company Funds, Inc. Asking me if we had our board meeting and what the decision was. I told him that we had Google'd his company and found a lot of damaging reports that made our decision for us. He said that he was sorry we had used Google.com. I thanked him and hung up.
Thankfully, we did not lose any money. Just a lot of time in frustrating, annoying phone calls, and after reading the horror stories of those poor people who did lose their money to this company, I felt that I had to write my story in hopes that it will keep others from getting caught in this scam.
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