My mom was running a little low on funds near the holiday season so applied for a loan online. About 24 hours later she received a call from Mel Johnson out of Washington State saying he was with Cash Advance America. Mel Johnson had all of her personal inforamtion so she thought it was a legit response to her application. After coming to agreeable terms for a $2000 installment loan he stated that since her credit wasn't the best that she would need to make the first loan payment prior to getting the loan. Since she agreed with his assessment of her credit she didn't think this was odd. He then informed her that their financial portion was outsourced to the Phillapines. As most company do that now she thought this was probably true. He then informed her that it would need to be sent via Western Union so that the funds were guarenteed and that it needed to be sent to Lorna Quiroz. When she asked why an individual and not the company he said that it cost more to send to a business via Western Union. She confirmed this with the Western Union attendant so she completed the transacation. My mother was to get the funds deposited into her account within a couple hours.By the next day the funds of course had still not been deposited. She attempted to call him back and it went straight to voicemail. We tried from 3 other phone numbers wtih the same result. Finally after several messages we received a call back from someone with the same middle eastern accent proclaimining to be Mr. Johnson's manager. I told him I was her daughter and that I wanted this situation corrected or i would report him to Western Union as well as the FBI for Cyber crimes as well as international crimes as it consisted of emails, wire transfers and out of country transactions. He apologized and said that he would get it straightened out and call back within 10 minutes. That never happened. A couple more messages later, another "manager" called back again and during the middle of the conversation my mom handed me the phone. I started answering questions without telling him of the switch of persons. When I started questioning him, he said " This isn't even (mom's name) is it? It's her daughter". I asked him how he would know that if he wasn't the same person that called earlier and at that time he became irate - screaming at me that I tricked him by not tellin him who i was. I told him that he was a fraud and I was reporting it, he screamed " Are you saying I'm trying to scam you?" I answered simply "yes" he calmed down and said that he would send the $2000 plus the 247.00 she sent as well as the $10 Western Union fee but that they had tried to deposit the funds into her account but since the Western Union had her middle initial in it and her account didn't, they couldn't find her. I then told him that was false and that even if it was true he should have contacted her. He again stated that he would sent a total of $2257.00 to her account but needed her to send the first payment in her "correct" name before they could send it to her. I said then if that's the case, you send it back via western union to the same name from the Original Western Union and that he had 30 minutes before I called the FBI back and i offered him the case number. He then started screaming at me that I couldn't do this to him and then I hung up. I guess we'll see in 30 minutes what the outcome is. This operation is very convincing, you think you research enough and they had email addresses and web pages but still turned out to be false. The really sad part is that my mom is on disability and that was almost half of what she receives on a monthly basis and I read another incident with the same company that involved a parent that was now unsure how to pay their rent.
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