Beware of Bronlen Financial Group, LLC: A warning about Bronlen Financial Group in Arizona. Owner name, Raquib Abdullah, President.
Below is a recent experience that I have had with Bronlen Financial Group. Raquib Abdullah, President, who claims to have a large lending operation, is a one man show, who claims to be a lender but is only a broker. Raquib recently stole $40,000 from my client. I have reported him on wire fraud to all financial governing authorities. Please beware. He is slick, and I have been in the financial business for 20 years, and have never had this happen to any of my clients before. These are the things to look out for:
1. He will inform brokers that he is a direct lender. He is not!
2. He will put together a commitment and request $7500 upon a commitment.
3. He will then request huge fees for lawyers, appraisals, etc. All fees to be wired. The total fees will be no less than $40,000.00.
4. He will write commitments on projects that would be impossible to lend upon.
5. He will document that he can fund the project by a certain date.
6. Once he gets the funds he wont even order the appraisal, and if he does, he will not pay for the appraisal from the funds that were already wired to him.
7. He will come up with excuses why the appraisal was not ordered, why the appraisal has not been paid, etc.
8. He will then stop responding to the borrower and/or get real hostile towards the borrower.
9. He will attempt to steal your business from your borrowers.
10. He will go straight to your borrowers w/out your consent and request more funds to be wired for odd reasons.
11. Once you question his motives, he will not return phone calls and send back your NDNA agreement all crossed out and terminate your working relationship.
12. He will send a denial letter with statements that don’t make any sense if he already had all the financial documentation prior before issuing the commitment.
13. He will state in his denial letter that he will return all unused funds and then stop returning calls and emails and of course not return the funds as stated in the letter.
14. He will then turn the blame on the referring broker and tell the borrower to get the funds back from them for referring them to Bronlen Financial Group (BFG), even though it is BFG that is in receipt of the funds.
Everything I have stated above is true and correct. I can get affidavits from my borrower and my referring broker to justify my report.
The reason I am so aware of how he operates his company is that he asked me to start underwriting his commercial loans when I referred him my client. After I discussed a few different loans with him, and questioned him on whether he had a warehouse line of credit, I realized that he did not have funds and that he was nothing more than a broker. A lender must have their own warehouse line, or they can not call themselves a lender, nor are they legally able to issue commitments. Raquib would quote fantastic rates on his commitments getting the borrowers excited and then state he was getting participating funds from a hedge fund overseas. When I would ask him for proof of funds he got real defensive with me. I then politely told him, that I was going to focus on my own loans from my own business and that he would have to find someone else to underwrite his loans. Meanwhile, we were still working on the loan that I referred to him. I asked him to send proof that the appraiser was paid, and gave him a specific date to respond by. The borrower and other broker had already requested proof of payment numerous times and Raquib started getting hostile with both of them. After my final request of proof of payment, he terminated our NDNA Agreement and said it was no longer valid and that I could not contact the client that the client was now his.
Raquib Abdullah is a scam artist. He states that he is a very religious man who practices Muslim. He claims to be affiliated with a lot of different affiliations. The associations gave me false comfort. He ultimately scammed my client who happens to be an attorney. My client is in the process of suing him.
Many brokers are desperate in this economic climate and will stop at nothing to make a quick buck, whether it means going to prison or not. I will do everything in my power to help the authorities convict him. It is my duty as a fellow mortgage broker to protect our fragile community and keep the scam artists out of our business which are making it very tough for anyone to trust anyone and close loans. I urge all other mortgage brokers do the same to keep our business clean.
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