I had done several internet searches looking for financial institutions that would offer a personal loan to someone with bad credit. Several days later I recieved a phone call from a Peter Marshall from Bellwood Financial group telling me he had good news for me, that he had a lender who wanted to offer me a $5000.00 loan at 6% for 36 months @ $ 151.94 per month. He told me that since my credit was bad and I was not using a co-signer they were going to require 6 months of payments put down for collateral. This would be applied to the loan amount and I would not have to make a payment for 6 months.
He faxed a contract over for me to sign and then gave me the instructions regarding sending the cash by wire transfer to Canada. He told me to use Money gram at Walmart and to send it to a Linda Kirkwood in Selkirk, Canada. I was to call him with the reference number after I had wired the money. I did this on Monday, Sept. 29th, expecting the money to be direct deposited into my account within 24 hours.
On Tuesday, Sept. 30th I recieved a phone call from Stewart Macky telling me that there was a slight problem. The lender went to purchase insurance for the loan and because of my credit status they were going to require another 6 months worth of payments which again would be applied to the loan balance and then I did not have to start making payments for a year. I foolishly wired the cash again to Linda Kirkwood in Canada thru Money gram on Friday, Oct. 3rd. I found out thru the Money Gram phone number that the money was recieved on Sat., Oct 4th.
On Monday, Oct. 6th I recieved yet another phone call from Howard Bennett telling me that the lender had backed out and that I could either get a refund or they had another lender that was willing to give me a $10.000.00 loan for additional money down. I told him I wanted the refund and he told me it would not be available until Oct. 31st because of the lenders billing cycle. He told me the lender was not cooperating with them and they had their legal office looking into it, he could not tell me why the lender had backed out because they had not recieved a disclosure yet but he did fax me a refund statement.
I am a single mother and this was all the money I had. I was so happy that I was getting a loan and going to be able to finally catch-up that I never even stopped to think how shady this all was. I hope this information will help prevent this kind of fraud in the future.
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