Citiwide Lending Group is a fairly new name for this bogus company, they used to operate as Nationwide Financing, and Greentree Financing and they all did the same thing which was sell bogus leads to insurance agents, mortgage brokers, real estate agents and who knows what other industries.
What happens is they call and say they are Citi Group and want to work exclusively with an insurance agent in your town and want you to provide home insurance for their clients. They told us that they will send us the appraisal, clients info, loan info, etc.; I mean this is an insurance agents perfect lead program, WRONG! On top of that they said their clients have a minimum of a 700 credit score, and no loan is under a $100,000. And on top of that they said if you don't sell the policy, for whatever reason, they credit you back, so you can't lose. And you get all this for $12.00 per lead.
Here's the first clue to me this was a scam and it was with their web page. Http://www.citiwidegroup.net. I mean if this was a legit company, as big as they claim to be, they would not be using (.net) it would be (.com). It took the sales rep 3 tries to give me the right web page.
Also, when I asked if they were the actual mortgage company they said yes. I even asked the person calling me if she was a mortgage broker and she said yes. When I asked her how long has she been licensed she said for years. She also told me she was in Delaware and did loans there, come to find out they are not even approved to be a lender in Delaware, California, or any other state.
In my investigation I called the State of Delaware where they claimed was their home office and have been there for years. They were incorporated on 2-25, the Delaware file # is: 4659536. The Registered Agent for them, which from what I understand is only necessary because they are not physically in the state, is called: New Castle Management & Consulting, LLC and it said their physical address is 85 Liborio Lane, New Castle, DE 19720. I looked the address up and its either a Chinese restraunt, a hardware store, or (what I really suspect) a Post Office. New Castle Management is a shell company and used for their physical address the post offices address.
I also found help wanted ads in California where Citigroup and Nationwide Financing were hiring people to solicit to insurance companies, and when I read the ad to the lady calling me she got really quiet and put her manager on.
I said what it looks like to me is that you are using nationally recognized names like CitiGroup, Nationwide, Greentree, etc and are playing off of them to defraud people in giving you their bank info. Get this, and by the way I recorded the whole phone conversation; he said I was right! He said they do that so they can have brand recognition too, I said, but its not your brand! He then told me I was entitled to my opinion and hung up.
I hope no one else gets taken by these people, but beware they will just change their name again. I suggest to any sales person if a company is trying to sale you a lead program and they don't believe in their own leads enough to allow you to try them for a few days or give you 5-10 leads without requiring you to give them your credit card or bank info then you shouldn't believe in the lead program either.
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