Our Company, Hobbit Distributing, Inc.
In Feb we were approached by a representative Of Norvergence Inc, promising our small business a method of reducing our communication costs by 20-30% annually over the next 5 years by employing new, proprietary technology employing their "Matrix" box.
Their letterhead had Nortel Networks, IBM, Sun Microsystems, Cisco Systems, and Lucent along the top as though they were affiliated, (when in fact, it was part of the scam to give us confidence that even though we had not heard of Norvergence, we had heard of the preceeding).
We finally, after two months of providing all our long distance telephone bills, cellular telephone bills, and internet costs were "approved" for the "Matrix" system. The device was installed on 4/27/04, but nothing was ever attached to it (we were supposed to get a T-1 line also). We received a ltr dated 4-30-04 from Popular Leasing stating that within 60 days we would be paying our rental agreement payments to Popular Leasing a division of Banco Popular, out of Puerto Rico.
We made several attempts weekly to find out when we were going to be fully installed so we could start saving all this money (in our case over $250.00 a month), but all we ever got was stalls and promises.
In June we were billed by Popular Leasing for our system and when I explained that we didn't yet have a system, they said in effect, it wasn't their problem and when would we be sending in our check. I told them that since we didn't have any of the promised services (just a box hanging on our warehouse wall) we wouldn't be paying anything.
We discovered in July that Norvergence was forced into Bankruptcy by Popular, OFC Capital (another leasing Co.) and Partners Equity Capital (another leasing Co.), while they were in negotiations with Qwest (they knew all the people who did get service would stop paying their leases if their service stopped).
Since then we have discovered over 11,000 small businesses, not for profit, and churches were caught up in this Ponzi scheme. We have been sued by Popular in Missouri, even though we were current with our payments, so we had to retain an attorney in Missouri to represent us there.
The FTC has filed suit against Norvergence, the scam is being investigated by the F.B.I., and suits have been filed against Norvergence and the leasing cos (43 in total) by the attorney generals of New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Florida, etc.
3 of the leasing co's have settled so far with GE Capital actually agreeing to reimburse their scammed customers, agreeing that it was fraudulent.
Popular Leasing continues its litigation as of this date.
So far it has cost our company over $10,000.00 for nothing.
What A Rip-Off.
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