MBF Leasing
Fraudulent Lease Scams Non-Profit Spiritual Organization

Our story is like many others involving MBF Leasing/Northern Leasing. But in this case, the victim was a non-profit organization, the Association for Reaearch and Enlightenment of NY (A.R.E. Of NY). And ultimately, I'm being victimized personally

I've recently retired as Director of A.R.E. Of NY, but was serving as Director on an unsalaried VOLUNTEER basis at the time of our unfortunate involvement with MBF Leasing.

A.R.E. Of NY is a small non-profit organization based on the work of the American mystic, Edgar Cayce. Since we had a limited budget for salaries, I was multitasking, doing, as best I could, the jobs of several people - not such an uncommon situation in small non-profits.

A.R.E. Of NY was approached by Justin Muntean, who wanted to sell us credit card merchant services. He was extremely friendly and personable and claimed his company could save us a great deal of money. He said he worked for Fifth Third Bank, a bank in the midwest. We'd never heard of it and it sounded strange to us, but we looked it up on the Internet and it turned out to be a legitimate organization

I signed what I understood to be a one page application, mostly for the purpose of checking our credit. I understood that I was APPLYING as the personal guarantor. Justin Muntean said I should just sign the application and he would fill out the details. That was on May 17.

There was no mention of any specific time frame for the service, and the monthly amount we were to be charged was $70 or $71. There was no mention of a company called MBF Leasing.

Generally, our Office Manager handled these matters, but she, too, was multitasking and a bit overwhelmed. After some months our Office Manager switched us to a different Merchant Services company, which offered real savings (there were no savings with MBF) but neglected to cancel the service with what turned out to be MBF Leasing.

Although we were no longer using their swiping machines, MBF leasing continued to deduct a monthly amount that turned out to be $149.99 from our bank account.

When I realized we were still paying MBF Leasing, I called them to cancel their service on Feb. 28. I sent them a letter to cancel the service on March 3.By that time, we had paid MBF over $5000 for machines worth no more than $400.

We received back from MBF a copy of a four page non-cancelable lease for swiping machines running for 48 months. This was the first time I personally saw the contract.' It did have what looked like my signature on it, but it contained inaccurate information about myself and our organization.

We cancelled permission for MBF leasing to make withdrawals from our bank account.

Harassing letters and phone calls from MBF started. Representatives of MBF called the A.R.E. NY Office and my home multiple times each day and sent repeated letters with threats to ruin my personal credit and that of the organization and to take us to court.

We returned their machines in person (MBF is only a few blocks away from ARE NY) on 4/9/08, although we had already paid MBF leasing many times the worth of the machines.

The harassing phone calls continued. There were also numerous phone calls followed by hangups and other phone calls where no-one spoke but someone played music on the line.

They started focusing on threats to take me personally to court and they finally did send a summons. They are suing me personally for $2099.86. We just had our first court date with them yesterday, in Civil court in Manhattan. I was representing myself. MBF was represented by counsel.

A date was set for the trial, September 9th.

I will not willingly pay this racketeering, criminal company anything, but we're now in the court system and will have to see how this plays out.

Company: MBF Leasing
Country: USA
State: New York
City: New York
Address: 132 West 31st Street
Phone: 2124578598

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