One of the business proprietors ("Sean, " though that is not his real name) has been squeezing money out of a senior citizen to support this business. He has told this senior citizen that he needs the money for Flowers By Sean, but he has had the senior citizen make the checks out to him personally instead of the business. "Sean" then takes the checks to the senior citizen's bank and gets cash directly, rather than depositing the checks into his business account. There is no valid reason to do this in a business that I can think of; it looks to me like he is trying to hide the source of the money for his business—assuming he's even using it for that. It also makes it hard to file for repayment as a creditor, which he presumably knew.
"Sean" has also lied repeatedly in oral discussions with me about the status of his business. He told me it was a million dollar business, and that this senior citizen would be repaid by a certain date. He failed to make that date, or any other, and has defaulted on at least $13,000 in loans so far. When he told me he had filed for bankruptcy, he said all the assets were already gone. However, when I called his lawyer, the lawyer said that bankruptcy had not been filed yet so there was no case number. When I left the lawyer a message saying that I was concerned "Sean" had not listed this senior citizen's debts in his papers, and that I needed the case number to find out what was true, the lawyer never returned my phone call, or any other one after that.
Now "Sean" is trying to get more money out of this senior citizen, who has memory problems, and I am doing what I can to protect him. But "Sean" is very slippery and has tried to circumvent these protections. I am doing what I can about this, but it is important that people know the truth before dealing with him any more.
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