As mentioned earlier I was approched by this company and Ben Parker in particular asking if I wanted to sell my business. He and a Rick a little later made the same claim that they have active buyers looking for what I do. This sounded good but he has no idea what I do and how large/small I am. After a short phone converation to get some preliminary data it was determined that they did have reason to move forward and scheduled an in-depth review of my business. All I had to do was send 4 years of tax returns to give them the backround needed for the call.
At this point I started to search for this Global Acquistion Group on the WEB and found nothing. I then used the e-mail address in hopes to track it back to a Web site and this worked. There is limited information available there but it did confirm the information that I was given but the contact tab was blank.
I then requested that they give me something that would give me a better idea what they were and how they worked. I was given an e-mail back with some reference material and was told to expect a call very soon from Rick. This reference material was pdf files from the SBA not anything to do with the company. Another document said that in order to move forward I would have to do an in depth accounting review before we even started and this would cost anywhere from $3,500 to $30,000.
Rick did call and basically covered the same ground. He does the next interview that would take a couple of hours and he had to have the financial data earlier to get prepared. He sincerely added that Ben wouldn't be doing this if they didn't have a buyer. He then went in to the accounting review that had to be done before I would get anything in return with the guarentee that it would be refunded if they couldn't provide a buyer within a year.
Then this morning I got an anominous phone call that indicated that this company may not be what I thought it was. Additionally they gave me the information that they had just changed their name from Corporate Aquisitions Group and to look them up on the web to get more details.
I did look them up and they popped right up on a standard search. I read the reviews that indicated that the business is getting these accounting contracts and then not giving buyers or refunds. Whether all of the info on this is true I do not know but it was disconcerting to say the least.
I then sent an e-mail to Ben Parker and Rick asking for clarifacation on the information that I found. He replied that he knew nothing of this company other thatn they were being confused with them. That they were in fact not even connected. He then cancelled the in-depth meeting.
Well this little lie about not knowing the other company is just not true. They are both in the exact same building and suite in Englewood Colorado. Half of the empoyees listed on both sites are the same. I find this a little hard to be coincidence.
This group is not reputable in my opinion. They appear to suckering businesses for accounting referals and can not deliver on the promise of preapproved ready to go customers for my business. I hope that warning atleast give som eothers a heads up prior to engaging with these people.
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