Wichita, Providence, Houston, St. Louis and more, oh my! They have been coming fast and furious as of late, business owners about to lose everything, and always because they fell in with the still unregulated MCA, Merchant Cash Advance Industry.
It was nice to see that the Congress and the Attorney General from the State of New York are finally getting involved. Congress wants to ban COJs, Confession of Judgments, as part of a new Fair Business Act, and the Attorney General has already subpoenaed one of the worst bottom feeders, Yellowstone, in an attempt to look into the shenanigans that have been destroying small businesses throughout the country with reckless disregard for the last decade or so.
Of course it will still be a while, years, before any real regulation, and these few first attempts are quite blind as to what these “legal loan sharks” as we call them, are actually doing, but at least it is a start.
We’ve been busy! Wow have we been busy! We decided after our Spokane lesson not to use our own money to help folks, an expensive lesson for sure, that we should perhaps finally stop picking and choosing the businesses that are referred to us and actually put out a bit of advertising to see just what is out there for folks desperately seeking assistance. We posted some craigslist ads, which you can’t beat at $5 per posting for 30 days, for our services, and the response has been through the roof.
Although most of them are small, under 100k owed, we have been helping as many as we can, and most of them for free, by assessing their situation, educating them about the industry, and providing them with their options forward for their situation. Of course when they insist on hiring us we try to talk them out of it by telling them we would be glad to consult them and / or their attorney for an hourly rate rather than a weekly fee for us to use a LPOA, Limited Power of Attorney, to handle their situation for them.
As an example, we were recently approached by restaurant owners who within the last year were on TV as part of one of Chef Gordon Ramsey’s shows helping restaurants. They were in deep debt, several hundred thousand, but went further lately with a couple of MCA loans that have now really got their backs against the wall. We spoke with them a few times, reviewed all their documentation, and then conference called with them and their attorney handling their situation, and after of course having to educate their attorney, they have insisted on hiring us. lol
Of course we are still sort of stuck with having to stay in the vicinity of Washington State for a bit longer, but we’re doing the best we can with it. We need to be near enough due to our filing in court to attempt to at least get some of our money back from our lesson learned in Spokane. Although we probably won’t get any of our money back at least there will be a record of our attempt and the truth will be on record to counter the slander that we stole their money and we were the addict. lol Oh well, lesson learned, when drugs are involved, especially opiates, walk away, don’t waste our time trying to help them.
Of course the RV isn’t real happy with the weather either, and after moving around a bit we have managed to find several good hotels within range of the court and we have been hopping about, staying close enough but on the move, just in case the real addicts, who are now in tons of trouble, thought of doing anything stupid. Safety and security first! As long as less than an hour from court we’re good, and although not happy to be back in hotel rooms while our RV is parked always close and visible to the security cameras on site, it should only be for a few months at the most and we’ll be back on the road, certainly headed for warmer weather. We even had to purchase some warm weather clothes, since we left all ours back in NH long ago when we thought we were not returning to cold weather and would just drive to warmer weather whenever the temps dropped. Oh well…
Everything else is awesome of course, we love helping folks and love fighting bad guys!
Our long term clients are happy and doing good, their situations all well under control throughout the processes involved, whatever they may be. We even picked up a client referred to us by a client we’ve been working with for some time.
Our son went back to NH for the Holidays but is now back in Colorado working again as a lineman apprentice. He’s young and making good money so his hardest job is to stay out of trouble. lol We speak regularly, and he’s a good kid, but we remind him that he is young and men don’t grow up until about 30 so he needs to be aware of the obstacles that might hold him down and back and keep them in mind as best he can so he can avoid as much trouble as he can while still having fun and finding out who and what he is forward. At 18, almost 19, and making good money at a job he enjoys, all he really needs to do is stay alive! lol
Our mother, bless her heart, is still in Florida for the winter but says this is the last year she will be there and that when she returns to Maine in the spring she is going to stay there from now on. She’s getting up there, she’ll be 77 this year, but still doing fabulous health wise. She speaks of perhaps finally needing reading glasses! lol
Fun, fun, fun, that’s all we have, and we are always well.
Peace