Another Bogus Email Scam
From:kevin Williams
Please reply me on this(kevinwilliamshelp@live.com)
Dearest One,
Compliement of the day, I am Kevin Williams, The only sun of late mr Williams and Mrs mary Williams. I contacted you after my praying and fasting for God’s direction in search of a honest and sincere person who will sincerely assist me in this transaction. I believe that my contact with you is not by chance but for the good will of almighty God to be done in our life. It is my pleasure to contact you for a business venture which I intend to establish in your country, Though I have not met with you before but I believe one has to risk, confiding in someone to succeed in this life.
Please and Please, Do not be embarased, I prayed for God’s direction to find a honest and truthful person in my life cause I find it difficult to find one here because of my father’s reputation as a wealthy person here before his sudden death, leaving me inheritance of fortune worth ($5. million america dollars and gold and diamond) My intension is to transfer this fund to your country for investment on a lucrative business which you will manage together with me.The fear of this money not raising eye brow here in abidjan, cote d’ ivoire, I decided to contact you, seeking for your honest and sincere assistance because I am too young to handle this transaction. I will give you more information and as soon as I hear from you.
I have decided to offer you 20% of the total amount of money as a compensation for your efforts input in this transaction, that is just for your honest and sincere assistance to me, then you handle and control the investment while i continue my eduaction there in your country and joins you in the investment as soon as i finish my education there.
I will fly to meet you there in your country for the investment and to start my new life with you after the success of this transaction, i hope to establishing a rewarding and good relationship with you. I am waiting to hear from you as soon as possible.
Thanks and God bless you as you sincerely assist me.
Best regard.
Kevin Williams
BE ON THE LOOK OUT FOR SUCH NONSENSE….THEY COME IN ALL SHAPES AND SIZES, BROKER’S ARE OFTEN THE TARGETS OF SUCH EMAIL SCAM LETTERS, HOWEVER IN THIS CASE, THE SCAMMER DIDN’T EVEN USE DISCRETION AS TO WHO HE WAS SENDING IT TO….THIS WAS RECEIVED THROUGH A FORMER CLIENT WHO OWNS AN ADULT BOOKSTORE…HUH?
GOES TO SHOW THE LENGTHS AND DESPERATION OF PEOPLE WHO ARE OUT TO HARM HONEST CITIZENS.
We’re lending direct now
In the current economic climate, it seems that commercial lenders are real skittish on lending and that comes as no surprise since the CMBS market is all but a faded memory, more high volume properties are going into default, banks are taking over projects to finish them out and retail conditions have not healed enough to spur on the growth we need to see real recovery.
While we can’t directly fund more than $1,000,000 and our funds are limited we are doing our part to fill the gap for the small business and commercial property owner. So what makes us different than other private lenders and banks?
First, our history in this business affords us multiple perspectives. We’re not just “banking industry guys” with banking industry dogma running through our veins, we’re real estate professionals who have not only bought and sold residential and commercial property, but have developed it, managed, repositioned and improved property. We’re business owners who have owned businesses outside the real estate and commercial finance industry, we’re landlords, construction workers, and of course we have been loan officers and realtors on both the residential and commercial segments.
So what makes us a bit different but still makes our investors feel secure? Aside from understanding the industry from different perspectives, we underwrite credit differently. We don’t just look at the last 2 years, we don’t just look at the business’ credit over the last 2 years and we don’t just look at the borrower and business. We underwrite the depth of the credit, how old is is, what does the history look like and the patterns in the credit. We do take credit explanations and consider the circumstances behind credit (business and personal) as part of the real credit analysis, and we don’t put much faith in credit scoring since there are contradictions in the scoring system.
This isn’t to say that we don’t look at credit, we just look at it like it’s supposed to be…THE HISTORY. Of course someone who has a 700 score is going to give us a greater degree of security, but that doesn’t mean that the person who has a 550 score is any less secure, circumstances change the score daily.
What else makes us different. In a time of underwriting on current financials, we still take projections into the equation. Not because we are basis our Debt Service analysis on the future, but because we want to see if in a year from now the transaction will qualify for a bank loan or will be able to pay our note if the loan needs an extension.
We also look at an exit strategy, we determine how WE will get you out of our loan, instead of relying on someone else coming up with promises. Our experience as brokers gives us the opportunity to determine which lender you can qualify for because we take those underwriting qualifications into consideration during our underwriting of your loan. For example, we can help structure a transaction for a business and get them into their new property with less money down while we silmultaneously work on qualifying the transaction for an SBA loan in the next 12 months.
Still not convinced that we underwrite better than other Private Equity/Hard Money lenders? You’ll speak directly with the underwriter, you’ll get to pitch your idea, you’ll get to explain your situation, you’ll get to toss out ideas to make us more secure and sometimes those ideas will be taken into consideration. Which bank did you go to and offer them your 50 acres in Oregon and they jumped at it?
The other side of our underwriting is that we underwrite every transaction as if we are going to foreclose on it. We do devalue the property between 12 and 20 percent of the current fair market value, we do take Senior position on the property and do not allow it to be pledged to anyone else, we do look at the project as if we were going to be owning it and moving it forward, we do beat up the property to ensure that if we have to foreclose we can sell it quickly…this is where we might be tougher or softer than most banks and PE lenders…But we’ll never say not interested without first looking at the project.
As a final note, our loans can go as low as $100,000, we can also structure Factoring loans and our terms will almost always include the costs from the proceeds, with the exception of our guarantee fee.
What’s the Guarantee Fee? We have a limited dollar amount, but we have to keep underwriting files and making lending determinations, so we do go over the dollars we have available. In order for us to guarantee the funds will be available to close the loan, we charge a guarantee fee upon acceptance of the terms, which is fully refundable if we fail to fund the transaction…especially since any third party fees that aren’t taken from proceeds are paid directly by you.
In closing this blogvertisement, we want you to consider contacting us if you or your client needs a small commercial bridge loan and look forward to helping bridge the gap in this current economy.
It’s been a while but we’re freaking busy!
We haven’t posted any blogs in a while because despite the economy, we’re busy.
We’ve begun lending small commercial hard money and bridge loans so we’ve been chasing paper, underwriting and closing transactions…whew! and to add to that we are also working on the exit strategies for our borrowers so we have very little marketing and promo time, very little opinion time and this is already on top of our current negotiation contracts, loan placement and commercial real estate marketing.
Or Real Estate Director, Ms. Terry Yimin will be in FL for the month of Nov and then back in NY for the month of Dec, before traveling again in the new year. We’re looking for specific commercial property for some of our real estate clients in these two markets and are eager to hear from owners who are ready to shed their some or all of their holdings. So visit our website or reach out to us for more information on our CRE Buyers.
As for our lending side, if you have a small commercial property and are in need of a loan from $250,000 to $1MM, short term, reach out to MSlotnick@Precisionfinanceandrealtypartners to start the process of qualifying.
As the slow season approaches, well take more time out to blog about our picks for the markets, the future of lending, our opinions on the economy and several other topics that effect the consumer, investor and professionals in the CRE market.
This will be the final blog from now until January and we will not be Twittering much longer either, but don’t fret, we’re not out of business, forsaken our professional brethren or turning our backs on our clients, we’re just busy.
Thanks
Precision Finance and Realty Partners Team
EXPERTS, Experts and More Experts
Here are the facts.
There are hundreds if not thousands of “experts” predicting your market future. Some “experts” are reading the data in one direction while other are going in another, both are sending their message to the public through all kinds of media and feeding the population this data and no one is still sure what’s happening.
Here’s the real deal….
The information you are gathering to make your own real estate choices is just that, information. YOU have to be your own expert when it comes down to making your investment. For some people the data will say one thing, for others it will send you in another direction, but ultimately it has to work with your investment strategy.
You can hire, read, watch and listen to all us “experts” but who the hell determined we were experts? We’re smart, we all know our business, some of us went on to become doctors in the fields of finance, some have been in real estate so long that they are older than the dirt their selling, but that does not mean that their advice will fit your strategy.
We here at Precision believe that we know our “shit” as one client put it to us. We try is all we can say and we’re pretty anal about each transaction, but just because some client said our poo doesn’t stink, doesn’t mean that we are an expert for everyone and every project.
Why would we say such a thing? Because we realists, we know that sometimes our vision, data and information may not be in line with a client’s data. We’ve addressed this most recently with a project that was presented to us for funding.
The client was insistent that his comparable data would be supportive in an underwrite. We told him it wouldn’t, he argued the fact, because other projects he did in DIFFERENT REGIONS (MARKETS) were supposedly successfully underwritten with similar data. Well we confirmed that our lenders would not underwrite his data as supportive…but the reality is that the project otherwise made sense, just the data supporting the rents and final costs would have to be changed to reflect the current market data. So, we’re not experts for this client, despite our due diligence and verifications.
In fact, there may be a lender out there that would underwrite the project using the client’s data, but just not our lenders.
In the opposite direction we’ve been with a client for almost 2 years attempting to work through issues that have consistently held up the process and now we are taking final steps to navigate around these issues to ultimately resolve the problem and put funding in place. These clients feel that we’re experts because we keep working on solving the issues along the way and trying to resolve these issues to finalize the transaction.
The point is that not everyone is an expert to everyone, the only person that can make a final determination, whether right or wrong is the client. Data is strictly that…data to be used to make educated and informed choices for you and your specific project. Most of us are well informed consultants and it is our experience that provides us the ability to see transactions close
We can guide you with your project and it is up to you to determine whether or not our guidance is going to work for you, listening to any expert is not going to make you rich or successful, we guide you, read the data and formulate an educated opinion of our own based on the combined information of your project and the market data…ultimately you finalize the outcome and whether good or bad, the choice is yours.
Are we experts? No, we are advisors, consultants and professionals that understand the information we are analyzing…it’s up to the client to wake up and realize that they need to leave ego or timidness at the door and make clear cut determinations for their project based on the consultants opinions, options, offers and reading of the data.
Then again, you can just hire us to put the project in motion…we’ll tell you whether or not you have a dog project or a good project before we every get involved.
Government backed loans
They don’t stop and start with Small Business Administration.
While the SBA offers some great products for business and commercial real estate owners, there still are other government backed programs that commercial developers, farmers, industrialists and other business owners can benefit from.
We have added several lenders to our vendor line that specialize not just in SBA, but in other government backed products for income producing property, manufacturing and farms, and we’re not done yet.
We’re currently working to find lenders that underwrite energy loans utilizing government backed programs, however don’t look for us to come on line with that for another couple of months.
LTVs under these various programs range from 5% down to as much as 20% down, and rates can start in the low 3% range and go to 9% depending on the program, lender and insured product.
We’re proud to still be here as other commercial professionals have moved on, closed their doors or have given up on our industry due to these hard economic times. Working with these government backed programs not only gives us faith in accomplishing the American dream, but it gives our clients, new and old, faith that their projects will see funding.
Visit us on the web at www.precisionfinanceandrealtypartners.com or contact Eric Allen at ericallen@precisionfinanceandrealtypartners.com
Visiting Bergen County New Jersey today – 8/18/09
My partner and I will be spending the afternoon visiting with Realtors throughout the Bergen County, NJ area, discussing how to increase revenues by utilizing government backed mortgages for small commercial real estate.
USDA, HUD and SBA backed programs allow for you to list and sell small commercial property to the anyone who wants to own small commercial and obtain the funding they need to close the deal.
Government backed loans cover various property types from owner occupied to rentals at loan amounts as low as $300,000 and minimum unit count starting at 5.
If you want us to stop by today or would like us to visit your office and present products to your staff, give us a call…we’ll be on the road today so call us at 203-273-1258. We may be near your office and would like to meet you.
With the Fed announcing that lending will be tight over the next year, you need to find alternative means of creating revenue, we’re commercial funding professionals, and unlike many mortgage brokers, we understand the real estate markets because we’re commercial realtors too.
So give us a call if your a Bergen County Realtor who would like us to swing by today and say HI…
Have a profitable day!
Only you can prevent wasted time.
Below is the text from our website, specifically our Submission Process Page. We thought that it might be a good idea for this to appear on our blog, not just as an advertisement, but because there is a key point that runs through the process.
YOU!
Not just us, but any professional you engage can only go as fast as the data you provide, only move as fast as you respond to requests and only do their professional best if you give them the tools they need to do their job.
While the below information is directly for Precision Finance and Realty Partners, it does resonate throughout the real estate industry. Realtors are not going to be able to market your apartment complex if you don’t provide them the information needed, they are also not going to be able to put a qualified buyer on deck if the buyer fails to be qualified.
The rule holds for any professional…if your architect is waiting for you to obtain an approval from the city and it is YOU who has taken on the responsibility of presenting and obtain the permit from the building department, then you cannot expect your architect to move forward if he/she doesn’t have what they need to move forward.
One of the toughest issues we face as financial consultants and brokers is lack of information, often because the principal has failed to maintain that information or has not found the time to provide it, we will be addressing this in a separate blog sometime in the near future. In the meantime, below is our submission process protocol and in it is a lesson for all applicants and professionals…Be timely because you are responsible for your project/property.
Submitting your funding request is easy with Precision Finance and Realty Partners. It is a several step process that will tell you if you and your project are qualified for one of our lenders/investors programs within 48 hours (or less).
Initial Review: Phone Interview and Application, Email of Business Plan – The initial review is the first stage. We take your funding application over the phone, ask that you email us your executive summary or business plan, review your request and the data and match your project with one of our investor/lender’s criteria.
If there is a match then we will notify you via email or phone and email or fax you the document checklist and broker disclosures, so you can provide us with the documents the lender will need to begin the funding process.
If your request doesn’t fall into any investor/lender parameters then we will notify you and tell you why the request could not be met. If we cannot place your request you will not pay an engagement fee or need to provide any documentation.
Step 2: Review of file, collection of data, final qualification, initial submission to lenders and packaging – Once we receive the documents and the engagement fee, we will begin to process your file and package it according to the investor/lender’s submission requirements. The file will then be sent (provided it is complete) to all lenders, in our pipeline, that offer loan and investment programs that meet your needs.
Step 3: Formal Submission and LOI stage – processing of the file once you’ve accepted a term sheet from the lender. We will co-ordinate and help you through the underwriting process.
Step 4: Underwriting – Once we’ve obtained the commitment from the lender, we will continue to co-ordinate and process the file until it is cleared to close.
Step 5: Closing – Again Precision will co-ordinate with the lender’s closing department or agent, your closing agent and you and process the necessary information and documents needed by all parties.
The time it takes from initial review to closing depends on several factors, how much time it takes you to compile the necessary documentation, the type of project you are requesting fund for, how complete your file is for underwriting, the lender’s case load, and third party services.
We cannot control the speed of the lender and the third party services, we can only move as fast as you provide the information. The initial step will take no more than 48 hours, after this step the collection of information is up to you and if you have all the necessary data. If you don’t and you do not inform us of your dilemma or fail to provide the data you have, then the process drags on, we will not chase you.
Once we are officially engaged and you’ve provided as much of the information as possible, we will work with you to fill in those gaps before a formal submission to the lender, again, we can only move as fast as you respond. If you fail to provide documentation and fail to pay our engagement fee, then we will not process or submit your file, no exceptions.
If your project is not ready for funding and you have been met with denial after denial, it may not be the broker or banks you’re engaging, it may be your project doesn’t make fiscal sense enough in this economy to take a risk on. You may not need placement services, but rather a consultant to revamp your project to make it more palatable to a lender/investor. We can provide those services under our consulting contract and have your file prepared to meet interested lender/investor criteria. Please check out our consulting service.
The Onus Is On You If You Get Scammed
We’ve been in this business through 2 decades of real estate and banking change, we’ve seen micro and macro market effects, been here for changes in the way things are done and attempted to implement our own changes. The one thing that is consistent in these market ebbs and flows is…FRAUD.
We’ve seen the Ponzi schemes reported in the news, the federal investigations into real estate and mortgage fraud, the political back room deals for illegal permits and a whole slew of finance and real estate scams displayed all over the internet, and despite these constant reminders of less than credible people selling bridges, there are so many people who continue to want to buy these bridges.
We’ve all scene the NIGERIAN PRINCESS letter spammed to our email boxes, telling us a sob story of how help is needed to release money and get it out of the country…how your help will give you a piece of the lost fortune, all you have to do is open an account in a foreign country and deposit some money. Then you forward the information to the good princess so she can deposit her riches, the scammer takes your deposits and you lose. Of course as time has passed most people mark the email as junk or spam and move on, well aware that these emails are hard scams that cost a few good people far too much.
Then there is the bank letterhead email attachments, more often than not Barclay’s is the targeted bank and choice of the scamsters. Bank letterhead is not to hard to obtain and names of bank officers are just as easy to get, banks have little or no immunity to the fraudulent letter being written. Generally these false letters are passed through the industry as opposed to the public, the would be letter holder passes the letter to an unsuspecting broker and supposedly proves that they have $10MM in an off shore Barclay’s account. Those who are often unaware or new to the business take the letter as legit and run off to find a private investor to lend against the letter, then the scamster signs off on the deal and runs with the investor’s money, leaving them with a worthless piece of paper.
These are only two of the more widely known scams that pervade our industry, the usual targets are the new or naive brokers who are just trying to make it in a tough industry. The seasoned vets know that the minute they see something like this, whether presented by a credible source or not, that they need to do their due diligence and verifications.
The latest scam that has come to our table is a cold hard identity theft scam, which is not so easy to do any basic due diligence on, because the identity stolen is very well known and very credible…searching the web will not yield you any scam results at first blush, you have to dig.
In this scam a well known Middle Eastern Engineer, Khaled M. Al-Seif or El-Seif sends you an email claiming to have found you through one of the very credible professional networking sites, such as Viadeo or Linked In. The email is suspect out of the gate for those who have an idea of investing protocols and simple common sense, but the idea of the email is to hook someone in, via excitement and hope…just like all other scams.
Once you correspond, the good Engineer, with the obligatory blessings and thanks, informs you that their financial person will contact you…of course you have to agree to take the good Engineer’s “Family Money” and send your business plan. The way the letter is written is more directed towards people with projects who need funding, than brokers, consultants or conduits who shield clients from such scams, but if you’re a broker, you might suspect that there is a possibility that the 1% chance its real is something you do not want to dismiss right away.
So you send the bogus business plan…just to see if their is anything real here. But before you do that you send out the NDNC, just in case you need your butt protected and your dream earnings guaranteed.
After the forgery by the good Engineer on your NDNC and the lack of following any of your instructions, you are given the financial guru’s info and told to contact him to start the investment process.
Now here is how you avoid getting scammed…first you do not call them at any of the numbers they give you.
You go forth and do all your due diligence and not look for things to prove that this is legit but for things to prove that it is fake.
You call the corporate offices of the good Engineer and leave a message that you received a signed document from the Engineer and that you would like to verify the document with him…send a copy, the real Engineer Khaled M. El-Seif knows his identity and business name is being used. Make sure in the email that you allow the Engineer to opt out of contacting you, and to only contact you to verify that he did sign your document, otherwise if he did not to please forward the copy of your document to the property authorities in his jurisdiction.
Because the good scam artists that tried this with us may read this blog, I can’t tell you all the things that direct us to them being frauds, but what we can tell you is that they are not sophisticated in their scam. Despite their attempts at burying the scam behind credible names, if you have patience and do your simple due diligence through standard websearches and digging into the back pages of the search, you will yield the results you are looking for.
There are a lot of resources for proper due diligence and many dead give aways right in the scammers correspondences, again I can’t give things away, but simple reverse look-ups can be done, basic references can be asked for, bank names can be demanded…with SWIFT BICs and so on and so forth. The scammers are not going to give you information they cannot control, they are not going to provide you with third party verifiable documentation. If you get to a point where you are reviewing documentation and even if it looks like it could really be genuine, you still cannot and should not accept it at face value.
If you fail to do your due diligence, verifications and quality control, whether you are an entrepreneur or broker, the onus is on you for the loses you incur. If you don’t know how to properly approach due diligence to root out scam artists, then you would be a fool if you didn’t spend a few thousand dollars to insure against losing a few hundred thousand, or worse…a few million.
If this doesn’t bring it home for you, let me put it this way…you would spend $500 for a Doctor’s consultation regarding the possibility of Cancer, you would go out and spend another $1000 for a second consultation if you were unsure of the first doctor…all in an effort to avoid a very costly process or worse…dying. Think about that, the next time you are asked to part with hundreds of thousands of dollars just because it “LOOKS” good.
Fractured Condos
Precision Finance and Realty Partners is not only a commercial real estate and business consulting firm, we are also commercial funding conduits, brokers, professional negotiators and licensed real estate brokers.
Our Director of Real Estate, Ms. Terry Yimin has been involved in the real estate industry for 20 years and has developed and built a qualified list of buyers and investors nationwide. Currently we have the pleasure of working with a client that is seeking the following property types:
Fractured or unsold class-A condominium developments and distressed B+ or better multifamily properties.
Pricing: $2 to $100 Million in current asset value
Location: Manhattan, Brooklyn, New Jersey, Miami. Other destination cities considered primarily on the eastern seaboard
Asset Type: REO, short sale, wholesale discount, defaulted whole loans, otherwise very motivated Seller, Developer or Lender.
Our clients are serious and perform the required due diligence, they have been proofed and will act upon any projects that fit their overall investing criteria. They do not engage in bid wars, will not buy one offs and have no interest in areas outside of the criteria listed above. They are not looking for boarding houses or hospitality properties, no single family developments and eastern seaboard targets are generally coastal projects on or within 100 yards of the beachfront.
