Structured Settlements 4Real™ Blog: Structured Settlements | Settlement Planning News and Commentary

Woodbridge Structured Funding v Sovereign Funding Group and David Springer Update

One of the lawsuits seeking justice over the parasitic webuypayments.net re-direct scheme that plagued structured settlement search results last year swings back into action this week. This is a notable litigation for structured settlement industry stakeholders in the primary and secondary market, as many were affected by the re-direct scheme and are currently affected by a similar re-direct scheme that surfaced in February 2012 .

Woodbridge alleged in its November 28, 2011 complaint that Sovereign Funding has not been content with simply using its own name and webuypayments.net to promote its services. Instead, upon information and belief, Sovereign Funding embarked on a campaign and scheme to both misappropriate the marks of and malign its competitors through a re-direct scheme that drove traffic to webuypayments.net (i.e. Sovereign Funding).

According to the civil complaint filed against David Springer and Sovereign Funding in the United States District Court for the District of Maryland, Defendants David Springer and Sovereign Funding are alleged to have committed:

1. Trademark Infringement
2. False Advertisement
3. Unfair Competition and False Designation of Origin
4. Common Law Trade Libel
5. Product Disparagement
6. Common Law Defamation

The other lawsuit was filed against the same Defendants by JG Wentworth in Maryland State Court in October 2011. The parties to that lawsuit executed a Joint Stipulaton of Dismissal With Prejudice on March 2, 2012.

Woodbridge alleged that David Springer, Sovereign Funding and persons acting with them have engaged and continue to engage in infringing, wrongful, deceptive, defamatory and unfair conduct with respct to Woodbridge and others (such as Novation Capital, Stone Street Capital) and sought to cover up his conduct and to mislead people investigating the company's practices.

If the lawsuit moves to the next stage, the Battle Royal on discovery should be interesting. If you have a PACER account the case documents can be accessed easily.

The legal departments of companies such as Pacific Life and MetLife and many other structured settlement stakeholders  who were affected by the webuypayments re-direct scheme (and are affected by the freedom1stfunding.com re-direct scheme) will find the legal documents interesting.

Kathryn Sias. the person who is behind the Sovereign Funding commercials and SEO was apparently fired yesterday according to a notification I received.

The thing is that the webuypayments.net re-direct scheme appears have begun prior to the hiring of Kathryn Sias and o-Assist.

Previous blog posts concerning the business practices Sovereign Funding Group and David Springer

 

Manufacturing Fake Complaints: One of John Darer's Defamers is Getting Desperate

4structures.com, LLC wants to do the best for the parties who ask us to help them and use our services.  Our business is interactive.  We ask questions, listen to the responses and then formulate solutions based on the depth and breadth of experience. Customer satisfaction is extremely important to us. We want our customers to be happy.

As we close in on one of John Darer's defamers the perpetrator is getting very desperate. Tonight the defamer submitted complaints on both Pissed Consumer.com and Rip Off Report. The joke is on the submitter of the fake complaints, and the operators of the websites Ripoff Report.com and Pissedconsumer.com, because both posts were precisely the same word for word, were both submitted within minutes of each other on May 8, 2012, from "people" of different sexes, separated by 3,000 miles. (2,000 or so of which is ocean ). 

Download Fake Complaint on Pissed Consumer May 8 2012 re 4structures.com Paris France

It is worth noting that Pissed Consumer profits off the fake complaint and has no fewer than 7 in-line advertising key word links in the fake complaint about our company. 

Download Fake Complaint on Ripoff Report _ 4structures May 8 2012 Providence Rhode Island

The People's Credit Bureau  states here "Do NOT be deceived by anything you read about any company listed on RipOffReport.com. Odds are good that it was written by RipOffReport.com's founder ... Ed Magedson..., and is, in all probability, an attempt to extort money from companies he has targeted". Also useful reading  " The Anatomy of a Rip Off Report Lawsuit,  by Sarah Bird

Here's the fake pissed consumer's profile from "Paris France".

Download Mainemail131322 Profile - 4structures @ Pissed Consumer Fake Consumer May 8 2012

The story told is similar to a fake complaint that appeared on a website anonymously registered on February 8, 2012 in Nassau, Bahamas and April 10, 2012 switched to a Panama registration, a country that does not subscribe to the Hague Service Convention and hosts in Malaysia. The places to go if you have something serious to hide.

The nature of our work is such that 4structures.com, LLC has open communication with its clients. Our real customers freely communicate with us. Had a real customer of ours expressed concerns those concerns would be dealt with promptly.

4structures.com, LLC is has been an accredited member of the Better Business Bureau since 2004 and holds its highest rated of A+.  4structures.com, LLC has had no complaints registered with the BBB since its establishment.

Neither 4structures.com, LLC nor its President John D. Darer, have received notice of any consumer complaints from any state insurance commissioner since they have been active.

Two statements I am proud of

"Thank you for being a strong advocate for integrity in our business" by an industry colleague and competitor from Florida

"You are a man of character and integrity, and I greatly appreciate your work". by an ELNY annuitant May 8, 2012.

4structures® is a Registered Trade Mark of 4structures.com, LLC Reg.2720815

More informaton on 4structures.com, LLC

Biography of 4structures.com, LLC President John Darer™ 

Sovereign Funding Group SEO Expert Kathryn Sias Fired?

In breaking news, I've received notice today that Sovereign Funding Group SEO Expert Kathryn Sias of o-Assist has been fired. Sias was in charge of Marketing and Search Engine Optimation for Sovereign Funding Group,which is based in Mt. Airy , MD.

The big question is why?

Stay tuned.

 

With All Due Respect to ELNY Annuity Victims -2

It has to be the hardest on those who were minors, like one of my readers, Jennifer, who did not make personal decisions to place their future with Executive Life Insurance Company of New York. Decisions were made for them by parents, guardians or their lawyers.

Despite it perhaps being beyond statutes of limitations,  ELNY annuity victims who were minors at the time of settlement can at least take some solace in having an accurate story of what happened recorded in the history books. This has been what has been driving my inquest for the last several years. There are lessons to be learned by others.

But one must also consider this reality. The structured settlement itself was not the problem, the insurance company was. If a plaintiff did not do a structured settlement, or used the cash portion of a settlement and placed it in a single bank and that bank failed,  just as hundreds did  during the recent 2008-2009 financial crisis, and 1,500+ did from 1990-1993 during the savings and loan crisis of that period they might have been worse off. The current FDIC limit is $250,000 per depositor. Between 1980 and October 3, 2008, when President George W. Bush signed into law the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (subsequently made permanent by "Dodd-Frank"), the limit was only $100,000.

According to a 1992 article in Business Economics by R. Charles Moyer and Robert E. Larny (published only a few years after then minor ELNY payees' structures were established)  "Legally the FDIC has an obligation to protect depositors up to the limits of deposit insurance. Since the passage of the Garn-St. Germain Act in 1982, the FDIC has had the authority to use "purchase and assumption" transactions as an alternative to liquidation, if the former has a lower cost. Over the ten-year period ending in 1989, the FDIC actually protected 99.7 percent of all deposit liabilities for failed banks.(6) Thus the FDIC has provided nearly 100 percent deposit insurance coverage. The primary exceptions to this rule have been large (over $100,000) depositors in smaller banks". (emphasis added)

Statutory prohibitions by insurance regulators on insurance agents discussing statutory protections with prospective insurance purchasers may be part of the problem. The ban is designed to mitigate the possibility that an insurance agent encourages an annuity or insurance purchaser to patronize a financially weak company (where they otherwise would not) because of statutory protection. Yet would a consumer opt put all his or her (or his or her ward's ) eggs in one basket if such information could be made known at the time of sale?   The State of New York is particularly stiff on this. I personally sought and received several published opinion letters from the New York Department of Financial Services (then  New York Insurance Department) Office of General Counsel in 2008-2010 on various scenarios relating to the subject.

 

With All Due Respect to ELNY Victims...

After years and months of empathy for ELNY victims which has not abated, in which I have given them a voice, I think it is important to say this regardless of the torrent of responses to follow. 

I can only imagine that it is not easy to put things in perspective when you are facing shortfalls that some ELNY annuitants are facing and the impact of those shortfalls on your future. But from a 10,000 foot perspective, one of the things that gets lost in the ELNY Liquidation discussions is that for 25-30 years ALL ELNY annuitants received 100% of what was a grossly unreasonable annuity amount to begin with. 

But for the incompetence of regulators who permitted ELNY under-priced annuities to be sold to the public, was the ELNY annuity even in the mix of settlement of personal injury cases. 

Those who benefited for over a quarter of a century

1. Annuitants for 25-30 years
2. Insurers and Defendants who relied on and negotiated on the basis of payments generated by the gross under pricing who bought and held the annuities. Had the product been priced more in line with the prevailing structured annuity market the Defendants and Insurers in those cases might have incurred a higher exit price from the litigation.
   
3. Insurers and Defendants who did not buy and hold
   

As annuitants, ELNY victims have every right to expect that what was contracted for is paid.

Yet had the ELNY annuities been properly priced to begin with,  we might not be having this discussion.

The result may have been:

1. A solvent ELNY
2. Lower payouts to begin with
3. More prudent planning would have been the order of the day. There would have been less of an urge to put all the money in one basket.

Other life insurance companies that sold structured settlement annuities during the time period that ELNY was active, are over a century old , still writing new business and have been paying their annuitants. Some of those same companies made it through two world wars, The Great Depression and other panics. Those same insurance companies made it through the 2008-2009 financial crisis when big brokerages and investment banks like Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns and hundreds of banks failed.

All other things being equal, a business that prices responsibly and maintains reasonble contingency reserves,  will be in business a long time. A business that doesn't will not. There are plenty of case studies in all sectors of the business world.

If ELNY victims wish to examine the specific transactions that gave rise to the structured settlements they have been receiving, including an examination of any sales literature used, copies of illustrations etc., nature of negotiations, copies of correspondence, whether pricing and financial comparisons were done,  whether pricing was ever questioned by victim's lawyers, executors, adminstrators or guardians etc., then let's have at it. It will make a compelling story. But let's make an accurate portrayal together.

An ELNY annuitant and client of one of my industry colleagues on the West Coast understands this and realizes , as was related to me last Fall, that he or she got significantly more for the last 25 years than he or she would have received otherwise.

As much as you hurt about what has happened to you (that again I too am disgusted about), I am  extremely proud to be able to represent what is good about structured settlements and the structured settlement and settlement planning industry. I am proud to have the skill, mental strength and intestinal fortitude, along with others, to push for increasing standards of education and ethics, regardless of the consequences. There is alot of good being done EVERY DAY all over the country by structured settlement consultants and settlement planners.

I hope you will try to put things in perspective so that we can educate current and future injury victims in a constructive way.

 

"Sias... Ain't So" Bloopers for "Plantiffs" by o-Assist for Sovereign Funding Group

A Sovereign Funding Group "flapper" holds up cue cards in a faux silent movie. I have to go "Mary Picky-ford" because one of the flapper flipping cue cards proclaims that Sovereign offers "Conveniant No Risk Services". The video was produced by o-Assist for Sovereign Funding Group and posted on settlemenow YouTube channel October 1, 2011. The voice of o-Assist is Kathryn Sias, a "little old country girl from St. Louis" who resides in Port Richey, Florida.

I also discovered these bloopers on Arcadia/ St.Louis Examiner.com:

"Only 150 miles south in Arcadia / St. Louis consumers beware. Because of an up-swing in personal injury claims and awards, structured settlements became warrented in the 1970's." Kathryn Sias Oassist.com, for Sovereign Funding Group on Examiner.com January 14, 2012

Comment: Why should consumers in 2012 beware of the 1970s?  Unless of course thats a veiled reference to some of the o-Assist produced commericals (for Sovereign Funding), a/k/a "The Six Million Dollar Ham".

Blooper: The news of the 70's quickly spread to news of the 80's, 90's and now current news.

Comment: Fluffernutter please! 

<----John Cleese demonstrates a popular "silly walk" from the 1970s

Blooper "When a case is won, a company who can't pay the settlement in full may opt for a structured settlement or annuity paid out in periodic payments and over time". Kathryn Sias Oassist.com, for Sovereign Funding Group on Examiner.com January 14, 2012

Comment: Just as "there's no crying in baseball", there's no 2-for-1 sale in structured settlements! Periodic payments means "over time," thus no need to be redundant Kitty Kat. Very few companies "can't pay the settlement". Most structured settlements are the result of a compromise where the plaintiff has elected to receive periodic payments. But then again, Kat Sias says in the article "It's not the really current news we're after, although there is plenty"

Blooper "Because of the amount of claims settled, the IRS implemented laws and implemented regulation, both Federal and State regulations became effective. The structured settlements industry has not been out of the news since".

Comments: The IRS implements Federal tax law. To wit "The IRS is organized to carry out the responsibilities of the secretary of the Treasury under section 7801 of the Internal Revenue Code. The secretary has full authority to administer and enforce the internal revenue laws and has the power to create an agency to enforce these laws. The IRS was created based on this legislative grant". Section 7803 of the Internal Revenue Code provides for the appointment of a commissioner of Internal Revenue to administer and supervise the execution and application of the internal revenue laws. Source IRS.gov

The IRS DOES NOT administer or regulate state taxes.

"If a consumer is forced to sell a structured settlement or annuity then there are those who may purposly take advantage of the consumers bad situation". Kathryn Sias o-Assist.com for Sovereign Funding Group, as posted on Examiner.com May 6, 2012, first published  January 14, 2012

Comment:  Spell check please!

Concluding Remarks

This example demonstrates AGAIN, why simply hiring an SEO firm to write articles can backfire on you if the writer is not a qualified expert on the subject. Kathryn Sias may be qualified to do SEO but in my opinion, as a credentialed structured settlement expert, based on what has been placed on display by o-Assist and Sovereign Funding, she and her team don't know jack about structured settlements.

If cash now pushers like Sovereign Funding Group would simply pay a little more attention to the quality of information they publish, including spelling and sentence construction, they would do consumers, themselves and the industry a world of good. The information is out there. Laziness is no excuse.

For further reference "Rebuttle" to Structured Settlement Companies Sovereign Funding SEO Expert March 2, 2012

Why People Take Structured Settlements: Safety, Security and Guarantees

Structured settlements appeal to people who want safety, security and guarantees.  The tax benefits of structured settlements are almost secondary. This video explains.

 

          

If you're looking for "Fast Money", but cannot tolerate risk of loss, play Family Feud® on Facebook. It's fun and less potentially damaging to your finances.

Family Feud® is a registered trademark of FremantleMedia Operatons BV Corporation

Freedom1stFunding.com Re-Direct Scheme Walls Closing In?

Poor Linda Hughes should not have had to consider removing her website because she received a cease and desist letter from one of the factoring big boys in a case of mistaken identity. Since mid February Ms. Hughes, who runs a legitimate small factoring company in the Northwest, FreedomFirst Funding.com  (that does some structured settlements). has suffered because the folks behind Freedom1stFundng.com, believed to be fringe players in the structured settlement factoring business, have operated in a deceptive, egregious manner that creates the initial interest confusion.

The method of operation of the Freedom1stFunding scheme picks up where the WeBuyPayments.net scheme left off in the fall.  The latter was allegedly the work of David Springer, 46, of Mt. Airy, MD and his company Sovereign Funding Group. who are now Defendants in two Maryland  lawsuits. Whereas the WebuyPayments.net scheme used Domains By Proxy a US based privacy service associated with GoDaddy, the Freedom1st Funding.com website is registered in Nobby Beach Australia (above)  using a privacy service to evade detection.  The Whois record for Freedom1stFunding.com states that all postal mails will be rejected Download Freedom1stfunding whois The Freedom1stfunding.com site has no address or phone number.

To protect yourself against fraud  we have strongly warned against consumers filling out any forms with personal information at any website that bears the characteristics of no address, no phone number, private domain registration. Don't even thank twice if all of the above apply with an offshore registration.

That being said, I spoke with someone this afternoon who has a voice recording of someone who called in response to filing out a form on Freedom1st Funding.com. According to our source, the caller used a made up name,  but with voice that seems to match someone known in the factoring industry who became rattled when questioned, according to our source.

We'll see how this plays out, but the end of the tunnel is nearing which means a cure to the structured settlement industry "parasite".

Image source: Beach wiki.com

Genex Capital and Settlement Quotes, LLC: Shopping or Window Dressing?

Settlement Quotes, LLC has long advertised that it offers structured settlement sellers the opportunity to shop multiple companies in an effort to get the best price.  I like the idea of a factoring auction, but I believe that something has changed. 

On February 22, 2012 a concerned independent researcher tipped us off that the address for Settlement Quotes, LLC and Genex Capital are one and the same, 75 Bette Drive Manchester, CT 06040, a private residence address. This is consistent with one of the 5 addresses the Better Business Bureau report for Genex Capital pulled up today May 4, 2012.

The Better Business Bureau Listing for "Stuctured Settlement Quotes" shows Roger Proctor of Genex Capital as Sales Contact, but a business called "Structured Settlement Quotes" IS NOT listed as as registered to do business in the State of Connecticut.

Download CT Public Inquiry for Business called Structured Settlement Quotes

Our source expressed concern about the level of independence of "shopping around" when Genex Capital has an office at the same location as Settlement Quotes, LLC. Indeed the Genex Capital website suggests you should shop around at structuredsettlement-quotes.com the website of Settlement Quotes, LLC.

Recently an industry colleague related the details of a recent conversation he had with Genex Capital CEO,  Roger Proctor, in which Proctor was alleged to have said something about the bidding process that, if true, would throw what is being advertised into doubt. Settlement Quotes, LLC recently advertised that it added a new funder to its stable without naming it. While I like the idea of a factoring, there needs to be transparency to maintain confidence in the process.

Settlement Quotes, LLC is not publicly transparent about its funding sources or its relationship with Genex Capital. Therefore we call on Settlement Quotes, LLC and Roger Proctor, in his capacity as CEO of Genex Capital and as sales contact, to be transparent about their business relationship.

Download Settlement Quotes LLC Genex Capital Is It Really Shopping?

The Structured Settlement Watchdog™ thanks the "Concerned Indpendent Researcher" for the "bone". 

A note on anonymity to the concerned researcher. You may want to close your other browser windows when making a screen shot. Why does the world need to know that you are one of millions who banks with Chase online, have health insurance with CIGNA, have  Google Adwords account, a Reach Local account, listen to WFAN for your sports and enjoy listening to tunes on Radio.com? I'm just sayin'...

Way Not To Impress When Submitting a Writing Sample to The Editor

If you're seeking a writing job, shouldn't you proof read before you send? Here's an excerpt from an email I received from "Jonathan" at A1securedloans:

"This is Jonathan, I went through your blog (structuredsettlements)
while surfing in Google, am very Much impressed with your site's
unique information's.

I work as a content writer in many financial communities and love the
Opportunity to guest post for your readers. I would like to give you a
Unique article on any finance related topics.

No duplication or copying of the article is done. I assure you that the
article will be published only on your site.

The best part is I won?t be charging you a penny, but in return all I need
is just one link within the article".

Any of my readers who feel the urge to "get out the red pen"  should feel free to add comments.

Needless to say Jonathan won't be hired. The company domain associated with Jonathan's email is registered anonymously. Our current business practice is to avoid doing business where the owner of the domain cannot be immediately verified.