Victim of Advance-Fee Loan Scam

Here is our story of advance-fee loan scam. This all started when my husband decided to look for a personal loan online. He found the website for Capital Venture Investments and applied online via their website. On 12/10/08, Nancy Rosen, a loan representative for Capital Venture Investments called him and told him he was pre-approved for a loan in the amount of $20,000. What she didn't tell him was they would need money upfront. So he tells me about this and I look them up on the BBB and a few ripoff/scam websites. I found nothing on them. So I called Nancy Rosen wanting some information about the company, she tells me since my husband is the one that was approved she needs his permission to speak to me. He calls her and gives her the go-ahead...I call her back and voice my concerns over not being able to find a single thing about them on the web other than their website. She proceeds to get hostile over my questions..I told her we had a near-miss a few years ago with being scammed and I was afraid it would happen again. She told me Capital Venture Investments has been in business X-amount of years (can't remember the exact amount) and they've never had a problem with anyone. She stated they were a loan brokerage firm therefore they did not have to register with the BBB and such. So after the phone call between myself and Nancy, my husband decided to have them email him the contract. So on 12/15/08, Nancy Rosen emailed the contract, we printed it and looked it over. I saw they needed a collateral payment of $1,089.99. So my husband used a good portion of his paycheck to wire the money via moneygram to a William R. McCullock in Halifax, Nova Scotia on 12/22/08. Nancy then called my husband back and told him they need an additional $1,089.99 transfered to cover the cost of insurance on the loan as per Mr. McCullock. So I called her back, I was puzzled as to why we had to wire money to Canada when Capital Venture was located in New York. She told me that Mr. McCullock was our "angel investor" (http://www.angel-investor-network.com) and he lived in Nova Scotia. We only had $500 of the required amount so she told me to go ahead and wire that to them. So I wired the money via moneygram on 12/23/08. I then called Nancy with the reference numbers and she told me she would call me back within 10 mins. to confirm the transfer and confirm that infact the $20,000 did transfer to our account. Well the phone call never came. I called her multiple times and she has yet to return a phone call, I've emailed with no results.

Now since this has all happened, their original website: http://www.caventureinv.com has been taken down for fradulent activities and has been replaced by: http://www.caventureinvonline.com. Their address is listed as: 315 Pearl Street, New York, New York, 10038 which doesn't exist. Other contact information is: 866-834-5349 (ext: 330 - Nancy Rosen's extension) 866-228-9633, 866-465-6922, 866-653-4484 which are fax numbers.

On it - M

Hi there
I am not sure I understand your story. Are you saying that you actually had the loan amount deposited into your account?

I am new here, Hopefully someone with some experience will reply to help you.
If the amount deposited by these scam lender into your account was by cheque it is probably a fake. I have learned from this site that cheques can be cleared and then drawn on only to find weeks later that the cheque was fake and the money will disappear from your account.

Have you reported this to fraud agencies and internet watchdogs in your country?

Maybe the best you can do to get them back is bait them. If you are interested go to 419 Eater and request a mentor.

Sad to hear you were so cleverly scammed even after doing some of your own checking. These lads best skills are in confidence cons and addressing their victims suspicions.

Please post if anything comes of it.

Cheers

Astrid

Hi, blueyedmom, and welcome to Scamwarners.

This seems to be a well-organized group of scammers. They set up a website and phone numbers, nab some victims and go through the initial transfers of "collateral" with them, and then close down the site and phone numbers, only to open up new ones in different names. There are several threads on this site about these scammers.

You have given the scammers some personal information, including your bank account. Please take the necessary steps to protect yourself from identity theft and further criminal activity on their part.

This thread - Cedarbrook Lending contains information about who to report this to, and how to protect yourself.

As you can see, you are not alone here. If you have questions, please feel free to ask them, and someone will be happy to assist you.

I am not sure I understand your story. Are you saying that you actually had the loan amount deposited into your account?
No, there was no money deposited into our account. My husband even put the bank we deal with on the lookout for a wire transfer since this happened right before Christmas. He thought that maybe the money was floating around somewhere. The bank has also put an investigative team on this.

Have you reported this to fraud agencies and internet watchdogs in your country? Yes, I've filed multiple reports with different agencies, some have responded some haven't.

Thanks much for your suggestions, I've noted them in the file I've begun keeping all my papers in regarding this. I'll keep everyone posted.

Good evening Holly, yes, unfortunately they are very good at what they are doing. I'm in the process of trying to cover our butts to put it nicely as far as identity theft goes..lol. Thanks for the thread link, I'll definitely check that out.

Hi Blueyedmom. I'm sorry to hear that you're a victim to this scam. As you can see by the thread Holly has posted, or by reading the forum, you're definitely not alone.

Please do read the other threads for information. Please be thorough in your efforts to combat the identity theft by this group of scammers. There is some very good information on the FTC website here: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/microsites/idtheft/

Let us know if you have any questions.

Hi blue.

I'm sorry to hear of your situation.

Could you please post the websites you were directed to. All I need is the URL.

We have the ability to have them taken down. This could prevent others from becoming victims to this scam.

Thanks for your willingness to discuss this.

Always,
B. A. Ware

Their new website is: http://www.caventureinvonline.com. The old website was already taken down. There is another website that is on our contract for the National Angel Organization Angel Investor Network. I've looked it up a few times and it is still up but for some reason just doesn't look right to me..I could be completely off base or just extremely wary of these types of websites..so if anyone could give me any input at all I'd appreciate it. The website is: http://www.angel-investor-network.com

I have gotten responses from some of the Canadian Officials I emailed. They all said basically the same thing..they would refer my complaint to phonebusters. One even told me I should've thought twice about sending that much money to Canada!!

Jillian, thanks so much for the link to the FTC website...I added it to my ever-growing list.

I'm getting a "404" on http://www.caventureinvonline.com but I didn't do it. I'll keep an eye on it for a while.

Oh wow...I tried it too and got the same message. So does that mean the site is no longer available?

@ Blue. Yes. Someone probably reported it as a fraud and the site host zapped it.

That's good news! Whoo Hoo!!

@ Blue. Yes. Someone probably reported it as a fraud and the site host zapped it.

That is not necessarily true. They have probably taken it down themselves as they probably were starting to look suspicious and they did not want one of the government agencies to catch them. For the most part the shelf-life of these sights are 6 weeks maximum. I was scammed by CedarBrook Lending in October. They contacted me on October 20th, I sent them the money on October 31st and after I found out it was a scam, I was supposed to get my money back on November 22nd, I called their so-called offices on November 17th and that was when I started getting hang ups. By noon on November the site was down. No one has been zapping these sites as I have been working with other people because this is a very big network you are dealing with, one site going down is not going to hurt them. They just move on to the next.

They change their names, they change their sites but the game remains the same.

I keep in contact with another person who was scammed by the same people we were..he went to his local police department and has an investigator working on his case. Long story short the investigator found the registrar information by contacting whoever was the websites host/domain..they gave him the information for the guy..so I guess his police dept. is now really working at getting these people. I don't know if that will benefit anyone else who was scammed or not. All I know is I'm very frustrated by the whole thing