Scammed by "Estate Legal"

[Scott Johnson]

Unless someone can prove otherwise, I’m fairly certain I was just scammed out of $3,400 by a supposed “Lead Provider.” I’m sharing my story so everyone can be aware and hopefully avoid the same experience.

I received a call from one of my ads that targets probate clients. The caller, William Silva, claimed to be a salesperson for a company called “Estate Legal.” He seemed legitimate at first, and I even had a few friends look over the materials he provided. Everything checked out.

They claimed that Estate Legal helps people through the probate process—especially those with a living will or those who’ve moved into a nursing home and need to sell their house. Supposedly, they connect sellers with brokers and homebuyers in each market. They also stated they only allow three brokers and three cash homebuyer “spots” in any given area, and they only move into areas where they can guarantee at least 600 leads per year. I was told there was already one broker signed up and no cash homebuyers yet, so it seemed like a good opportunity. After doing what I felt was enough research—even though the sales pitch was a bit pushy—I decided to move forward.

Their pamphlet outlined several guarantees and provided additional details. The only slight red flag was that they only accepted payment via Venmo or wire transfer, but that's how I accepted payment when I was selling lead bundles, so I still thought it was worth a shot. So, I wired the money. After that, they sent a few messages mentioning they were working with a couple of probates and would get back to me.

To date, I haven't received anything, and my attempts to reach them have gone unanswered. I recall looking up their LLC in Florida, even though some documents mentioned California.

If you’ve had any interactions with these people, please reply below and let us know your experience. I hope this helps keep others from falling into the same trap. Hope this helps, and God bless!

[Scott Trench]

@Christopher Johnson 

A couple of things that you should know: 

1) We do not remove posts as a matter of course. Not even negative posts discussing our largest partners and sponsors. And not even posts where users give me and/or BiggerPockets negative feedback, no matter how much I do not like the posts, or how untruthful I personally feel them to be. Companies tend to do well when they professionally respond to negative posts, and either provide their version of events and stand their ground, or do what it takes to turn the angry poster into an ally. I have seen it backfire when companies attempt to get posts removed, including with legal threats. It seems that this risks the posts getting more attention than if they posted a simple, professional, response.

2) We are in no position to verify the truth or falsity of the posts on this thread, and are not responsible for user-generated content. If you have issues with what's posted here, you can take it up directly with the person who posted it. 

Somewhat unrelated, but I do not allow BiggerPockets to do business with partners who require their clients to sign agreements or otherwise agree to terms that prevent them from leaving what they feel to be honest reviews on BiggerPockets. As I see it, there is no reason to have people sign an anti-defamation agreement... because if it is truly defamation, the person doing the defaming is liable regardless of whether there was an agreement in place.

I believe in this so strongly that I have even once confronted a large advertising client about this issue when I discovered they had language to this effect in their terms of use in the past, and asked them to change their policy, at risk of material revenue loss to our company. They changed their policy promptly.

It seems to me that some companies could use this as a tactic to scare customers from discussing what they feel to be their version of events. 

Last, I would like to also say that if a company WERE to sue a BiggerPockets member for defamation in a forum thread, that I would be very interested in covering the situation as a news story. I believe this would make for very interesting news coverage on our blog, YouTube channel, podcast, and social media.

We would of course not presume to judge who is right or who is wrong in such a situation, but might follow the lawsuit, discuss facts as they unfolded, and of course share the verdict. We could even, if the story were to be of interest to the community, send a reporter to take notes in the courtroom.

So far, we have not had the opportunity to cover such a story.