Has anybody ever heard of Frank Walker? Says he is a private lender.

[Jerry Ferrell]

A guy named Frank Walker showed up in my Facebook messenger asking if I needed a loan to finance my deals. I said, not at the moment.  He then asked me if I could text him my email address so he could send me his funding requirements for review.  I did.  He even attached a bank statement that had $13 million in his account as "proof of funds." Even then, I still asked, how do I verify you are who you say you are? Can we get on a call?  I give him my number (google voice), he texts me and the number comes up as Prem Singh & Sons.  I call and first he doesn't answer so I double dial and he's this guy with a heavy accent but his profile says he lives in Texas but from Switzerland.  He tells me on the phone that he's originally from Poland but all the time, he sounds like he's from the middle east.  I then ask him why my caller ID comes up as Prem and he says, "Prem Singh is a lender who works with our funding team."  I go to his Facebook page and also notice that it says he works for Keller Williams so I ask him if he does in fact work for KW because about seven Frank Walkers pop up on realtor.com but none of them have profile photos or are in Texas. He says, "I do, but I don't want to do business with people with doubt" to which I replied, "You want people who don't do their due diligence?  You don't exactly sound like somebody I want to do business with either sir, have a nice day."  Then I hang up.   

I know I just typed you an essay but I said all that just to say this:  Be careful with these people who pop up in your messages claiming to be private lenders and asking for upfront loan origination fees.  I thought the whole exchange was odd since I told him from the beginning I wasn't even looking for funding at this time but he definitely wasn't legitimate.  My question to anybody here is, do private lenders typically have a website or any way to verify who they are? Or is it, because they are "private" money lenders, there is no public records to refer to?  Please break it down for me.  Thanks. 


  

[Jay Hinrichs]

you obviously got hit by a spammer there are thousands of them trolling the Private lender pages looking for victims that are not familiar with how private lending works.  NO lender is going to send you copy of their bank account.. they might have to prove up to a seller or the sellers agent but never send it to you right out of the gate.. and all the other things you discovered its just an off shore scammer trying to scam those that dont know what they dont know. AND it works other wise they would not keep doing it.

so A true private lender is someone you personally know or have met who has money in their IRA or other cash but lending is not their business they just make a few loans a year to those close to them. that is a true private lender.

Any other lender that has a website or advertises or is on facebook is a Hard MONEY LENDER HML started to market themselves as Private Money lenders about a decade ago on the guise that folks will think there rates are cheaper and they are easier to work with.. They are brokers or have their own credit lines or are placing money for true private lenders. ( I used to hae a company that did this I had 250 private lenders that did loans for my clients and I was a HML.

But these folks were all in some other business and predominately used their IRA or company 401k to invest in our loans we were brokering. You have to be careful its not that these guys can beat you out of an upfront fee of 500 to 5000. but you have spent the time to find a deal you put up EM it maybe non refundable and when these guys just vanish without a trace your out what you paid them you lost your EM your money on inspections and most important THE DEAL that was going to make you big bucks.

I get these guys approaching me all the time with PM s here on Bigger pockets.. Every so called lender even if they advertise on BP need to be checked  BP does not verify the validity of any of these lenders. there have been some horrible lenders on the BP preferred lender list over the years and there are threads about them.

If you really want to dig into this watch the American Greed episode on Remington financial and google Ingrid Robinson loan fraud  due diligence fraud she has a great website on it and she was the victim of Remington.  And Frankly I almost was a Remington victim.. But something just did not add up with those guys ( and they were AZ based and slick as all get out) But to easy to approve me just send 10k for due diligence.