Potential Fraudulent Lender: TJW Properties LLC

[Gloria Sheridan]

I am taking the time to share a recent experience I had with a potential lender I connected to via Bigger Pockets. This is the first time I’m looking for this sort of loan (this is only my 2nd rental property). These are simply the facts I experienced. You can come to your own conclusions about this lender, however I did not pursue further interactions with these individuals or company.

I posted a message around the end of April 2018 looking for long-term financing for a wholly-owned 3-plex. On May 1, BP member Alan Jones contacted me via BP and referred me to a lender: TJW Private Lending. Their website looks legit: www.tjwprivatelending.com. Alan indicated I should complete an application on this website, alert him to when it was complete, and he would continue the process. Any documents about my deal were to be sent to info[at]tjwprivatelending[dot]com. I completed the online application the same day and later that same day received an email back with a term sheet. The Lender was Mr. Thomas J. Wood of TJW Properties, LLC.

Still looked generally legit, except that I noticed that the Borrower was required make a deposit of 4 points (in this case, $5600) for the lender to “initiate the due diligence process.” “The Borrower will be billed with a pay pal invoice to guarantee his cash back if deal isn’t closed.”

Say what??

I next took the time to research the lender and the company. When asked, Thomas J. Wood didn’t hesitate to email me a copy of the front and back of his Connecticut driver’s license. His company does show as an active company on the CT Secretary of State website. His address as shown on the company filing, the driver’s license, and the term sheet all matched. I also used BeenVerified.com to try to find out a little more about this person. This took me a little time to research and during the pause, I started getting some pressure from Thomas J. Wood. I immediately received the emailed invoice from PayPal to send my $5600. I got a few text messages like this one: “When do you intend to pay invoice Madam?”

We talked live also: Heavy foreign accent. Tough to make out exactly what he was saying.

To see what he’d say, I offered to have my attorney set up an escrow account (at no cost to him) to hold the $5600 for us and to help us complete the transaction, to which he responded that would mean he would not have the funds then available to pay for the due diligence activities, and that would not be fair to him.

Suffice to say, when he outright declined to do business using legitimate methods, I knew for sure this guy was a scammer. So: Watch out for Alan Jones and Thomas J. Wood of TJW Properties, 129 Cosey Beach Ave. #A-5, East Haven, CT, 06512. Phone # (two-zero-three )684-1194.

All right, people, let’s make some deals, but let’s be careful out there!