I'm so sorry this happened to you Debbie, I'm just a newbie in the beginning stages and I have considered the "Gurus" as well. I guess I will continue my research and use BP's pro resources.

I bet this guru you are speaking about is Fortune Builders! 

I'm so sorry Deb! I hope you can get your money back! 

I sympathize with you. I've been there ... but a bit different situation. Long ago (when I was much younger and believed the law protected me) I lost low 6 figures to Bob Brennan's boiler room operation. Aka. First Jersey Securities. But when they got me, they were Hibbard & Brown. They had changed their name three times by then. I knew nothing about the market. They were slick. When I figured something was going on, I called the Attorney Generals office. When I told them it was about Hibbard & Brown, they asked me if I wanted to speak the to investigative division they set up just for them. They asked me if I wanted to be a witness if they needed any more, but had many other witnesses who lost a lot more than me, some millions. I was so naive then. I could not understand how these guys were allowed to continue to operate for so long, ripping people off. I hired a lawyer at the cost of about 5 - 6 k more, but dropped it when it became apparent there would be no money for me to get back. The lawyers take most of it (from what was not hidden), then there is so little to split up between the many, many who got taken. Gave me write-off's for years :-) it's a terrible feeling to loose like that.  Sorry that happened to you. 

This is an impressive thread! Debbie, I'm sorry you lost your money. 

I went to one of the Gurus as well and I "invested" the same amount as you did. I also increased my credit limit and took out new credit cards too. However, I look at it this way, I had zero knowledge of the real estate market as an investor before I did the program. What some of the people responding to your initial thread fail to realize is that we are all not the same. I wanted to find an alternative way to earn some cash flow but had no clue where to turn to. My wife and I had no experience in this field and knew no one who was actually doing this. We were ripe for the picking, enter the Guru's program. 

Was it expensive? Yes. Would I have been able to use the money to flip/buy/renovate a house? Yes. Did I feel ripped off afterwards? YES! Could I have bought a new truck or Harley with the money instead? YES!!!!

I would say that I purchased my Real Estate Investment Master's Degree with my experience. I did not ask for my money back because I signed a contract and just like many in here have said, regardless of what they said, it was my responsibility to go through it. Lesson learned. 

On a positive note I found biggerpockets because of it. I have increased my real estate investing knowledge more through biggerpockets than I did with the program I bought at least a hundred fold. I have also begun my REI career and I'm happy that I'm moving forward.

I did learn one thing. I CAN DO THIS. Good luck to you!

Let's stop confusing the misinformation, embellished outlier stories, trite truisms, unverifiable shortcuts and unsustainable business strategies that are "taught" by gurus with the real education in real estate provided by real educators.

At the lower end of the "real" real estate education spectrum are the real estate broker/agent courses, both initial licensing and continuing education offered by both community colleges and privately owned real estate schools, both physical and online.

The next step up are the short term courses offered by the real estate institutes of major colleges, open to anyone, such as those offered by  NYU or Wharton.  A step up would be the real estate specialized certificates offered by these same colleges.

Next up on the food chain are undergrad degrees in real estate offered by legitimate colleges.  On a similar level but with less commitment of time and money are completion of a series of courses leading to CCIM, Appraisal Institute or similar certification. 

The top rung in real estate education are the Masters in Real Estate offered by a number of U.S. based universities and an increasing number of European and Asian colleges.

I realize that putting in the time, effort, and struggle to prepare for a successful career change is ridiculed by those selling the dream of near instant success to the masses.  But my gut tells me that the actual "success" rate of guru program "graduates" is scandalously low.

I can not justify spending $41,000 on a guru course because it introduced me to the concept of real estate investing when the same can be accomplished by spending $10 on a book.  If spending $41000 on a $10 item is an indication of how one will operate their real estate investments, it may be better to find a more appropriate financial endeavor.

Hi Debbie! I am so sorry this happened to you! I saw that you got most of your money back. Did you get anymore back? Any updates? Have you started investing yet? We would love to hear an update! You have a lot of support in here which is great! I hope you are doing well! 

"their attitude and responsibility promised to me changed totally"

@Debbie Lee what responsibilities and attitude are written in the contract?

I am disheartened and wish I would have found this blog first. We have paid over $50k to one company who promised one to one training, an "inner circle" access and so far the consultant we had has left the company, the company contact has not responded to my emails as at all. I'm so upset. I am now researching a class action lawsuit because this is just wrong. I haven't even completed a transaction yet! Thankful for Bigger Pockets and I will keep investing but I am definitely need to get my money back. 

Debbie Lee who created this post already mentioned earlier that the company was Success Path from Premium Financial Training in Salt Lake City on page 16 of this thread.

This sounds like the same guruI lost $$$$ too.

Sounds like the same Armando Montelongo scam .

I tried the credit card dispute. but they sided with them .  DUE TO CONTRACT .

even though I tried to cancel but no answer on phone till deadline passed.

 single mom Lost  $$. I still haven't paid it off,c redit dropped 113 points, because I have too much credit cards  /debt now.

The bad thing is I second guess who to trust ,so I 

Have been missing deals .

I would like to no ,if 

 it was the same  CON ARTIST

ARMANDO MONTELONGO???

Hate to imagine there is more than  hI'm 

Although I am sure there are . but sounds like his b.s  ..

Lets talk.!!!

@Lisa Lavine , unfortunately, the vast majority of gurus in the real estate field ARE scam artists.  This is the way it has been since the mid - late seventies when this whole guru business developed.  As media has grown, so has the guru business.  Here are the negative aspects of the "guru" programs.

1. Majority of gurus were NEVER successful in the real estate field.  In fact many of them have multiple bankruptcies.  

2. The techniques they teach either (a) don't work (b) require a level of knowledge unobtainable by the student (c) require a level of experience the student does not have or (d) require a significant amount of capital

3. The guru lies about #2 above and tells the "suckers" that they need no experience, no expertise (above what they will be taught) and no personal capital

4. The guru or his top assistants are NOT providing the mentoring; the mentoring is actually often done by people who have failed as sales people for the guru. These people have NO experience or success in real estate.

5. Real estate is VERY localized.  It is unreasonable to believe that one single system can possibly work everywhere.

6. The lists of resources provided by the gurus are often just lists of vendors pulled from various websites, with no special "relationship" to the guru.

7. In situations where the guru personally knows the vendor he "recommends", he is often getting a kickback or advertising fee.

8. The sale of the "success" system is always sold based on lifestyle; those that work in your typical 9 to 5 job long for the "freedom to be your own boss', etc. that the guru is selling.  The reality is that even if successful you will be working long hours, always be "on call", handling mostly mundane and boring tasks, be continually disappointed by the work ethic of the contractors you hire, and see most of your profits go to your lenders and equity partners.

9. The promises that the guru organization will partner with you is actually a negative; all this does is have you pay $40K AND give the guru 50% of any deals you come up with that have a chance of being profitable.  Often the "partnering " consists of the guru obtaining a hard money loan that you can obtain yourself and taking half the profit for his efforts.  

10. Having been burned by the cost, lack of success and reality of how hard it is to be successful, most people will turn off to real estate investing totally.  This is unfortunate because (1) with the CORRECT education and experience, some of these people might have found a profitable and interesting career in the field and (2) real estate investing (as opposed to the real estate "business" ) could be a very important part of anyone's investment portfolio, providing diversification, inflation hedge, long term savings buildup, tax advantages, and cash flow.

For someone who wishes to learn real estate investing, a far superior method of education is to take the courses leading to a real estate brokers license, take the additional courses offered by NAR, CCIM, ULI, etc., consider the seminars/courses taught be your local REIA, IF, they are taught by local people with actual experience and NOT national guru types.

Thanks Don Konipol

Appreciate the insight !!!

Originally posted by @Don Konipol :

@Lisa Lavine , unfortunately, the vast majority of gurus in the real estate field ARE scam artists.  This is the way it has been since the mid - late seventies when this whole guru business developed.  As media has grown, so has the guru business.  Here are the negative aspects of the "guru" programs.

1. Majority of gurus were NEVER successful in the real estate field.  In fact many of them have multiple bankruptcies.  

2. The techniques they teach either (a) don't work (b) require a level of knowledge unobtainable by the student (c) require a level of experience the student does not have or (d) require a significant amount of capital

3. The guru lies about #2 above and tells the "suckers" that they need no experience, no expertise (above what they will be taught) and no personal capital

4. The guru or his top assistants are NOT providing the mentoring; the mentoring is actually often done by people who have failed as sales people for the guru. These people have NO experience or success in real estate.

5. Real estate is VERY localized.  It is unreasonable to believe that one single system can possibly work everywhere.

6. The lists of resources provided by the gurus are often just lists of vendors pulled from various websites, with no special "relationship" to the guru.

7. In situations where the guru personally knows the vendor he "recommends", he is often getting a kickback or advertising fee.

8. The sale of the "success" system is always sold based on lifestyle; those that work in your typical 9 to 5 job long for the "freedom to be your own boss', etc. that the guru is selling.  The reality is that even if successful you will be working long hours, always be "on call", handling mostly mundane and boring tasks, be continually disappointed by the work ethic of the contractors you hire, and see most of your profits go to your lenders and equity partners.

9. The promises that the guru organization will partner with you is actually a negative; all this does is have you pay $40K AND give the guru 50% of any deals you come up with that have a chance of being profitable.  Often the "partnering " consists of the guru obtaining a hard money loan that you can obtain yourself and taking half the profit for his efforts.  

10. Having been burned by the cost, lack of success and reality of how hard it is to be successful, most people will turn off to real estate investing totally.  This is unfortunate because (1) with the CORRECT education and experience, some of these people might have found a profitable and interesting career in the field and (2) real estate investing (as opposed to the real estate "business" ) could be a very important part of anyone's investment portfolio, providing diversification, inflation hedge, long term savings buildup, tax advantages, and cash flow.

For someone who wishes to learn real estate investing, a far superior method of education is to take the courses leading to a real estate brokers license, take the additional courses offered by NAR, CCIM, ULI, etc., consider the seminars/courses taught be your local REIA, IF, they are taught by local people with actual experience and NOT national guru types.

 A very clear and concise explaination of the "Guru" scam. Thanks Don, you have educated a few people today with this post. 

Originally posted by @Charles Parrish :

We were able to get $23,000 back from one of those motel seminars rats by proving they were frauds.

We had our client call their phone mentor to ask them questions after getting permission to record the call.

They were unable to answer the question or gave wrong answer. We threaten to expose them nationwide. After a few weeks they started putting the money back to the credit card accounts.

Here is the letter we sent - names omitted. 

RE:DEMAND FOR IMMEDIATE REFUND

To Whom It May Concern:

I am writing to express our absolute disappointment in the service that my husband and I experienced as customers of your company, and to demand an immediate refund of all monies we have paid to you for real estate investment consulting.

Several months ago, my husband and I learned about your company at a hotel seminar in Baltimore, MD.On September 8th and 13th, 2014, we paid $1,997 and $29,997 to your company for what was represented to us in your marketing materials and by members of your team to be "expert instruction", "the most advanced real estate training in the world", and "education second to none". Your marketing materials stated that your education would lead us on "the most exciting journey of [our] life". None of these promises could be any farther from the truth.   The reality is that the financial advice we received from your company was at best totally uninformed, and at worst, provably dangerous inasmuch as it exposed us to serious fines, liability, and even jail time given the laws of the State of Maryland.

The financial advice we received was tendered by representatives of your company including "Brandon" and "Earl", during our various telephone consulting sessions. With their permission, I recorded each of those consulting sessions.The following is a brief summary of their advice:

• In response to a question about how to make an offer to a homeowner in foreclosure, Brandon instructed me to contact the homeowner directly, and Earl told me to approach the homeowner and offer to rent the property back to him. Subsequently, I learned that their advice was in direct conflict of the Maryland Homeowners in Foreclosure Protection Act, and put my husband and me at risk for fines and jail time!
  • When I asked Brandon if I should leave the "Time is of the essence" clause in our purchase offer for wholesale assignment, he advised me to do so. Earl told me that ALL real estate contracts include that clause. However, we later learned from our own research that their advice would not be in our benefit, because the clause means that all deadlines must be strictly obeyed. That said, if we happened to miss closing by one day, your advice would have cost us our deposit.
• When I asked whether we should use calendar days or banking days on my offer to purchase real estate for assignment, Brandon advised me to use calendar days. Which again would give us less time, not more.

• Your marketing materials clearly promised that we would "learn all the steps necessary to work on a 'no money down' deal" and that we would be "walked through the process of creating a deal so [we would] have confidence in both the process and [ourselves]". Yet, each time I asked Brandon about various creative financing methods, he would admit, "I've never heard of that" and then search Google for answers. He actually kept me waiting on the phone while he looked up one explanation on Investopedia.com and then read it word for word.
• Brandon could not tell me even the basics of how to calculate a capitalization rate (or any other method of evaluating profitability). He admitted, "I'm not familiar with that at all". And when I asked the same question of Earl, he argued that a cap rate was of no use to me as a real estate investor, and then he went on to tell me that for anything over a 6% cap rate, I should expect to have a shot gun to collect rent.
• When I asked Brandon how I should have a real estate owner redeem my tax lien in Baltimore City, he told me to have the owner send the money to me directly. I later learned this advice is in direct violation of local tax sale law, which requires liens to be redeemed through the City of Baltimore.
• When I asked your representatives how I might negotiate a clause that would allow me to walk a mortgage from one property to another, they were totally unable to speak with any knowledge about what goes into a standard substitution of collateral clause.
  • The issues above are not an exhaustive list of problems with your so-called "experts"; nor are your representatives, Brandon and Earl, the only source of problems with "the most advanced real estate training" you purport to offer. For example, both your materials and "experts" instructed us that the "#1 technique for finding buyers" is to post "bandit signs" at freeway entrances and in parking lots of Lowe's, Home Depot, and Wal-Mart. My husband and I were livid when our teenage daughter was detained by a policeman who informed her that such signs are illegal in Baltimore County and carry a fine of $200 per sign per day!
It is fortunate for your company and for my family that we sought the advice of a competent real estate investment professional before we put any of your techniques into practice. Had we followed advice from your company, it is a certainty that the outcome would have been financially disastrous.

Your written marking materials advertise that "[your] mission is 100% satisfaction", that you offer a "Warranty of Service", and that you "follow the strictest industry standards". Your company has not delivered on those or any one of the other promises we've cited. Given the aforementioned facts and other audio-recorded documentation, we have been advised by legal counsel that the representations made in your sales presentations and on your Web site demonstrate a misrepresentation of your actual product, and constitute a bona-fide cause for a class action lawsuit. And, given that you are representing yourselves as a post-secondary educational institution as defined by the U.S. Department of Education, your misrepresentation may be elevated to the status of fraud.

This letter serves as actual notice of our demand for an immediate refund in full. We wish to terminate our business with your company amicably; but in the event that we do not receive a refund of our $31,994 in full by close of business on August 24, 2015, then we will file complaints with the Federal Trade Commission, the Office of the Attorney General of Maryland, Utah, and every other state in which you offer seminars, the Real Estate Commission of Maryland, Utah, and every other state in which you offer seminars, the Banking Commission in Maryland, Utah, and every other state in which you offer seminars, the Postmaster General, and the Better Business Bureau.

Furthermore, we will post a detailed account of our experience along with our legally obtained audio recordings on RipOffReport.com, PissedConsumer.com, AngiesList.com, Yelp.com, Google.com, CREOnline.com, BiggerPockets.com, ActiveRain.com, LinkedIn.com, Facebook.com, and 38 other real estate and watchdog Web sites. We will make sure that, should you choose to ignore the issues outlined here, your decision will follow your company in the public record for the foreseeable future.

In addition, we will forward copies of our complaints and our legally obtained audio recordings to the offices of MD-REIA and to every one of the 126 real estate investors associations in the United States. We will share our experience with each hotel and facility rented by your company for seminars, as well as every radio station on which you have advertised your seminars. We will contact all of the other individuals we met at the seminar we attended to inform them of our experience and we will refer them to our attorney, if necessary. And, we will contact Dr. Spencer Johnson to share with him the handout we were provided by your company directing us to download the entirety of his book, Who Moved My Cheese?  from an offshore Website. We are perfectly willing to do all of these things, because what your company has done to us is wrong and must be made right.

All of the materials we have received from your company are enclosed herewith in original condition.Thank you for your immediate attention to this matter.

Attentively,

Name withheld

I hope this information will help other in the same situation.

Charles Parrish

 Wow, I am blown away at the smart, professional way you handled this, and won! Nicely done! If only everyone had the chutzpa you have!!! Then there wouldn't be as many scammers in the world! 

Thank you for the kind words. It is sad that there are bums out there pushing useless information about real estate investing. 

Charles 

PM me their name. I will be sure to warn others.

I do not no if you named the  company, that ripped you off, but i received this, a few days ago. APPARENTLY, Lawyers are going after these GURU 's. because students are getting together and speaking up. 

Did you pay by credit Card. file a dispute . They will fight for you . 

If you got contact info for some of the other people  in the class? contact them. COMPARE NOTES and Get as much info as you can from them. 

This is for the ARMANDO Montelongo group. 

just in case this is the con artist you got you , too?

If not, maybe you can contact them and find out if they will help you too. 

Jinean Florom

Business Operations ManagerPOB 887
Cortaro, Arizona 85652



pmso.biz

Hi all, sorry to read about this, once again. If you have bought products from premier mentoring or Zurixx email me here. We can discuss it further!

We have an attorney working on our behalf to get our money back. No cost, let us know what happened and we can help - we're formkng a class action now.   They have taken in access of 8 figures from all of us since 2006!  Thanks Cindy

@Debbie Lee

@Debbie Lee

Were you ever able to get your money back? Who was the guru?

Self serving, I know -- but get a lawyer to discuss the details.  Also, discuss with an attorney that assists real estate investors.  There are a lot of investment opportunities out there with trusted groups.  

@Debbie Lee Just came across this post from 2 yrs ago. Just curious of the outcome. I almost got sucked in as well, but I knew I couldn't support the payments in the meantime awaiting flipping success, so I backed out. About a week later they called and said there is a cheaper option available at $15k, but that was still too much for me. I said try me again in 6 months, they pushed more and offered me their lowest option at $3k which gives you all the same tools and support just without the coaching so like a self study program, that seemed doable so I went for it. Still regret it now, but not as much as I would the higher amounts. The only thing good that came out of it for me was at the 2 day seminar I met somebody who did sign up for their program because he was already flipping so I asked him how, and he mentioned he had been using bigger pockets. That is how I got started with BP, had I not gone to that seminar I wouldn't have known. Of course I could have went to the seminar and found BP without paying the $3k anyway, but I hadn't had time to get deep enough into BP to learn that everything they had for a high price is pretty much available on BP for free. I love BP! I will do as everybody else does and say stay away from the guru companies. They likely make more money from selling their program than doing flips.

Debbie, 

Honestly any company charging that much has to have a national name. They do not want bad press. If you get high enough on the chain, you can probably get refunded. If you cant get anywhere there, Federal Trade Commission is pretty aggressive with the "Gurus".

This is why I do not sell coaching to the masses. The only way to get REAL coaching is from the person that has actually done it. Those companies hire people with such little experience there is no way for them to give 41k in value. They try to get experienced folks like some of the members here on BP, but they only offer 200k /yr to get on their team and it just is not enough for someone that actually does the business. 

Keep on pushing for the refund, but do not slam them on line, they could hit you back with a suit. 

Good luck, keep pushing!!!

 To all the people who got scammed by the current guru of the month. I have been meaning to update this post. But i just wanted to inform everyone here. you can fight these guys

I disputed with the credit card company and got all my money returned. Lesson learned. 

Thanks

Lisa

@David G How much is a "demand letter" normally?  I feel that this thread is a educational piece for anyone that has been ripped off on a big purchase.  

Does anyone have resources that DYIers can use to make their own "demand letters" in place of attorneys?  This feels like being a landlord and sending a letter to the tenant demanding late rent, eviction letter, etc.