Complaint Review: American Cash Flow Corporation - American Cash Flow Workshop

An Advanced Warning

Hi, I was watching TV and ran into an infomercial for American Cash Flow Corporation. Being a sceptic at heart, I checked here and didn't find them listed, so I Googled them and came up with these VERY interesting articles.

First, from Wayne Walker at ezinearticles.com: Over the
past two years or so, American Cash Flow Corporation, a
"marketing" company with a rather checkered history, targeted the industry for promotion. Since then, the lawsuit funding industry has resembled a Wild West gold rush attracting an unbelievable number of "get-rich-quick" rip-off artists, amateur lending brokers with no experience and just plain folks who paid their
$5,995 ($2,495 for the tape course) to become a "cash flow broker" and are trying to make their fortune.

Virtually all of these "cash flow brokers" are just that-brokers. They do not invest their own money to fund lawsuit advances. However, they all do have websites that trumpet their expertise without revealing that they have none and are not acting as principal. If you are not careful dealing with them can make your situation worse-much worse.

Then, from foreclosures.com's "52 Gurus to Avoid":

Larry Pino AKA: Cashflowinfo.com; Dynetech.com; American Cash Flow Institute (ACFI); American Cash Flow Corporation (ACFA); Laurence J. Pino; Whoislarrypino.com; American Cash Flow Association (ACFA); National Mortgage Investor's Institute (NMII); Diversified Cash Flow Institute (DCFI); Dynetech Corporation Currently as CEO and Chairman of Dynetech Corporation, Pino's most illustrious ventures were the foundation of the American Cash Flow Corporation, and author of "Cash In On Cash Flow".

"But others have questioned whether his past sales seminars were over hyped "get-rich-quick" schemes. The sales technique he's now packaged up developed from his work teaching traveling seminars in the '80s and '90s on how to make money in the cash-flow business.

Cash flow involves selling, buying and brokering inancial debt instruments."

Source: Orlando Business Journal, March 7, 2003 "Pino hopes to clear industry's blemishes"

"An "Assurance of Voluntary Compliance" was filed in court in Davidson County, Tennessee in 1996 and is labeled State of Tennessee versus Diversified Cash Flow Institute, Inc. (Pino is "President and General Counsel" of DCFI). "It says "The Division of Consumer Affairs and the Attorney General conducted an investigation of [DCFI's] business practices.

These practices include the following: using earnings
claims that are not representative of the results an average participant in the training program could expect; making potentially misleading statements about the value or cost of the training program; stating that the training program was associated with a university when it was not; and overstating the value of certification offered by [DCFI] the Division and the Attorney General determined that certain acts and practices of [DCFI] violated the Tennessee Consumer
Protection Act of 1977. [DCFI] neither admits nor denies any wrongdoing and gives this assurance in order to avoid the expense of litigation." The court papers state that the DCFI training program cost $6,995."
Source: Crimes of Persuasion.com

"Pino, 46, a lawyer in Orlando, Fla., describes himself as an "exceptional business trainer." His seminar experience goes back to 1983 - not always in the best of company. He first lectured for huckster Charles J. Givens Jr., who ran some dubious financial-planning organizations. In 1993 and again in 1996, juries decided that Givens had committed fraud. Later, Pino taught for Dave Del Dotto, an earlier popularizer of "cash flow," who settled an FTC action in 1996 with a $200,000 fine.
(Del Dotto went bankrupt; the FTC says he never paid). Pino himself was reprimanded by the Florida Bar Association in 1988 for misusing an investor's funds."
Source: The Washington Post, June 18, 1998, Jane Bryant Quinn, "Note Brokering: Harder Than it Sounds"

"And so it goes, at a free three-hour "workshop" plugging the Diversified Cash Flow Institute (DCFI) - the very latest in mass-market get-rich gambits. Guarino is selling a five-day, $5,995 boot camp led by dapper money guru Larry Pino. In a TV infomercial called "Millionaires at Home," prospects are told
they'll learn "three easy steps" that will "change your life.""
Source: Newsweek, June 08, 1998 Jane Bryant Quinn, "Show Me The Money. Larry Pino's pricey cash-flow workshops plug an easy way to get rich quick. It's a real business, all right - but there isn't much easy or quick about it."

Doug
Van Nuys, California
U.S.A.