So a few years ago I attended a seminar taught by Jason Rodriguez who claimed to be an expert in real estate, specializing in wholesaling. Jason claimed to be making tons of cash in real estate and showed pictures of his lavish lifestyle. Unfortunately my partner and I were sold and signed up for a seminar that would be sold out soon. A few months later we flew to Orlando to attend this 3 day seminar that would teach us everything we ever set us FREE....
Well the first thing I noticed was that the attendance was small. We were under the impression that there would be a large group there (on his website He claimed to be the Tony Robbins of real estate). Unfortunately there were only 8 people there and found out later that half of the students didn't even pay. Then in 3 days of "learning" only a tiny fraction was committed to real estate. About 4 hour out of the day was dedicated to other speakers trying to sell us their seminars. Well by the end of the seminar we learned enough to get excited about wholesaling but not enough to actually do it ourselves. Then Mr Rodriguez went into a very convincing sales pitch about his mentoring program (
http://www.elitementoring.com/home/mentorship.html ) were he claims to come to your town and walk you through your first deal for the low low price of $25,000. This made sense because he said he could walk us through a r.e. deal netting us $100,000. So we cleaned our our saving, borrowed $7,000 from my in-laws and here is what happened.
One month before our mentorship We had 4 one hour phone calls with jason where he instructed us to purchase lots of marketing (which was tough because we were pretty broke by now) and got some tips that were slightly helpful. When Jason finally arrived things seemed to be going pretty well. The perspective r.e. deals in theory would have made us some quick cash, unfortunately it only made sense to jason. Well at the end of our 3 days we had a bunch of confusing r.e. deals and an empty bank account. The best part was that even though we were about $30,000 in the hole, Jason kindly offered to help us complete our transactions through his telephone coaching program for only $3700 a month!! We declined.....
In the weeks following we demanded assistance then refunds which were promptly denied and eventually ignored. After about 3 months of of unreturned phone calls and late mortgage payments I did what I should have 6 month prior. Here is what I found in my 18 month investigation.
1) Jason Rodriguez has not bought or sold a house in over 5 years. His "successful real estate company" has been inactive since 2005. he makes his money by ripping off gullible mentoring students. Recently he is claiming to be a Luxury Homes Experts but has never bought or sold one either. I found this out from a former long term employee.
2) One of his former students was an old friend of his who took him in when Jason first moved to Florida. Jason kindly took $25,000 from his old friend and pregnant wife and left them in debt. Their house went into foreclosure and the family now lives with the old friends parents. I learned this straight from the old friend, I guess Jason is not bias about who he will steal money from.
3) Jason is currently being sued by a large group of his former students. After a group of his students began comparing notes it was discovered that there was never been a successful mentoring program. Not one single student has ever completed a successful real estate transaction. I know this is true because I am part of the class action law suit.
4) Jason's company is not listed with the BBB. After getting a score of F- Mr Rodriguez closed his account with the BBB (yes, you can do that. Crazy huh?)
5) Jason the millionaire and real estate guru lives in a 4 bedroom rental.
Don't take what I say at face value. Before you give this guy a dime,do your research. I tried this with another seminar speaker at their seminar. I asked them to call one of their successful students right there in front of me. The way I look at it, if this guy made me rich and successful, I would take his call night or day. Well when I asked this other speaker to put his phone on speaker and get me a live testimonial he gave me a terrified look and mumbled that he didn't bring his phone with him. Really, as if anyone travels without a phone.
All I'm saying is beware, this guy is all con and double talk. He changes the name of his seminar every few months, that alone should tell you something.
2 Updates & Rebuttals
Danielle
Altamonte Springs,Florida,
United States of America
I've Been Ripped Off TOO!!!
#3General Comment
Fri, February 11, 2011
My husband and I went to one of his seminars and signed up. Jason said that everything that we would need would be provided and guaranteed that we would be able to make $100,000 in the first 90 days. Jason also said that we would have trained VA's who would find us private lenders, sellers, and build our buyers list....making this too easy. Said that if we followed what he said we would have our phone ringing off the hook, and more leads than we knew what to do with; at least a hundred.
We put down all we had in our account, and within a few weeks we put down a total of $12,000, owing the remaining $13,000 before the mentor would come to our home. When we joined we told them this is all we have and that we HAD to make this work because we have a three year old son. We were told that this was a fool proof plan and that we will make our money back and become wealthy with the tools and techniques taught to us by Jason.
We were under the impression that we would be apart of Jason's team and would have access to him for support, and a team of mentors that specialized in several different fields would help, but later learned that we got one mentor assigned to us, Jason's email went to his office aids, and the VA's were only available after we paid the whole $25,000.
It took us almost an entire month to get our material, and when it came it was put together sloppy and basically the same thing we heard for free at the three day seminar, with the exception of some foot notes and examples of letters or flyers used.
We were told to spend as much money as we could to market, which was tough for us because we spent all we had for the mentorship. Our mentor made us feel like we were not doing enough because we were not able to come up with $2,000 to do a mass marketing project. We later learned that a lot of the marketing could have been done for free. We tried to speak to our assigned mentor but he would never answer our questions clearly, or was very rude to me. He was pushy and hard for me to deal with.
Talked to the office about the issues we were having with him but nothing was done, just told for me to talk to him. We heard of other students who were able to get a new mentor and get re-started, but they wouldn't allow us to do this. They wouldn't refund our money, not even for the months that were not used.
We would go several days to weeks before we would hear anything from them about our situation. We talked to other students and they had no success with the mentor program either, or made any deals within the six months...even though Jason's team said that everyone else was having success with the program that it must just be us.
We later heard that Jason was contacting his students who had started working with other investors in the area and was trying to get them to steal the investors buyers list for him.
Jason is a great salesman and fooled us into believing that his program would work for us. I wish I knew what I know now, and never signed up with him. I lost $12,000 and recently received a bill for the remaining $13,000. He has some balls...what a snake!
Chuck
charleston,South Carolina,
United States of America
Don,t throw your money away !!!!
#3Consumer Comment
Sun, November 07, 2010
Great posting, I couldn't agree more. Jason changed the name of his seminar to " The Wealth Blueprint " but its still the same old sales marathon. It was 3 days of seminar with 6 different sales pitches thrown in, the first day was wasted by Jason talking about himself most of the day. I fortunately didn't sign up for anything because of some poor woman I met there. She spent a ton of money at jasons seminars with nothing to show for it. By the end of the seminar she was on the verger of tears, her husband was furious and they were filing for bankruptcy. I'm glad He is being sued..