Complaint Review: National Franchise Services

Despite having received numerous Desist and Refrain orders from the California Attorney General's office, Ken Hollowell and his National Franchise Services bogus company continue to operate outside the law. His latest series of on-line ad's continue to attempt to dupe investors into believing that he can teach them how to sell and operate franchises in a variety of businesses. Essentially, Ken Hollowell claims that any business model can franchised. To falsely prove his point on his web site, he has a short film that shows clips of many franchise based businesses such as McDonald's, Starbucks, IHOP, Kinko's, Burger King and many others. In this video, he basically points to himself as the founder of all these franchise based companies and then tries to take credit for their success.

Hollowell is a rather large man who claims to be an ex-cop. No record of a law enforcement career could be found on him. Before publishing this story, a complete research of his background revealed a long list of complaints by former business associates who had been duped out of their life savings by one of his many scams, some of which include Private Placement Memorandums or REG D 504's, private stock offerings for bogus companies, restaurant franchises and overseas companies that do not exist.

Hollowell can be very convincing with his supposed knowledge of franchise based businesses. In 2006, he managed to deceive the founder and executive producer of the LA Music Awards that he could franchise his business. "Ken Hollowell managed to convince me that our community event could be franchised, basically turning an awards show into a vending machine for music awards," says LA Music Awards founder Alfred Bowman. "I can't believe I fell for it. He promised to pay me $150,000 a year for his involvement in our events. He paid me nothing and attempted defraud many of our sponsors and supporters. It is my personal opinion that Ken Hollowell is a sophisticated criminal mind. Ken Hollowell is very dangerous and if you have made contact with him, be very, very careful," concluded Bowman.

Al B.
Hermosa Beach, California
U.S.A.