John Hooker (by name given via email) approached us Dec. 2017 by introducing himself as a lender under "Hooker Funding Inc." supposed to be located at "Dept PAJ 790, 228 Park Avenue S. New York NY 10003".
He started to propose long term loans to 2 of my companies, but after collecting significant amount of loan fees upfront, none delivered. This was the very beginning of his full menu of financial crimes/frauds.
1. Scam/theft of loan fees/fund transfer fees: $91,600.
Collected: Bank wire transfers to individual named accounts, Western Union/Money Gram transfers, iTunes prepaid cards, and bitcoins by pretending as if he would deliver the loan fund immediately after we have paid such last last last fees.
2. Credit card frauds /theft of fund: $85,635.
By asking our credit cards' balance, he brought various individual named bank accounts to make payments to down the balance of cards. Then by using open credit card limites he requested to buy iTunes Cards and Amazon Gift Cards to send to his email so that he could encash them.
3. Bank account frauds and misuse of third parties' accounts with different banks. $210,765.
He offered to transfer the fund to our business accounts by using various different bank accounts of third party individual names to begin with. (The size of transfers were $10K, $30K, and $50K, etc) After such transfers were completed into our accounts, by saying "this is the funding method I propose for your company", he demanded to deposit in cash 3/4 amount transfered from other acconts to our business accounts. Such almost bank account frauds and even money laundering like operations were told as "this fund deposit is to help your companies as a part of loan security deposits that is calculated total $350,000".
But, afterward, all such transferred fund from other banks' accounts were bounced back under the reasons of "Unauthorized transactions". Because of such activities, we lost not only such monetary value but also we lost key impotant bank accounts with 3 major banks.
By October 2018, he seemed to have relocated from NY to TN and crowned the name of new company HCRPC Capitals. He re-approached us again by saying "I am now different man and started different funding things under new company. I can provide funding up to $3.5M with very preferred terms and conditions". After having discussed things with our skepticism, he offerred "Line of Credit" for $4.5M and requested total $3,950 fees as upfront fee. We became unable to pay such big money at the time and the case was held untouched for long till late May.
Because of our tightened cash flow situation, I requested him to send $50,000 just a part of his proposed $4.5M fund, but he requested at least $500 must be paid as transfer fee. After argument, we paid $450 from what we no longer have cash balance, but he did not deliver even such $50,000 life saving funding.
Later today, he sent an email telling, "the funding department requested additional $500 to successfully send you the $50,000". At this point, we concluded he were nothing but a scammer, thief, fraudster whom we should not work.
Because of such continued fraudulent works attacking us to date, we lost not only $388K monetary losses but also more than $1.5M value business assets by not received funding over 19 months and such non-funding situation made the company insolvent and almost deceased.