Complaint Review: Brian Gibbons - Sherman Oaks Ca

I am posting this to save anyone else from the hellish experience I had with Brian Gibbons.

He comes highly endorsed on http://BiggerPockets.com which was partly why I hired him. I learned early on that, as a re investor he considers himself 'the best of the best in the nation' as he would say or text this on a near daily basis, reminding me of how fortunate I was that he chose me to start a company with.

1. When we first formed our company, the agreement was, I would find and qualify the prospects and he would close the deals. We would split the profits 50/50 once we got paid from a buyer. Then about a month in he started encouraging me to close the deals. I said 'Ok but in those cases I would keep the full profit.' He said 'No, it's still 50/50.' I told him that wasn't fair and not what we agreed to. He said if he found and closed a deal we'd split that too. Except he was not looking for or talking to prospects, at all, so that would NEVER happen. I believe his ulterior motive in forming this company was to profit off of my efforts.

2. On Nov 6 I asked him in writing (please see attached my final email to which he never responded) to please take down the website with my LLC (apparently he made a second one too, a support site, which I was unaware of). See attached screenshots from December 25th, they were both still up. Looks like as of today there is an ‘account suspended' message. That is MY intellectual property, he has/had no legal right to keep it up when I asked for it to be taken down. This goes to show the level of blatant disregard he has for me.

3. His deals were unethical and only my name was on the contracts, not his. We had two deals which fell through. The first, when I informed him it was priced $75,000 over market value based on the comparables, he said 'Since its a lease option, someone will accept it. Either keep the price as it is or dump Shirley.' (Shirley was the seller, and those were his exact words). If a house does not appraise for the purchase price the buyer will not get a loan, thus will not be able to buy. Being that this was a house with no updates at all, it would NOT appraise for that price and thus would never sell (the seller was hoping to sell within two years if possible). I told him I was uncomfortable with both those options and took it upon myself to price it accordingly ($75,000 less, so that it was right at fair market price).

4. The second deal, per Brian's instructions I explained to the seller that the purchase price would be based upon appraisal price, whatever that was once the buyers were ready to purchase. He was very happy with that arrangement. Then Brian got on the phone to close it and offered him a whole new deal (without discussing with me first). He said both the rent and the purchase price would be raised 3% per year. This was a very expensive house and Brian priced it $16,000 over appraisal price of $388,000 (appraisal attached), thus the price would go up $12,120 per year (please see purchase contract attached) On average it takes 2-3 and sometimes much longer for a buyer to be ready to purchase. The only way an arrangement like that works is on a very inexpensive house in a down market. This was an expensive for the area ($404k) house and an up market. Again, only my name was going to be on the contract, not Brian's, and not only did I not believe we would find a buyer to agree to that, it's unethical and just bad business practice. The seller was now very excited and readily agreed to Brian's new offer. I had to call him back several days later after losing sleep over it and let him know I could not in good conscience keep the pricing structure Brian offered, and Brian was not interested in having his name on the contract. Thus the seller became exasperated and rescinded on the deal (after getting the contracts notarized).

5. Brian would yell, swear at me, and call me 'dingbat' nearly everyday. One day I was on the phone non-stop from 10am-5pm searching for a property management company to help find a buyer for the 1st house. Not a single person i spoke with was interested since it was a lease option, i called every company i could find. Several hours into it i called Brian to let him know the status to which he responded- 'You're just lazy! Stop ****ing around and get to work!' Finally that evening I told him I was tired of all the abuse. At first he said 'I'm not abusing you' and i let him know its not ok to yell, swear at me and call me names. To which he responded 'Ok you're on your own, I'm done. Not kidding.' This was in the middle of the second deal (before the seller rescinded) and I had no idea how to do the final closing with the contracts etc., I was devastated. The next morning he changed his mind and completed the paperwork.

6. The following week when I finally found someone to find a buyer for the first deal, Brian did not want them to see the contracts he used (which was a big red flag for them, they’ve been in the business for awhile and that was a first), so he insisted on sending them snippets of it. They were supposed to go to the house on a Sunday so that Saturday he was going to forward them the parts of contract he wanted them to see. He never did. I told him they needed them by Sunday morning, he said it would be there in their inbox at 7am. It wasn't (he sent it later that afternoon). They ended up having to cancel the day as a result. So i told them to use their own contracts going forward. He was so angry at me for that that he threatened to call and tell the seller this company was engaged in illegal acts, which was completely untrue. That would have killed the deal I worked so hard to find and he knew it.

It was odd that he would be so negligent in getting them the paperwork in the first place because he would say to me on a regular basis 'If you say you're going to do something and you don't follow through, you'd better be dead or unconscious.'

7. If i was 2-3 minutes late to a call with him he would give me a very long lecture (once it was 45 min to be exact and other times he would refuse to take my call, even in cases when I was finishing up a call with a prospect) about how i would never be a successful business leader. He was a real stickler for time. However, my first appointment to go see the seller, he was so late getting the contracts to me, wouldn't let me fix them myself even though his computer was not working and mine was..i could've fixed them in 10 minutes. I kept saying 'Brian PLEASE let me do it, i need to leave!' And he would yell 'Shut up! Just shut up and let me do this.' By the time he finished I was going to be 45 minutes late, to my FIRST appointment. I was a total nervous wreck, it was one of the worst days ever. He stayed on the phone with me while I drove trying to calm me down as I was a basketcase.

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All in all, working with Brian made me dread real estate investing and especially dread working with him. I didn’t mention how he would go through contracts line by line with me, yelling at me the whole time as I would read each line and he would edit. I foolishly endured this kind of treatment from him daily. And I have most of the texts to back all of this up as that was our main method of communication besides phone.

Aside from all the unprofessionalism, bad business practices, verbal abuse, and wanting half the profits for 100% of my work and efforts(!?!?), technically and according to his refund policy, I am absolutely owed a $7000 refund. He never indicated we went beyond our coaching hours nor did he charge for additional time as he does past the 100 hour mark. And again, that is all because we went from coach/student to co-company owners- upon his suggestion when he realized I am very good on the phone and not afraid to make cold calls. If I were to make money between now and July it would have nothing to do with him nor be a result of working with him. Which is one more reason why I should not have to wait until the 12 month mark to be refunded.

Just to clarify, Brian and 'stripe' don't want to refund me AT ALL, let alone make me wait until July (the 12-month mark). I realized in re-reading this that point is not very clear.

Please note, we went over the 100 hours I signed up for because he invited me to become his business partner (bold added for emphasis) and we were on the phone quite regularly after that. I sent an email requesting a refund and he responded with:

"Hi Marni,   Yes it has not been 12 months on your contract yet, and you are well over 100 hours of my time (maximum on the contract) for me to assist your REI business.   The reason I gambled with my time with you is I thought both of us could build a company together regarding lease options and land contracts in the midwest where these seller financing tools are common place.  And I did this without a JV  agreement in place.   I have been working to get "boots on the ground" in OH, MI, IN, PA and a few others.  I am using my contacts with BP and other sources to get these affiliates signed up.   I can imagine you are discouraged!  Putting a lot of time into a project and not getting a good financial result, being vulnerable without help is really hard, I know."  

I followed up with this final email (3rd party names changed) to which he never responded (and he still did not take down the website until several months later when contacted by the credit card company):

Hi Brian,

It was actually being called dingbat more times than I could count, getting yelled at regularly, told I was 'lazy' and to 'stop f*cking around and get to work' during the 6 hours straight I spent on the phone trying to find a prop manager to handle the Smith's house, threatening to call Jane and tell her the company I brought in was doing illegal activities (before you even had the facts, turns out they're not) which of course would have killed the deal after I had worked on it for a month+, reading me the riot act for just under an hour if I was 1-2 min late for a call (even though you made me 45 min late for my appt. with the Smith's messing with the contracts, when i could have done it in 5 min because my computer was working fine and yours wasn't..i kept offering and you kept saying 'shut up'), telling me to shut up all the time, not sending the contracts to the Evergreen folks as you said you would, then refusing to take any responsibility for it or discuss it at all even though according to you if I don't follow through w what I say i'm going to do I better be dead or unconscious. Lastly, the pay structure with JB was so completely confusing he ended up pulling out. When I told you I felt I was being abused and all the yelling and name calling was inappropriate your response was 'Ok I'm done', followed by 'not kidding' in the middle of finishing JB's contracts. I believe you are a poser, bipolar and narcissistic (always claiming to be the best of the best, even though the contracts for both deals were riddled with errors we had to amend, which ended up being incredibly embarrassing, then telling me to 'fix it Marni').    Kindly take down the website associated with my LLC and any ads you have up to find a prop manager for me. Flushing that 7k down the toilet would have been a better use of my time than the endless hours spent just to be verbally abused and completely discouraged from doing this business.