Complaint Review: Cash Advance America - San Jose California

I smelled this one coming.It started when I got initisal calls from two different individuals with heavy East Indian accents, both named "Jack" asking for all the same information. They called and said my loan application had been approved for up top $10,000. I didn't submit any application. I decided to spoof them back,

They asked for personal and bank info which I gave*. Then they had me call a "loan specialist" with a "reference number". I did so, and I was told he was just "verifying" my information, when in fact he was trying to trick me into providing it. After giving it all, he told me that I would get $10,000 today, with a payoff of 44 payments of $250 each. That's $11,000, or 10% total interest and fees over almost 8 years.

When I agreed, he told me that all I had to do was prove I had the cash on hand to be able to make a payment, but would not be asked to make that payment, just prove I could. To do this I just had to go to a store and purchase a throw-away Visa card worth $250, and call them with the receipt number. Then I could use the card any way I wished including retreiving all my money immediately from an ATM.

Yeah right. By the time I could get an ATM to respond to this brand new, as yet not fully processed card, they would have withdrawn the money. So I strung them along for 4 hours and listened to them get more and more frantic. Finally one of the crooks tried to tell me the other one was a "fraud person". The other one called and said if I did not provide the number soon my application would be cancelled.

* At this point I took steps to protect myself. I notified my bank of the incident. They gave me a new account, with automatic forwarding from the old one for all authorized transactions. If you provide your critical information to them or others, call your bank to get at least a freeze on the account if not a replacement account. It is better not to give it. After all they should have it on an application and don't need to verify every single blank and box. But I knew I could have my bank switch accounts, so I used it.

My next action was to report the incident to the Federal Trade Commission. This is a second must if you find yourself in this situation. The FTC has teeth and they use them, but not unless they hear from people enough to consider this a serious situation.

I spoke with them again and said I was leaving to buy the card as soon as they gave me their mailing address. They gave me 102 Crompton Avenue, San JOE'S California. They actually pronounced it as if spelled Jay Oh Ee apostrophe Ess, as in Eat At Joe's. The address is fake.

The number that they always called from was 818-813-5617. They gave me other numbers to return calls at: 818-945-1877 and 818-813-6037. All these numbers have been reported here by many others for at least 6 months.These show as being in Burbank. They have not changed them in all that time. Towards the end I received two call from the other phone phone number also in other reports, 424-245-6138, which appears as from Beverly Hills, but didn't answer

Finally, I took one last call from the 6037 number. When asked if I got the card, I told them no, I'd been too busy reporting them to the FTC. Then I had to explain what the FTC was. As soon as he understood he hung up. I suspect I've been taken off their list. And when the 6138 number called I simply said "Federal Trade Commission" and waited. By the delay before he hung up I suspect he was a little surpised.

Pay attention and protect yourself. Report to your bank, and the FTC any activity like this. Have fun if you like. Play stupid, keep trying to talk at the same time as them, then apologize, then do it again, talk back to them in an equally thick but imaginary accent, and so forth. But DO REPORT IT.