In brief, Richie contacted us and claimed to be a food broker that represented a very large list of national and regional retail grocery and convenience store chains.
Richie claimed that he would represent our brand and present it to gain authorizations for purchase from these large retail chain buyers that he currently has reltionships with. He said that he requires a fee up front of $3,500. He also claimed that he would sell a minimum of $50,000 of goods within the first 12 months, or he would refund the money.
In the 10 months since we engaged Richie, he has not presented our brand to a single retail chain, he has repeatedly requested that we send him more and more samples and he has changed his phone number 4 times. We were also informed by a number of people in the market that he has taken the free samples we've sent him and he has tried selling them to small local convenience store chains for cash.
He recently claimed that he had an order of nearly $10,000 pending and asked for credit terms. We requested some standard credit info from him, at which point he claimed we violated our agreement and stopeed returning all forms of communication.
As of today, his web site is down and he has blocked our phone number.