Complaint Review: Nations Direct Capital - Frank Antonelli - Chevy Chase Maryland

Frank Antonelli with Nations Direct Capital, has greatly disappointed me and my client. This individual claims he has been doing commercial lending for many years, which for starters his company was registered on August 16th 2012, and he doesn't seem to have any references. I should have looked at those red flags in the beginning of our process, so I partially blame myself for the waste of my and clients time. 

We engaged in a transitional process for a commercial lending deal due to his advisement that no upfront cost or fees will be incurred and that he will incurred all the cost upfront without charging upfront fees. Well our process begin and when it came to the Letter of Interest (LOI) he provided to my client, he requested an non-binding refundable engagement fee of $25k. At that point myself and the borrower was confused and disappointed at the request from Mr. Antonelli, for which he had already stated no upfront fees will be incurred. The financing was needed and the client was in a tight predicament that he felt desperate to move forward, but only because I asked Mr Antonelli to lower the fee, but instead he split it. So we decided to go forth with the split in fee in order to see the honesty and legitimacy of Mr. Antonelli; and my company was going to provide the first half of the split. I advise Mr. Antonelli that the client was not willing to put any upfront fees due to prior incidents and lost of monies on same request. He advise that he didn't care where the funds come from as long as he received it. Mr. Antonelli also stipulated due to the split of fee, that we had to provide his travel arrangement to visit the property and meet the client. We agreed, but the travel was decided to remit an extra amount of $2,500 to Mr. Antonelli for him to arrange the travel himself. He stated that the travel was arranged and that he was arriving at the destination at a certain time and had an accommodation at a certain hotel. Unfortunately we couldn't provide the first half of the split ($15K) and the $2,500 in a timely manner, for which was advise. Mr. Antonelli still decided to go forth, since he had already booked the travel arrangements. We were delighted of the decision to go forth. Once he arrived at the destination, he had arranged a meeting with the client at a certain time, for which he halted due to non-remittance of the $15k. But he did not advise the client of the reason of his procrastination, but rather advise him that he was on another meeting with another client which had already paid him the fees he requires.  I advise Mr. Antonelli, that the wire was going to be remitted but to not halt the meeting with the client for which he wanted to feel more comfortable with the transaction. Mr. Antonelli did not returned any of the my or clients phone calls, left the client waiting at the location he advised, and when I called the hotel he supposedly had booked, there was no records in the hotel manifest for either Frank Antonelli or his company, Nations Direct Capital. Right there a big Red Flag went up, and I started calling him and requesting phone calls to be returned. The only manner of which he responded was via text messages and email. At no point of time did he ever returned our phone calls! Later when asked through email his confirmation of his accommodation, he stated that he was accommodated in an associates's clients house in another city.

What a disappointment, waste of time and energy that we experienced dealing with Mr. Antonelli. The client was optimistic on the financing and wanted to still move forward, and I advise Anotnelli of this, but stipulated on having a call returned to the client/borrower from Mr. Antonelli and also meet face to face in order to ease all of our doubts and insecurities we had. Sure enough, neither a phone call or a response of any kind through any source of communication was returned till this day. Luckily we did not loose any money, but did loose valuable time. Fortunately we didn't get ripped-off for which the funds were never remitted. But if you can see the scenario seemed to be leading towards that direction. So I wanted to advise anyone of his manner of business. And if you have had any prior positive engagements or closings with this individual, please advise, for which we can then send an apology and disregard all of our negative perception of him. Until then, you are warned!