Need some insight

Good story and you handled it exactly right! Those brokers needed to know that they were being robbed. Were there any prosecutions?
 
Not that I know of. Basically the DA was involved, and Alain Pinel had their attorney as well as a private investigator, so I pretty much took a step back and licked my wounds and moved on. Not much more I could do. A while later the private investigator called me to fill me in as a courtesy. He had a hell of a time finding the guy and tracking him down, real slippery character.

A few years ago I checked online and they were still in business, but had an F rating on the BBB. From talking with a few other people, it sounds like they had run this scam before in the past. I just checked the BBB. They are still in business, still the same owner, and they appear to somehow have cleared their complaints on BBB and have a neutral rating.
 
Not that I know of. Basically the DA was involved, and Alain Pinel had their attorney as well as a private investigator, so I pretty much took a step back and licked my wounds and moved on. Not much more I could do. A while later the private investigator called me to fill me in as a courtesy. He had a hell of a time finding the guy and tracking him down, real slippery character.

A few years ago I checked online and they were still in business, but had an F rating on the BBB. From talking with a few other people, it sounds like they had run this scam before in the past. I just checked the BBB. They are still in business, still the same owner, and they appear to somehow have cleared their complaints on BBB and have a neutral rating.

Wow...and selling crap insurance, they are still in BIZ ???

Amazing!
 
They weren't selling crap insurance, they were selling crap advertising. A listing/referral program more or less that would send them business based on advertising run.

Basically the agreements that they had me have the agents sign had a bunch of confusing legalese that basically said the company never had to run any ads whatsoever. So, based on these contracts, it could be argued that the company never did anything wrong. Furthermore, each sale was relatively small $2-$5,000 so it wasn't enough for any one victim to justify launching an aggressive suit, or class action. There are two things to keep in mind. 1 - the advertising industry has (or at least had, for the 10 years I was in it before my exit 8 years ago) virtually no regulation. 2 - When you sign up for advertising, there is often fine print saying the company isn't actually obligated to run the ads or send you any business whatsoever. That way, if you sign up for tv advertising, newspaper advertising, whatever, and they go out of business or can't deliver the ads, they aren't subject to a bunch of lawsuits. That's the concept, at least. It also makes it easier for them to screw you.

Advertising is a pretty slimy cut-throat business overall. I'm glad to be out.
 
This was attempted and is partly the reasons Green Choices Insurance was created.
A cannabis-based insurance company for individual protections
 
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