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Seneca One "The Disruptor" | Structured Settlement Secondary Market Slammed

by Structured Settlement Watchdog

Seneca One has undermined the entire structured settlement secondary market in a single tweet that quotes hedge fund titan Paul Tudor Jones  "Don't focus on making money, focus on protecting what you have".

For many structured settlement annuitants, their structured settlement payments are their primary or sole source of income.   Yet unregulated and often unlicensed hucksters working for structured settlement factoring companies bait their victims with fanciful schemes that make no financial sense.

Instead of protecting what they have, structured settlement annuitants are lured into selling their valuable tax-free income asset for pennies on the dollar

National Association of Settlement Purchasers' Fluffy 2017 Letter to Consumers is Without Substance

by Structured Settlement Watchdog

The simmering NASP bouillabaisse gurgles like the bullfrog Jeremiah,  the morning after a "Three Chili Dog NIght" out.

21 months after one of its members financially raped a young African American New Yorker for over $1.4 million in profit spread and continues to this day to make wholly misleading statements that it delivers maximum payouts, the National Association of Settlement Purchasers delivered this nothing burger.

All is not accurate on the NASP lilypad 

"Firms that join NASP are required to disclose the details of their business practices by providing an approximation of how many transfers they complete in a calendar year, explaining how the company finances its acquisition of structured settlements, and describing how the company markets its services to customers".  NASP website annual letter January 2017.

• Strong doubts are surely raised about NASP's review of Novation Funding.  In the same time frame as the $1.4M financial rape.  Novation Funding skanked another African-American New Yorker, with an Allstate structured settlement for a discount rate that meant a much lower payout than he would have received had he just used Allstate's Advanced Funding Exchange Notice that was in his policy. Novation lacked the ethics to get anywhere near the Allstate rate.  Novation lies in wait by suggesting you sell your structured settlement to go to Bora Bora, or an interest rate fire sale.  Novation Funding has been the industry poster child for false, misleading and predatory advertising,  in my opinion. 
• Strong doubts are surely raised about NASP's review of Seneca One. Seneca One recently withdrew from NASP. While Seneca One was a member it was notorious for creating official sounding  fake agencies to generate leads for its business and, while operating as Albanoni LLC,  for hosing Oklahoma resident Lauren Nesbitt for a $1 million profit spread while advertising " your trusted source".
• Strong doubts are surely raised about NASP's review of a certain member's soliciting structured settlement annuitants, including a young African-American single father of two toddlers and an Allstate structured settlement,  with statements about inappropriate investments and using investment projections that could have potentially violated securities laws.
  
• Strong doubts about review of the NASP member companies involved in Kyle Stibb case
• Strong doubts about review of NASP member Liberty Settlement Funding's " Don't Miss The Boat" ads, a dishonest targeting of immigrants with the false premise that a factoring discount is a good deal.  More dubious advertising by Liberty Settlement Funding

It's simply not enough for NASP to say they review a company's marketing because its clear that either (1)  they're not doing so; or (2), that they are conducting such reviews based on incomplete disclosures and/or (3) they are aware and professing willful ignorance

 

Have a Structured Settlement? Beware "Settlement Accounting" Stunt

by Structured Settlement Watchdog®

Beware the "Settlement Accounting" stunt, the Maryland Cauldron of Deceit's latest fur ball.

More nonsense from Seneca One

Get a load of Seneca One's shady publicity stunt using official sounding words that belies what Seneca One actually does.  Seneca One continues to send mailings out under the trade name  " Settlement Accounting" (inset) that I first reported about in June 2016. Um, what does that imply?

What is Accounting?

According to Merriam-Webster, accounting is:

1.   the system of recording and summarizing business and financial transactions and analyzing, verifying, and reporting the results; also :  the principles and procedures of this system. The skill, system, or job of keeping the financial records of a business or person — often used before another noun

   a: work done in accounting or by accountants b :  an instance of applied accounting or of the settling or presenting of accounts

Until you read the small print and find out that it's Seneca One lurking in the bushes, someone reading the name might falsely assume that there is a need for accounting if you are receiving payments from a structured settlement. It's total nonsense.  Just like these other Seneca One marketing schemes I've reported about that are total nonsense created to suck unsuspecting people in under false pretenses.

• National Structured Settlement Registry
• Structured Settlement Registry?
• "Structured Settlement Processing Group"  Is No "Deutsche Treat" | Label is Misleading to Customers
• Settlement Purchasers' Sleazy Direct Mail Solicitations Exposed | NASP Members The Worst Offenders
• Seneca One Finance is The Enemy of Structured Settlements

A structured settlement's simplicity is such that if you are receiving payments from a structured settlement that you received as part of the settlement of your legal claim or you inherited a structured settlement from the death of a spouse, parent or child, there is:

• No need to register the structured settlement
• No need to have "settlement accounting" for the structured settlement. Payments are income tax free if payments are for damages arising from personal physical injury, physical sickness or wrongful death, or workers' compensation claims.

It's a shame that Seneca One, the Bethesda MD member of the National Association of Settlement Purchasers has shown, for almost a decade, such a proficiency at exploiting the lack of regulation by soliciting consumers with what they don't do, instead of highlighting what they actually do.

 

 

 

 

Structured Settlement Registry? It's Just Cash Now Pusher Seneca One

by Structured Settlement Watchdog®

Is a "Structured Settlement Registry" coming near you soon? 

Maybe, considering that an individual with a Seneca One email address has just registered structuredsettlementregistry(dot)com on May 22, 2014, with GoDaddy.

Let's nip this structured settlement secondary market scam in the bud consumers:

1. Despite the official sounding term, there is no structured settlement registry. This appears to be a putative phishing scheme hatched by Seneca One, a Bethesda MD based cash now pusher, and member of the National Association of Settlement Purchasers at the time of publication, to obtain your private information.
   
2. You do not have to register your structured settlement anywhere. So don't.
   
3. Keep your structured  settlement information to yourself unless you enjoy being bothered with loads of unsolicited mailers and phone calls.
4. Steer clear of any website that includes the label structured settlement registry.

The Structured Settlement Watchdog® will continue to monitor the situation.

• Efforts by any secondary market company to generate leads using official sounding bogus entities will be "torpedoed".
• There should be no tolerance for it, in my opinion. Any research that we develop will be turned over to states' attorneys general and the Federal Trade Commission.

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Cash Now Pushers Not Paying Yet Continuing to Advertise "Cash Now?"

by Structured Settlement Watchdog

Settlement Quotes, LLC's Andrew Cravenho's  February 24, 2009 post will be of interest to Attorneys General and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Cravenho describes several recent instances consumers have written to him describing a process from structured settlement transfer companies JG Wentworth, Stone Street Capital and Seneca One that is anything but cash now.

That these cash now pushers (and many of their industry brethren) have the balls to continue to mislead the American consumer with cash now advertising knowing that there are cases like these out there is just the type of thing that the Federal truth in advertising laws were meant for.

"Structured Settlement Processing Group" is No "Deutsche Treat"!

by Structured Settlement Watchdog®

The Structured Settlement Processing Group bills itself as " a consumer education and information group of Bethesda's Seneca One, LLC,  and a self claimed, but unsubstantiated, "leading national purchaser of structured settlement payments". What it appears to be is basically a call center staffed by operators who hesitate to give a reference. What they did reveal is that the company's major investor is Deutsche Bank Group. How disappointing!

In a display of what clearly does not befit "a model of German engineering prowess", Seneca One, LLC, through mask of the "Structured Settlement Processing Group", continues to profit from a misleading name which suggests that it actually processes structured settlements, which IT DOES NOT DO, as opposed to structured settlement factoring transactions, which IT DOES DO. This author has confirmed that the company DOES NOT possess a New York life insurance license.

Seneca One, LLC is of course the company which was on the wrong end of a New York decision rejecting a structured settlement transfer,  that we covered in Factoring Smackdown 2, where a panel of factoring companies destroyed Seneca's wimpy offer to the tort victim.

Do the bloated profits that can be obtained from the structured settlement factoring deals that judges actually approve from Seneca One, LLC make it worth it for a global banking titan like Deutsche Bank to overlook the misleading advertising of the company?

New York Structured Settlements 101 "Awards v Settlements"

by John Darer CLU ChFC CSSC

In a recent post on its Structured Settlements Wire, DealFlow Media informed its readers about an otherwise newsworthy recent decision in New York where a factoring attempt was denied by the Court for failure to satisfy the "best interest test". Unfortunately DealFlow media made the pedestrian mistake of referring to certain structured settlement payments as "lump sum awards". That mistake is something one usually associates with "pay per posters!"

If it is to be a credible source of information its writers and editors will have to bone up on the reality that you cannot be awarded a structured settlement. A Court, jury or arbitration panel makes awards. A structured settlement is created as part of a compromise- "a meeting of the minds".  Of course, that's why it's called A SETTLEMENT! A structured annuity that is used to fund an award is called a structured judgment. In New York a structured judgment, pursuant to statutory guidelines in CPLR Articles 50A or 50B, would not contain lump sum future annuity payments.

Here's the DealFlow Media quote, with its error emphasized in shocking pink!

"In the third case, which was heard last month, Lebous took into account the previous transactions and disapproved the $100,000 payment that Ciemielewski was attempting to transfer to Lump Sum for $10,000, utilizing his staggered lump sum awards that included a $50,000 payment that is due on May 17, 2019, and one-half of a $100,000 payout that is due on May 17, 2024".   

Incidentally, our sources tell us that the market price for Cimielewski's cited payments is  AT LEAST 3 TIMES THE AMOUNT that Seneca One was willing to pay. WOW! How about a hand for the Honorable Judge Ferris D. Lebous?

The term "paternalistic" may be used derogatorily to characterize attitudes or political systems that are thought to deprive individuals of freedom and responsibility, only nominally serving their interests, while in fact pursuing another agenda. While some factoring brokers and companies might snort about New York Judges being "paternalistic", in doing his job Judge Lebous created an opportunity for at least an additional $20,000 to get into the tort victim's pocket.