by Structured Settlement Watchdog
Today we go round the world in colored squares. Red Square is in Moscow and there you have St. Basil's Cathedral. Green Square is fast becoming Sydney Australia's most exciting cosmopolitan playground. Yellow Square is a hostel in Rome. Brown Square is a small green space in downtown Newburyport, Massachusetts. Blue Square is a hotel in Amsterdam
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Black Square Financial falsely represents to structured settlement annuitants that "you can take control of your policy". That's a Prime Fib, with a loaded "faked potato" and "frazzled bunyans". How can you control something that you don't own?
To give a window to my serious concerns, read my May 10, 2020 blog, wherein I reported about an absolutely horrible Texas case that Jarrod Freeborn, one of the co-founders of Black Square Financial was involved with. It has to be one of the worst cases of predation I've reported about. See FL Company Preyed on Mentally Disabled Man's Structure and Caused Alleged Loss of Government Benefits
To say the least, from the Court record, Jarrod Freeborn's role in communicating with M.H., a mentally disabled man, with the severity of afflictions described therein and partially reproduced below, was absolutely shocking.
Read the blog, Read the court decision and then ask yourself, what kind of judgment did/does Freeborn have to proceed with communicating with a person afflicted in such a way? If you were Freeborn and you had this information, would you proceed or back off, like another factoring company did?
M.H., was described in the court record as (among other things)
- "M.H. is a forty-year-old man suffering from chronic schizophrenia and mental retardation. CR 948-49. These conditions are permanent, and M.H. has suffered from this condition his entire life. CR 948, 951
- As a result of his condition, M.H.’s cognitive abilities are extremely limited:
– he cannot live independently, and requires assistance with the most basic elements of daily life, such as bathing, changing his clothes and handling money;
– his inability to work and take care of himself is the product of M.H.’s mental abilities, which are akin to those of a small child;
among other problems, M.H. has an extremely poor memory, he thinks and acts slowly and even when given the same information time and time again, he is unable to comprehend and remember it;
– at most, M.H. can follow simple, one-step instructions, but shows little understanding of his surroundings or what he is doing;
– he is unable to remember even simple tasks that had multiple steps, being fired from a job at a car wash just days after being hired because he could not remember that he was supposed to do;
– M.H. has little ability to read, and no ability to retain or understand what he has read;"
"Freeborn was described by Fairlawn as being an “independent sales contractor” responsible for arranging for the sale of M.H.’s annuity; it was Freeborn who communicated with M.H. on Fairlawn’s behalf. CR 1047. However, the question of who Freeborn worked for exactly is not entirely clear: according to Freeborn, it was not Fairlawn that provided him with the “leads” about people who might have an annuity to sell, but rather Rising Capital, another of Ferrante’s entities. CR 1262 (26:5-28:13. In fact, the comings and goings of the various companies Ferrante and other defendants formed, used, rearranged and then dissolved confused even Freeborn, who worked for them". Compare CR 1260 (19:14-21:5 (“Rising Capital as the company involved in the M.H. deal) with CR 1263 1(31:1-31 (Freeborn unfamiliar with the name of Fairlawn; he excused his unfamiliarity by saying “We used a lot of different entities”).
On May 7, 2020, the Appeals Court Affirmed in favor of M.H. Read Memorandum Opinion here Download 2020-09-19-00306-cv Fairlawn Assets LLC John Ferrante Jarrod Freeborn v Booker
Photo credit: Red Square photo, by Julius Silver – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46508155. Others Wikipedia.
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