Business coaches are people that advise and guide business owners in the operating and growing of their businesses. They can be quite helpful, particularly to entrepreneurs. However, scammers posing as business coaches take advantage of trusting people by selling worthless services to their unwary victims. I have reported on variations of this scam numerous times in the past, but it is timely again with the FTC’s settlement of charges against the operators of Ganadores Online and Ganadores Inversiones Bienes Raices. These scams targeted Spanish speaking people through false and deceptive advertising that touted its “infallible system” for business and real estate investments that they promised would provide financial independence, however their victims, who paid thousands of dollars received no training or mentoring and made no money from the “infallible system.” Customer refunds of the victims were denied.
The scams targeted the Hispanic community with its marketing and sales material all written in Spanish, but the fine print contracts were all in English to hide the scammers true intent. The FTC ha settled its lawsuits against Ganadores and its principals permanently bans the defendant from any business coaching in the future and requires the defendants to turn over assets to be used to reimburse victims. The settlement is waiting for final approval by a judge which is expected soon. When further details become available as to payment of refunds to victims, I will post that information on Scamicide.
TIPS
Before hiring the services of a business coach, you may want to find out what helpful advice you can get for free through government agencies such as the Small Business Administration. http://www.sba.gov/starting-managing-business
If you do decide to hire a business coach, you should find out if there are any complaints filed against him or her. An easy way to do this is to just do a search engine search in which you look up the person’s name with the words “scam” or “complaint” and see what comes up. Also, be wary of paying up front for the services of business coaches before they provide any services.
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