Scott Yancy Abundance EDU Lied about what was promised to get your money South Jordan Utah

On Sunday May 31^st my husband, and I were watching our Sunday morning Charles Stanley program. After Dr. Stanley's service was over I flipped through the channels and came upon a program called Real Estate Investing, featuring Flipping Vegas stars, Scott and Amy Yancy. My husband and I had decided earlier this year to begin investing in real estate to boost our income and this program interested us. We had already taken seminars through Remax Advantage Plus and Minnesota Realtor Investors group. In addition to that, I had purchased numerous books on real estate investing, Land Trusts, forming LLC's, and financing real estate just to name a few. We weren't going into this seminar blind. The seminar advertized by Scott and Amy Yancy said that it would provide further education to help those interested to get started. My husband and I agreed that it was free so it didn't hurt to learn more. I called and registered for the seminar on Friday June 5^th at 11:00. Upon arriving to the seminar we were greeted by numerous individuals. We were seated in the front row and the presentation began. A video of Scott and Amy Yancy was shown first. In the video Scott and Amy congratulated the audience on wanting to better their lives, but ultimately there had to be a deep reason why. Amy said her ultimate reason why, was to help the wounded vets by donating a rehabbed house to a vet. Amy cried and Scott said we all have to have a reason why. A speaker came to the front after the video was over and began. The speaker was named, Steve. Steve began to tell us about Scott and Amy Yancy's partnering with Abundance Edu to help people get a leg up on investing in this hot market. Now my husband and I, along with a fellow investor had previously bid on many houses to flip, but were were outbid and left frustrated because auction houses were coming into our area, buying foreclosed houses in bulk and selling them to auction houses, where the prices got bid up and priced any profit right out of the house. Listening to Steve he confirmed what we had already learned about not being able to get access to houses or deals. Steve went on to say that, if we invested 2,194.00 for further advanced training that we would get access to “hundreds of houses that were cherrypicked and bought off tapes of the major banks”, and he also showed us examples in our area. Steve clearly implied that his company had access to deals in our area.Steve also said that when we received that training we would also get access to financing that had better interest rates and a reasonable transaction fee. This made sense to us because we knew that if we could get a first chance at these foreclosed houses we could get going in our future in real estate investing. Toward the end of Steve's presentation a woman named Tish, came up to give her testimony as a student of Scott and Amy Yancy's. Tish was from Wisconsin and said her reason why for investing in training was that her daughter, who was a nurse, had twins and developed complications following the births leaving her unable to work. Tish and her husband were desperate to help their daughter so they took the $2,194 dollar training and did five deals. Steve kept saying that those deals were waiting for us if we put a little skin in the game ($2,194) and received the further training. We decided to take the training. We believed, without a doubt, that what was promised (the leads on houses and financing) would be given to us if we took this training. We had to pay in two installments $1,000 down and then $1,194 the following Tuesday, because I had to transfer the money out of savings and make sure that I had no debits coming out that might cause overdrafts. Our three day real estate retreat and training was scheduled for Friday-Sunday June 12th-14^th, 2015. Meanwhile, we read through all of the preliminary materials provided, glowing reviews, wholesaling previews and about some of their other small add-on services. Nothing raised a red flag and we both believed what was promised to us.

On Friday June 12^th we arrived at the Hyatt Regency, downtown Minneapolis by 8:30 to get checked in for our seminar. We were greeted by four men: Darin Knowles, Gavin Satio, Rob O'born and Brandon Hudson. We were directed to Brandon where he gave my husband and me a name tag and information to fill out. The form that was given us asked what credit cards we had, the balance, IRA balance , any equity on our house and if we had fellow friends, or investors that had money and how much. We chalked this up to the fact that sometimes in real estate you have to get creative in financing deals. We were seated at tables outside the seminar to fill out this paper work. We sat next to a kind , friendly gentleman from the Caribbean who was there with his business partner from Minnesota. This man told us that he and his partner (we will call him Tomas and her Janet) had gone to many seminars that they learned quite a bit from, but one seminar, put on by Flipping Boston stars was a scam to get you to pay $30,000 more for their real estate training. My husband and I just said “oh, wow, that's crazy!” Just about that time, Gavin, one of the seminar consultants came over to us and told us to get up from the table so that others could sit down and fill out their information. Later Tomas told us that Garth came over to him and said “who do you think you are bothering those people?” Tomas then replied, “you don't know me, what gives you the right to say such a thing?” About that time Tomas' business partner, Janet came along and it was time to be seated in the seminar room. We sat down at the second to front table. Garth came to the front of the room and said that where he was from they had a custom of rubbing their hands together when greeting others. He told us to rub our hands together to welcome our main teacher, Deno Febrezio. We were rubbing our hands and Garth noticed one younger guy not rubbing his hands. He called him out and demanded that he go to the back to talk to his assigned advisor, Darin, because everyone had to participate, and if you didn't you weren't a doer. Deno came to the front of the room and began by saying, “if you are not committed you could leave, and in fact, there would be many who will leave because they are afraid of taking action.” He also said that we weren't allowed to ask questions during the seminar but to wait until breaks and talk to our assigned advisor. Deno went on to say that he knew this first day of the seminar there would be skeptics, but he “wouldn't tolerate it for long because I am sick and tired of non-doers.” So that set the tone right there, we were losers, if we weren't doers. Deno showed the class how he began his journey; over leveraged in a house he couldn't afford with two kids and another on the way. He said his sister was in the same situation and they decided to have both families share rent on a house. His wife, Melissa, was upset by this and it prompted him to look into buy and hold rental houses, and here he was today giving presentations for Scott and Amy and living in a gated community. The morning part of the seminar was all about changing your mindset, to not let negative people sway you into not bettering your future. We were given a short morning break, but not before meeting in a group with our assigned advisor Darin. We were already a bit tired and Darin kept talking about if you don't make a change now, you never will. My husband and I took a needed break and returned to the room. Deno then began to tell us that we wouldn't be able to get access to these tapes of houses bought in bulk by their company unless you were willing to be a doer and sign up for their Diamond training at $29,997 dollars. Our jaws nearly hit the floor. Deno then became very aggressive in his hard sell the rest of the morning. Deno also went on to talk about how we needed to get more credit, because that was considered good investor debt. Before lunch Darin came to the front of the room and gave us a script to call our credit card companies and raise our limits and try to get lower interest rates. I wasn't too comfortable with this because I knew it might ding our credit a bit pulling reports because we had credit pulled not long ago for pre-qualification of funds for buying houses to rehab. My husband and I did the exercise and presented the information to Darin. After lunch, Deno began the hard sell again and began to really insult people about not using credit cards or the equity in their houses or IRA's and it was actually better to pay that small early withdrawl penalty fee on an IRA so you could make better interest on being a Diamond member of their company and being a hard money lender in their pool of money. In the afternoon break my husband and I were tired and shocked at the bold faced lie that we had been sold and to ask for more money from the students. After the break, Deno briefly covered wholesaling contracts. There were two gentlemen, who didn't understand, a black man behind us and an older white guy who looked to have had a stroke. Deno allowed their questions and belittled and talked down to them both! I was shocked at the rudeness “what don't you get? “ “How can you not understand this?” Then Deno went into his whole talk about not taking action and that he was really, really sick and tired of basically lipservice. The whole atmosphere was very intimidating and threatening feeling as if they were a mob of goons who were going to get our money because we wouldn't succeed without their advanced training. Deno made us repeat him over and over about when the advanced training was and where it was (Las Vegas, once a month). Then he went on to say that we all need mentors and there was additional fee for that ($18,000!) called “Boots on The Ground”. By the end of the day 6:30 or so the seminar had finally wrapped up. My husband and I were exhausted and blindsided, all that we had been promised was NOT being delivered without an additional $30,000! On top of that Darin told the class before we left to go onto Credit Karma, pull our credit score and apply for more cards!My husband and I got up to leave and were barely out the door when Tomas came to us and said “something happened I have to talk to you.” He began to speak and I noticed Darin come out and look at Tomas. I told Tomas, “let's go outside”. Before we went outside Darin said “see you tomorrow”. My husband and I said “yep, see you then.” Outside Tomas began to tell us that on lunchbreak, Janet had called her husband to tell him about the $30,000 upsell and he was very upset. Tomas tried to calm Janet and she walked away. Garth then approached him and said “You aren't a man, you didn't even pay for the seminar, Janet did (Tomas did offer her half, but she declined him).” Tomas looked at Garth and said “man, what gives you the right to say that?” And Garth replied”You (Tomas) are no man, you don't know sh*t, you aren't deserving as a business partner to Janet.” After Tomas told me that I felt it was total racial intimidation. Tomas was upset and stunned as we were. We gave Tomas our number, I recommended free resources for learning more about real estate, he thanked us and we wished each other well. After leaving and getting home we were livid. All day it was as if they were purposely fatiguing us putting us on the ropes until we committed to that $30,000. There are so many negative things that happened and I tried to make this as clear and brief as possible. But ultimately, we WERE NOT given what was promised for $2,194 which was access to houses in our area and clear financing.

After further investigation, this company has had many names, and on top of that I have been continually contacted by them even though I have said I wanted a refund and to STOP calling me. Wells Fargo did not get my money back and now we are out $2,194 and I have been physically stressed because of this.