Capital Marketing Pros Looking for Referral Agents for Visa MasterCard Charging 'Registration Fee' of $895 Nationwide

They've been contacting me for a few weeks - different numbers, different names. I suspect they use an auto-dialer now which shows numbers from different states.

I was told by the first 'agent' that he'd been making money with Capital Marketing Pros (capitalmarketingpros.net) for 6 months. He had a website and everything. I asked a lot of questions, especially when they hit me with the $895 'licensing fee'. When I asked for the licensing authority, they couldn't answer the question.

They had me navigate to the usa.visa.com FAQ page and showed me the yellow highlighted portion regarding the registration of third party agents ( http://usa.visa.com/download/merchants/tpa-registration-program-faqs.pdf). They use internet postings from Visa to seem legitimate. They even had me go to RipOffReport.com and search on their company name to prove they weren't trying to rip me off!

I read through the FAQs while they talked at me and I found that only large entities register for these statuses with Visa. I questioned them as to their status based on the FAQs and they couldn't answer those questions either. When I asked why I needed a license to register as a referral agent (a completely undefinded term in the FAQ), they said it was due to a Federal law. When I asked them which Federal law it was, they said they needed to confirm my questions and they'd get back to me.

I talked to at least 4 people on this 2 hour phone call. At the end of it, we established that I wanted to know what specifically the $895 paid for (either a licensing authority or an itemized breakdown of costs, fees, etc) and the Federal law that required Visa to recruit referrers as third party agents.

I had several more calls, went on vacation, then got another call this morning from Mark Taylor. This time the $895 was for an agency registration for Visa and the Federal law (still unnamed) provided a $10K penalty if Visa didn't recruit referrals through their third party agents. There is no Federal law - this is a penalty imposed by Visa on Third Party Agents if they fail to comply with Visa's rules. Here's what a couple of hours of research revealed:

1. For a company that is at least 6 months old, their website was created via GoDaddy on March 11, 2015 (confirmed on whois.net)

2. They are not listed on The Visa Global Registry of Service Providers (http://www.visa.com/splisting/index.html)

3. I found a Bank of America posting that specifically states that referrals/referrers do not register as agents (no registration no fees)

https://merch.bankofamerica.com/documents/10162/112534/VISA-MASTERCARD_THIRD_PARTY_REGISTRATION_REQUIREMENTS_-_5-1-2013.pdf

4. There is no BBB listing for them, so they must have just gotten started again.

5. Their IP address shows them in Houston, TX but that could just be a GoDaddy address.

6. The source code on their Contact Page contains no actual email address - hit submit button and it goes nowhere

The caller claims to be Mark Taylor. The phone number is a VOIP out of Sarasota, FL:

Area Code:941 Carrier:Bandwidth.com Full Number:941-363-1942 City/State:Sarasota, FL

This is a list of the legitimate webpages I found while researching their claims:

Bank of America
https://merch.bankofamerica.com/documents/10162/112534/VISA-MASTERCARD_THIRD_PARTY_REGISTRATION_REQUIREMENTS_-_5-1-2013.pdf

Visa Global Registry of Service Providers (Including TPAs and TPSs)
http://www.visa.com/splisting/index.html

Visa FAQs
http://usa.visa.com/download/merchants/tpa-registration-program-faqs.pdf

Visa Glossary
http://usa.visa.com/download/merchants/tpa-glossary.pdf

I stopped short of giving them my credit card information. And, since they're using ripoffreport.com to prove their 'legitimacy', I thought they should have a presence here. I'll also be reporting this to the BBB and the Texas AG.