JK Harris & Company ripoff North Charleston South Carolina

I wrote this letter to Jk Harris and Co. and received a phone call saying they were sending out a settlement offer and we would receive it by Feb. 8th. Today is the 10th. I called them today and they had no idea what I was talking about. I get passed from one person after another and still someone will have to return my call. We need help with this problem.

SUBJECT:
JK Harris and Co.
4995 Lacross Rd. Suite 1800
Charleston, SC 29406

My wife wrote you a letter some time back concerning an issue of 401k monies and the IRS. We were advised we would need to hire a lawyer or a tax specialist, which we did J.K. Harris & Co.

We retained the subject firm, hereinafter JKH, on April 13, 2005 to represent us to the IRS in order to settle a tax problem for the tax year 2000. We had met with a Mr. William Granzig in Fort Myers, FL who assured us they would be able to negotiate with the IRS and we could settle for substantially less than the approximately $17,000. (including interest & penalties) that we owed and hopefully less than $5000. Their fee was $1750.00, $500. down and $128.00 a month until paid in full. We signed all the request forms and a Power Of Attorney on that date.

We received a letter from the firm dated April 28, 2005 indicating they had assigned a Case Specialist, Ms. Aneika Chisolm, to cover our case. We had been assured we had nothing to worry about and just let them handle the case. She requested some additional and updated information at a later time which we supplied. As we received documentation from the IRS, we forwarded it to JKH for their action.

A Mr. Ron Riley, JKH, called on or about July 14, 2005. He had been in teleconference with the IRS and needed some updated data (prescription cost to current time). I talked to him for while and then my wife talked to him. We each gave him a brief on our health and financial situation which is poor. Mr. Reilly said he would submit an uncollectible recommendation and follow that up with an installment payment request and at a later date a request to remove the penalties.

According to the IRS on 10/5/05, they tried to contact Mr. Riley on April 21, 2005, left a voice mail on his phone answering service and never heard from him again. All the IRS needed was an updated cost of Prescription drug expense which we had provided to JKH within a day or two of the 7/14/05 date. We had tried to contact Mr. Riley and the JKH case specialist in the same time period with no success.

We received a letter from the IRS dated 8/11/05 indicating they had received our payment proposal (presumably submitted by Mr. Riley) and that we were to contact them within 7 days to confirm the proposal. We forwarded the correspondence to JKH after trying to contact them by phone. We found out, at that time, Ms. Chisolm was no longer our case specialist.

We received a letter from a Ms. Monika S. Chubb dated 8/29/09 indicating she was now our case specialist and requesting a new Power Of Attorney and assigning an 3 additional representatives to our case. We submitted the information by email and US mail the next day. We never heard from JKH again.

Tuesday the 4th of October I was checking our bank accounts to ascertain that my retirement checks had been deposited. Much to my chagrin I discovered the IRS had levied our checking and savings accounts and left them penniless. I called JKH immediately only to find out our case specialist was out the office until 10/10/05.

We tried several times to talk to any of the other representatives. Then we were told we had to give them 48 hours to get back to us. We tried the next day again to no avail. On the third day we still couldnt get anyone to talk to us. In desperation we called the IRS in an effort to settle the issue. At this point we were afraid the IRS would come and take everything in the house we owned.

The IRS informed us they had not heard from JKH since 7/14/05 and they had tried to contact Mr. Riley the 15 of July but never got any response then or even to this date. That is why they went ahead with the collections effort and levied our bank accounts. We settled with the IRS and will have to live with the agreement.

What we want to know is can we sue JKH for breach of contract and get our money back with damages? Do we have a case? We have no money and we had to close our accounts at the bank!

Respectfully,

Larry & arline
Cape Coral, Florida
U.S.A.