Strategy Sessions for Merchants, Pro Se Litigants, Attorneys, and Trustees

A  STRATEGY  SESSION INCLUDES

• Review your MCA agreements, renewals, amendments, and the sales communications surrounding them.
• Compare funding, fees, withdrawals, and balances with available bank and processor records.
• Identify the brokers, funders, servicers, and collection parties named across your records.
• Explain patterns encountered while helping dozens of merchants in cases across U.S. jurisdictions.
• Identify gaps, inconsistencies, and factual questions to discuss with your attorney or bankruptcy counsel.
• Outline the records to preserve, research to pursue, and practical next steps for organizing your matter.
• Review the contracts, bank statements, communications, and lawsuit documents you provide before the session, as arranged.
• Zoom session: 60–90 minutes. The listed fee for 60 minutes is $325.

This is NOT legal advice.

When contracts, bank activity, messages, and court filings tell different stories, the first task is to put the record in order. We help you and your attorney see what the evidence supports, what is missing, and which questions need answers.

Follow the contract. Follow the money. Identify the people behind it.

Our investigative work is led by a licensed private investigator with a background in criminal forensic cases: investigating crime scenes, examining evidence, developing leads, and analyzing case records. We bring that same discipline to civil merchant cash advance matters. The questions are concrete: What was promised? What was sent? What was signed? What money moved? Who was involved?

What is a merchant cash advance?

A merchant cash advance, or MCA, is commonly presented as a sale of future receivables. A funding company pays a business an agreed amount today in exchange for a larger amount of future business receipts. Collections may come through daily or weekly bank withdrawals or a share of card receipts.

A factor rate can make the price look simple. At a factor of 1.40, a $50,000 advance carries a $70,000 purchased amount, before considering any additional charges. Fees and payoffs deducted at funding can leave the merchant with substantially less cash. A factor rate is not an annual interest rate; the collection schedule and actual cash received matter.

When the label and the reality do not match

Calling a contract a receivables purchase does not settle whether it operates as a sale or a loan. We examine whether payments actually adjust when revenue falls, whether reconciliation is available in practice, what happens if the business fails, and whether repayment is effectively required regardless of receipts. Courts have found purported MCAs to be disguised loans in specific cases. Classification depends on the agreement, actual conduct, and applicable law.

These concerns are documented in the New York appellate decision involving Richmond Capital and the New York Attorney General’s Yellowstone settlement records.

The broker playbook: how one advance can become a cycle

An owner trying to make payroll, cover rent, or keep the doors open may have little time to study dense contract terms or untangle the people behind an offer. The public often hears “business funding” without understanding the daily collection burden. Urgency, repeated sales calls, and promises of a quick fix can leave a struggling merchant especially vulnerable. We examine the sales process alongside the signed paperwork.

• The fast approval pitch. What did the broker promise about cost, payment size, renewal, refinancing, or relief? Did the written terms match?
• Different callers, overlapping interests. Multiple names, email addresses, company brands, and rotating phone numbers can make related offers appear independent. We compare the original communications and look for evidence connecting the people and businesses.
• Stacking. Additional advances are placed on top of existing obligations. Several daily withdrawals can compete for the same revenue, leaving less for ordinary operations.
• Renewals and payoffs. A new advance may pay off an old balance while producing little new cash. We separate gross funding, deductions, broker charges, old payoffs, and the amount the merchant actually receives.
• The collection turn. When cash flow breaks down, new names may appear as servicers, collectors, assignees, or collection counsel. We reconstruct how the account moved and compare the amount demanded with the payment record.

Map the enterprise behind the brand

A merchant may know the salesperson’s first name and the brand on an email while the contract, bank debit, lien, and lawsuit name different businesses. We work backward through those records. The investigation can include ISO brokers, funders, investors, syndication partners, servicers, payment processors, collection businesses, and law firms involved in the transactions or collection proceedings.

We examine who introduced the deal, who funded it, who received payments or commissions, who held an interest, who claimed the right to collect, and who supplied the records used in court. A shared address, similar name, or attorney appearance is a lead to investigate; records of ownership, agreements, communications, transactions, and conduct establish the actual relationship.

Changing names, entities, and jurisdictions

Our research follows business records and litigation across jurisdictions, including New York, Brooklyn, and Florida. Similar names ending in Capital, Funding, Advisors, or Consultants can make an already complicated trail harder to follow. We compare legal entities, trade names, aliases, formation dates, managers, addresses, websites, and operational history.

When a business changes its name, forms a new entity, registers in another state, or shifts operations after court or regulatory pressure, the timing matters. We investigate whether personnel, assets, accounts, contracts, or collection activity continued under the new identity. That is how we examine a suspected shell game: build the chronology and document the connections.

Forum shopping and repeated collection filings

We review where actions were filed, which agreements and assignments were submitted, how service was documented, how balances were calculated, and whether the same forms or factual problems recur. Concerns about forum shopping or a “judgment mill” call for a close look at the filings and underlying evidence. We organize those findings for counsel to assess.

Financial reconstruction and document forensics

• Reconcile funding deposits, fees, renewals, withdrawals, returns, refunds, and processor records against the amounts claimed.
• Compare contract versions, amendments, attachments, and signature pages with the copies originally sent to the merchant.
• Review available electronic-signature records, emails, PDF metadata, document properties, and file history.
• Build timelines connecting the sales pitch, agreement, money flow, business records, and court filings.
• Identify missing records, inconsistent identities, conflicting versions, and unexplained transactions.

Our trusted technical partner: John Holstein

Digital document forensics and evidence analysis are part of the services our team offers with trusted partners such as John Holstein of 4Shadow Analytix. Together, we examine available metadata, signatures, document origins, and file changes, and connect evidence across complex records. A typed name or metadata entry cannot resolve every question about who signed or what was understood; we evaluate it alongside the surrounding evidence.

Meet our trusted partners →

We deliver organized factual findings for merchants, attorneys, and trustees. Legal advice, defenses, and court strategy remain matters for licensed counsel.