A payment vendor describes aggressive sales and unpaid bills

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 27:54

   The pressure with which they apply to the individuals attending these to get the credit card with the ability to pay for the course, to get financing, pull equity out of their house, it makes used car salesmen look like beginners. These people are seasoned at what they do, and they're very, very damn good at it. Basically, what he's talking about was the same thing that we heard from folks in our last episode who had been through these classes.

2. 28:30

   These were folks that were offered deals like taking out multiple credit cards with a temporary 0% interest rate from this other third-party vendor. Right. Credit stacking. Credit stacking was the term that was used. And then also, there's the ability to perhaps pull equity out of the home you have. Yeah, two of our guests talked about that very thing. They said at the three-day event, you have your own house.

3. 28:59

   Don't you have equity in your own house? Go use some of the equity in your own house. Which is, for the record, f***ing wild. But when it comes to just following all of this money, as Court Compass is concerned, at least, there is this other thing that we should understand about what Brad Logan provides in terms of services, which is that Cork Compass apparently isn't the only entity with some skin in the game when it comes to these transactions. What Brad Logan also says is that he relies on the outside risk departments of the merchant processing companies that Cork Compass itself partners with, who therefore might be also on the hook in case something goes wrong with this money. And what Brad says is that those risk departments also had questions. They had questions that only LifeSurge and its founder,

4. 29:49

   Joe Johnson, could answer. The risk departments at our very dependable relationship merchant processors that we run through, the risk departments were flagging these accounts. So I literally got on the phone with the heads of risk at three different processors that we worked with. And they were leery about the whole setup. So I go back to them and tell them I need financials. I need this. I need that. I need a tax return for Joe Johnson. I need information on who the signer on the account is going to be. And I get major, major pushback.

5. 30:32

   And so this is where I just need to say that LifeSurge, once again, denies any allegations of wrongdoing. But that wasn't Brad's only concern. On top of that, it was getting harder and harder to get LifeSurge to actually pay him. The first time we tried to do the ACH pool for merchant processing costs and the first installment on the equipment, we got NSF'd. What does NSF mean? So NSF is a non-sufficient funds available in the account for the amount that we requested.

6. 31:06

   So eventually, after months and months of complaints, Brad decided to just cut his losses. I said, we're shutting the merchant IDs down. We're going to have access to the terminals shut down. You owe us thousands of dollars at this point. We haven't seen you pay those bills. We're going to turn everything off and we're going to walk away and we're going to call it even, Stephen. Well, what are we going to do with our events?

7. 31:34

   what are we going to do? What are we going to do? I said, you're going to need to contact another processor. So I tried to stay calm. I didn't get upset. I was really, really upset. He and I had had some conversations over the phone over the past several months during 2025 before this call in August where I literally ripped him and he ripped me. And it had gotten very ugly. And at the end of the day, I would say we're roughly out 90 grand. So when we went to LifeSurg and we said Brad Logan of Court Compass claims that you owe him 90 grand, LifeSurg again did not respond to our detailed list of questions in time for our deadline. And we should also note, I think, that when Brad was asked a question that you might be asking in the audience, like, why were you continuing to work with this company

8. 32:27

   where red flags were now sticking out everywhere, he did have some things that he, in retrospect, admits don't look great. To have tried to work with them as long as I worked with them, I've regret for that, for trying to help them facilitate transactions because I was looking to recover the revenue that we had lost. And it was a simple business decision. And at the end of the day, it was the wrong decision.

9. 32:55

   And so this is where, Kira, I think it's worth saying the thing that has been in my head as I've been listening to Brad,