First Morgan Capital - still a scam

I received an email regarding this extremely suspicious "leading global alternative funding group". They claim to have assets "in the tune of 5 billion" (not mentioning which currency that might be) and promise enormous loans from $500,000 to $100 million with no checks, just an up-front payment from you to them. You can see the history here, here and here. The email said:

Hi Watchdog,

After reading your piece on First Morgan Capital Group, I emailed it to them and below is the response I got back:

"This sounds very convincing but I will ask you one thing.

Contact this individual who has posted this complaint about our company and ask them to provide you with proof that we First Morgan has taken any advance fee from anyone. This message you sent me states that we stole money from some unsuspecting victim which is totally untrue. We have an impeccable record and have never charged any upfront fee.

This site seems to be a Watchdog site which is mealy a witch hunt site targeting companies of their choice without any real evidence. Again if you can provide us with proof that we have taken any money from anyone we will gladly present you loan with 0% interest.

I am very convinced that you will not find any such incident that even warrants your concern. In fact we have clearly stated to you that all issue will be handled through your local bank and fees are paid out of disbursements.

Sincere Regards,
Kenneth Jones
Corporate Lending
-------------------------------
First Morgan Capital Group"

My reply went like this:

Thanks for getting in touch.

I would ask First Morgan Capital a number of questions.

1. Why are the addresses they give on their web site, in both Switzerland and Peru false? There is no trace of FMG at either of the two locations. The address they used to give in Switzerland didn't even exist but they seem to have changed this.

2. Why are the telephone numbers they give always answered by automatic answering services that do not ever connect to a human being?

3. They claim on their web site to have lent money to a variety of companies but none of the ones they mention seem to exist. When I last contacted them in early 2010 asking for a reference company I could contact they sent me the contact details of a company that also didn't exist.

4. We were alerted to FMCG when a consumer here in Botswana contacted us reporting his suspicions. In order to get a loan from FMCG he was required to pay an upfront "loan security" of 7% of the loan amount. This is NOT how loans work and contradicts what "Kenneth" says in his email to you.

5. He was also contacted by someone claiming to work for a Canadian bank who would actually provide the capital. However the name he gave is not of anyone employed by the bank in question.

6. Much of content of their web site appears to have been taken directly from other sites including Capital Source. Compare these two pages FMCG and Capital Source. Other pages have similarly "lifted" from other web pages.

7. See the comment on one of our reports here. Admittedly it's anonymous but I find the story told plausible.

8. I'm not the only person who thinks they are a scam. See here, here and here.

All FMCG need to do to answer their critics is to provide us with a single, credible reference company for us to talk to, a company that is independently traceable, has a presence on the web and whose finance managers are prepared to confirm the FMCG story.

That shouldn't be too difficult, should it?