American Data Services - bogus refund

Hey Troops,

I'm not sure if this is the right place to drop this info, but I wanted to pass this along.

A quick heads-up to those who have a mortgage refund coming to them. There is a company called American Data Services based out of Cincinnati, OH who is sending notifications out to people who have a refund coming to them. The letter LOOKS like they will get you your check if you pay them 10%. However, if you read it CAREFULLY (or send them the money) you'll see that they only INFORM you of how to get the refund... which I already knew how to do. I didn't want to do the notary, get a copy of my old grant deed, etc. So, for $169 (their 10% cut) I figured I'd just do it to get my $1,658.00. Wrong! I got a flippin' letter saying to get an application from HUD and send that in... which means notary, copy of my deed, etc.

Be careful. They say they will send you 'return information'... not your return/money itself. My refund was due to a sale of a property and I had the left-over mortgage insurance due back to me.

Just some slime-balls trying to rip people off. They got me. I tried calling their number and they never called me back. You only get a cheesy answer machine.

HUD can get you the document that you need to fill out and send them. Here's a link to help:
http://www.hud.gov/offices/hsg/comp/refunds/


Bogus Company/Letter info:

American Data Services
1232 W. Kemper Road, Suite 111
Cincinnati, OH 45240-1618

Willia Crenshaw
Audit Division Manager
(513) 58x-0857

I also received this letter, dated 1/31/07, and I live in Wisconsin. I found it suspicious immediately because they didn't list our complete address, just the number and "St.", but no street name. I also thought it was messed up that they wanted money prior to sending me mine-why wouldn't they just subtract it from the amount I had coming? So, I let it sit, then I came across it today. First thing I did was google the company name, and found this post. After that I reverse searched the phone and address listed on the letter-the phone number is a cell phone and the address is a UPS store. Thank you for the post, I too want to prevent others from getting ripped off and I also intend to contact the Cincinatti police department and advise them of this scam.

I just received a refund letter from the aboce company and I thought it sounded fishy to have to pay to get a refund. I called the phone number on the letter which only gave voice mail. I googled the company name and couldn't find it but I found this link and thanks so much! Thanks to your blog I contacted HUD directly and I also reported this company to the Better Business Bureau. It's sad what people do to scam money...

Thank you so much for your post!!! I just received two letters in the mail yesterday from two different agencies - "Cash Refund Company" in New Canton, VA and "Capital Recovery Inc" in Logan, UT - saying I had money owed to me from the US Government. Neither wanted me to pay anything up front, but both wanted a percentage of the refund (35% and 29%, respectively). After reading your post, I looked up the information at the HUD site and found that I was, indeed, owed quite a bit of money and that it would only take a phone call and a small amount of paperwork to get the refund IN FULL.

Either way you look at it, you helped me retrieve quite a sum of money! I thought it was a scam and was going to throw the paperwork away, but my husband wasn't so sure. If we had completely disregarded it, we would have missed out on over $1000, whereas if we would have taken the bait and agreed to a percentage of the refund, we would have received a bite worth over $400 off of the refund.

Thanks for posting your findings on Snopes - this is the first place I go when I hear something too good to be true. More often than not, I find that it is just that.

Ali Ackerman

[Griffin2020]

The fact is, that many of these comapnies rely on the fact that most people are not willing to do the little bit of research it takes to get their money on their own.

There are definitely some scammer companies, but there are also some valid companies that charge ridiculous fees to do something that it would take you ten minutes to do yourself.