John Darer's Structured Settlement Watchdog® initiatives have addressed an extensive array of issues

John Darer examined a structured settlement factoring transaction in Acadia Parish, Louisiana, initiated in December 2016 and continuing into 2017, involving D&A Litigation Support, LLC, an offshore entity registered in Puerto Rico. A Houston-based personal injury lawyer, acting as the authorized representative for the company, acquired (or attempted to acquire) structured settlement payment rights from the lawyer's client at a significantly prejudicial 22% discount rate. This occurred just over a year after the resolution of a personal injury case where the same attorney represented the client, and the structured settlement was part of the case's settlement terms. If it is deemed unethical for lawyers to provide loans to their clients, how can this practice be considered ethical? Had the lawyer advised the client to seek alternative options, the client could have secured a more favorable discount rate in the 6%-7% range. Instead, the transaction resulted in a $1 million profit spread, to the clear detriment of the lawyer's client.

Back in 2007, I wrote a blog titled "4 Days in the Vicinity of Touchdown Jesus Does Not Make You One of The Fighting Irish," calling out structured settlement professionals who hilariously misrepresented the origins of their CSSC designation. By 2009, the exaggerations escalated to some claiming the four-day NSSTA CSSC course was part of an Executive MBA program—because why not dream big? Didn't Rudy Ruettiger? The Certified Structured Settlement Consultant (CSSC) title, awarded by NSSTA, was never about Notre Dame enrollment, despite being hosted annually at the university’s Stayer Education Center iuntil 2019. After a pandemic hiatus, it moved to the University of Texas at Austin, culminating in a rigorous exam. For 25 years, NSSTA has awarded this certification to those meeting specific experience requirements, no Fighting Irish jerseys required. Thanks to persistent efforts, most certificate holders now tell the truth about their credentials, and NSSTA’s website offers crystal-clear definitions to avoid any further creative embellishments.

Einsteinstructuredsettlements.com and AnnuitySold.com seem to have turned deception into an art form, exploiting loopholes in the structured settlement market like it's their favorite hobby. With connections to JRR Funding from Owings Mills, MD and the Washington DC area, these brands (including Einstein Structured Settlements, Greenspring Funding, Edison Funding, Annuity Sold, Uber Funding, and the rest of their merry band of websites) are hard to take seriously. From fake testimonials and counterfeit BBB seals to SEO-driven faux seminars promoted in business journals and online papers, their antics made the truth look like an endangered species.

It was announced in January 2018 that theThe folks associated with these websites were banned from doing business in Maryland for 7 years, after a Maryland Attorney General investifation  into their shady business dealings. Read the Maryland Attorney General press release dated January 8, 2018

"Website companies" are like digital magicians, pulling scams out of thin air and calling it business. Take Einstein Structured Settlements (aka Einstein Structured Funding), for instance—a crash course in fake credentials and rented applause. Its founder, "Ryan Einstein" (actually Ryan Blank, an amateur poker player and gold dealer from Owings Mills, MD), claimed to have a PhD and LLM from Yale in 2012–2013. Spoiler: A quick call to Yale confirmed this was as real as Bigfoot. UCLA? Also imaginary. Turns out, Blank graduated from the College of Charleston instead. The Structured Settlement Watchdog® exposed two glowing video testimonials from October 2012—before the company even had a single deal under its belt! One involved an annuitant supposedly buying a Bentley and Miami beachfront property, which anyone familiar with Florida law would find hilarious. And the "Latina client" behind the testimonial? Fiverr actress Fabiola/Pinkkoala, paid to tell tall tales. Fiverr, for those unaware, is where $5 buys you fake reviews and stories galore. Unfortunately, not everyone catches on to these ridiculous tactics, leaving consumers at the mercy of Einstein’s truth-averse leadership.

Banned in Maryland for seven years, AnnuitySold.com, linked to Ryan Blank and his Owings Mills high school buddy Richart Ruddie, boldly claimed they were licensed and qualified in all 50 states to buy annuity payments. Spoiler alert: they weren’t! There’s no such licensing or regulation for settlement purchasers—though there probably should be. And as if that wasn’t enough, by August 2016, their website was setting off malicious code alarms from McAfee and Norton, leaving users wondering if they were buying annuities or downloading trouble.

Einstein Structured Settlements went all out, creating web pages to smear competitors with terms like "scam" and "complaints." They even dabbled in comment spam on Rip Off Report for marketing. By 2014, calls to their toll-free number rerouted to Fairfield Funding in Atlanta, confirmed again in June. On July 15, 2014, a call to their 888 number was mysteriously returned from JRR Funding, whose website conveniently lived as a subdirectory of Einstein’s site—busted! The involvement of Richart Ruddie and Ryan Blank became undeniable despite their denials. Then, in 2015, a Prezi presentation titled "JRR+Fairfield Success" by Ryan Blank spilled the tea on their "game plan," complete with court record scraping to find customers. Talk about a messy marketing strategy!

Einstein Structured Settlements reckless business practices continue as it has been discovered that it solicited tickets to a purported  "Chicago Settlement Planning Event", purportedly occurring on December 22, 2014 between 3-5pm at the Holiday Inn at 506 West Harrison in downtown Chicago, Illinois.  Owings Mills MD natives Richart Ruddie and Ryan Blank were behind Einstein Structured Settlements.

If one was intrigued to attend the suspect conference and its lofty fee, a click on the registration button on Crains led you to the Einstein website. on which there was no registration form, but included a sales pitch  

Einstein's reviews of its competitors are primarily used to brandjack its competitors. Why would anyone believe a review published by a brand like Einstein Structured Settlements, that has engaged in false advertising, fraudulent paid testimonials and has promoted fake credentials? Not convinced? Now there's this...

Back in October 2016, Richart Ruddie of JRR Funding and Annuity Sold found himself in hot water, splashed across the Washington Post. He was accused of being tied to fake lawsuits and allegedly forging names on legal documents to get takedown orders, all in a bid to convince Google to de-index content. This eyebrow-raising escapade was unveiled by UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh, the mastermind behind "The Volokh Conspiracy" blog, and Paul Alan Levy of the Public Citizen Law Group. Talk about a plot twist worthy of a courtroom drama!

See post by Paul Alan Levy on the Public Citizen blog entitled Dozens of suspicious court cases, with missing defendants, aim at getting web pages taken down or deindexed - CLP Blog (citizen.org)​. On January 31, 2017, a Rhode Island case was vacated and the court granted discovery to determine who paid the filing fee so that they could be pursued. On March 14, 2017 it was announced in the Washington Post, that Richart Ruddie settled for $71,000 under the Rhode Island Anti-SLAPP statute. Also see Richart Ruddie Settles anti-SLAPP Claims, Makes Restitution; but the Guilty Companies Remain Unpunished | Casetext Reports. The Washington Post and The Public Citizen indicated that Ruddie was negotiating a plea bargain with the United States Attorney for the District of Rhode Island in the criminal matter over the fraud. See April 13, 2017 sanctions order against Richart Ruddie. Attorney Paul Alan Levy of the Public Citizen Law Group submitted a May 11, 2017 amicus brief as part of an effort to vacate a number of the phony consent orders allegedly orchestrated by Richart Ruddie inthe de-indexing scam, which provides some good background information.

There was a bizarre tie-in to Richart Ruddie's structured settlement purchasing companies and associated persons involved with Ruddie. The papers in the phony Rhode Island case were delivered to a process server by an Annuity Sold email address and the check for the process server was drawn on the account of RIR1984 LLC which at the time the scam was discovered had Richart Ruddie and Ryan Blank, his Owings Mills high school classmate and colleague in JRR Funding, Annuity Sold and other entities. RIR1984LLC was coincidentally dissolved in October 2016, in the days around the Washington Post expose.

Then this​ Another Attempt to Vanish from Google Searches Materials About Attempts to Vanish Materials (reason.com) May 5, 2022

Maryland Attorney General Brian E. Frosh announced January 8, 2018 that the Maryland AG Consumer Protection Division has entered into a settlement following an investigation into Owings Mills based Annuity Sold, LLC , and its owners (Owings MIlls bred Ryan Blank and Richart Ruddie) and its affiliated companies that included hundreds of thousands of dollars in financial fines and restitution as well as a 7 year ban on doing Annuity Sold LLC and its affiliates from doing business in Maryland:

Uber Funding, LLC

Bendermere Capital Solutions, LLC

Axis Funding, LLC

Stonebridge Capital, LLC

Greenspring Funding, LLC

LSG, LLC

Preak Street, LLC [Ruddie and Ryan Blank established in Florida 06/23/2014, using Ruddie's address in Ft Lauderdale, now use Washington DC]

ILILIL2010, LLC

Palantir Packaging, LLC

JRR Funding, LLC [Ruddie established 11/26/2012 in FL, listed as managing member, registrant of website]

The settlement resolves allegations that the above named Respondents violated the Maryland Consumer Protection Act by misleading injured Marylanders, some of whom are victims of lead paint poisoning, to convert future structured settlement payments into immediate cash. Read more here.

"Ryan Blank and his (3 Delaware LLC) entities, agreed to pay $700,000 as part of the settlement, while Sutton Park Capital, the Florida firm that was set to receive (the Badger) girls’ future payments, agreed to fully reinstate the structured settlements"-Source: McClatchey. In addition sums were recovered from the guardian ad litem and his law firm, the lawyer who provided independent professional advice and his law firm, the .lawyer for the factoring companies and his firm all contrinbuted to a mi=ulti million dollars settlement. Click above title to read John's commentary, which inlcudes a copy of the legal complaint..

In mid 2011, internet search for structured settlements was dominated by pages and pages of gibberish titles and descriptions peppered with structured settlement and structured settlement industry related key words, including the brandjacked names of insurance companies, On its face the search results were of little utility to consumers. However when a frustrated user clicked on any of the links, for some period of time the user was redirected to webuypayments.net a domain that at the time was associated with David Springer. .When I questioned Springer about it in July 2011, he sluffed it of as if it was Google's doing and the issue persisted until Springer and his company were sued by Springer competitors, first by JG Wentworth and a month later by Woodbridge Structured Funding. The Wentworth case, filed in Frederick County MD, settled in March 2012 and the Woodbridge case, filed in Maryland District Court, went all the way to trial in August 2014, before a Judge rendered a decision against the Mt Airy MD resident for liabilty and monetary damages. At the same time of the we buy payments scheme, David Springer and Sovereign Funding Group worked with  company out of Florida and St. Louis, producing commercials, one of which used a $5 actress off the FIverr.com website, named " Old Bitty Grandma" to fraudulently promote David Springer as a lawyer, when he was not.

In his April 2015 Decisions of Law and Findings of Fact, then Maryland Federal District Court judge Marvin Garbis found that in or about 2003, David Springer began operating a sole proprietorship in the structured settlement (factoring) business under the Sovereign (Funding Group) name. By the fall of 2011 and continuing thereafter, David Springer had utilized and/or was using questionable business methods, including:

• Falsely claiming that Sovereign was a corporation.
• Springer fraudulently misrepresenting (in various contexts, including sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn and to the Better Business Bureau) Sovereign as a corporation, and fraudulently misrepresenting as real persons who were officers of Sovereign,that were just fictitious persons created by David Springer.
• Falsely claiming that Sovereign itself was a purchaser of structured settlements rather than merely a broker.
• Utilizing the website with the address webuypayments(dot)net,  and other websites anonymously connected to it to redirect Internet inquiries intended for competitors to the Sovereign website. [in the footnote the court acknowledged that David Springer denied that he owned or controlled the websites utilized in Internet redirects to webuypayments.net. The registrations of these domains are “private” and anonymous. However, based upon its evaluation of David Springer’s testimony and the fact that the beneficiary of the redirects was David Springer, the Court finds that David Springer owned, or at least controlled, these websites"
• The Maryland District Court also found that "at some time prior to October 2011, Woodbridge became aware that David Springer was (1) utilizing the webuypayments.net website to redirect to his own Sovereign website Internet users who would otherwise have been connected with Woodbridge, and (2) using deceptive search engine optimization (“SEO”) techniques that resulted in search engine results combining Woodbridge’s name with derogatory terms such as “funding lie,” “funding scam,” and “funding complaint.”

David Springer's vivid imagination led to the creation of numerous aliases and fictitious characters or sock puppets, all of whom supposedly worked for the judicially determined "purported company", Sovereign Funding Group. The purported individuals, sported purported academic credentials promoted on line in public facing social media, did not check out when the academic institutions were contacted. Among the sock puppets that David Springer deployed was President "James Goldstein", whose LinkedIn and Google Plus profiles displayed stock photos of a middle-aged businessman. [Credit to Ohio insurance broker Todd Associates for the heads up. Todd Associates used the same stock photo that Sovereign Funding/David Springer was holding out as its chief executive]. The fictiotious characters David Springer created, actually appeared to communicate with each other like 'finger puppets" and endorsed one another on LinkedIn to enhance David Springer's dastardly deception, in public facing social media. Coincidentally the fabrication of education credentials for both of the Maryland actors' aliases "Ryan Einstein" and "James Goldstein", involved a false claim of a degree (or degrees in the case of Einstein) from Yale.

Almost two years after being put on notice about David Springer's hijinks with respect to the Sovereign Funding Group BBB listing, on June 15, 2015, almost one year after the trial and more than two months after the judge's decision finding against Springer, the Better Business Bureau of Greater Maryland continued to give the defunct David Springer purported company its highest rating, underscoring just how unreliable the BBB of Greater Maryland was for structured settlement consumers during this period. Coincidentally BBB of Greater MD only took action in August 2015 after I excoriated them for their inaction on the blog following multiple notices.

In June 2012 David Springer and Sovereign Funding stated in their June 25, 2012 answer to the Woodbridge complaint [MD 1:11-cv-03421-MJG Doc 30] that the company had ceased operations, yet the website continued to operate purportedly under the direction of fictitious character "James Goldstein" at an address that later proved to be a UPS store mailbox in Rockville Maryland purchased by David Springer, in June 2012! David Springer also continued to use a Sovereign Funding Group email address AFTER the time he and Sovereign Funding claimed that the company ceased operations. [Note: The inconsistent timelines in a 2016 publication by David Springer himself on Linkedin raises the spectre that perjury may have been committed]

• Back in 2015, a Ripoff Report claimed that David Springer got scammed after forking over $3,000 to a Romanian bot vendor to churn out fake likes on Facebook, YouTube, and other platforms. Talk about paying top dollar for digital deception—just another cringe-worthy chapter in a David Springer's book of blunders!
• In his current Linkedin, David Springer omits his Sovereign Funding legacy
• In his 2013 LinkedIn profile (retrieved 7/29/2013) David Springer listed his title as President of Sovereign Funding from February 2002- December 2011 (9 years 11 months) followed by 1 years and 1 months as " Transition Consultant", ending in December 2012. Springer also purportedly had 10 endorsements for investments, one of which was from a Linkedin profile for "Sandy Jackson, one of the half dozen or so fictitious employees that David Springer later testified that he created.
• In his 2012 LinkedIn profile (retrieved 11/26/2012) David Springer had only 3 endorsements.
• A press release issued by a company hired by Springer in August 2011 claimed he had been in business for 15 years! [ See The David Springer Time Line-1 The Math Doesn't Work June 12, 2014]

Springer's math never seems to add up. [Then when the same LinkedIn profile was accessed in March 2017, there were further changes in the timeline].

David Springer includes years that David Springer (1) submitted in June 25, 2012 court filings that the Sovereign Funding had ceased operations (see bullet point immediately above) and (2) a time frame that David Springer claimed not to be in business in an appeal of a legal decision in favor of Erie Insurance Group to the Maryland Court of Appeals , Erie Insurance Group was David Springer's homeowner insurer from whom Springer was attempting to be reimbursed for the cost of defending himself against JG Wentworth's defamation lawsuit against him that was filed in Frederick County MD in October 2011. Moreover, (3) David Springer's current LinkedIn profile conflicts with the 2015 Maryland judicial finding against David Springer, which determined the starting year was 2003. (4) Advertising for Sovereign Funding Group appearing in 2011 also claimed Sovereign was in business for 15 years, to paper over a not so flattering time that David Springer spent on the island of Grenada, he was referred to by Offshore Regulator Michael Creft as "the right hand man" and separately referred to in Owen Platt's book One Big Fib: The Incredible Story of the Fraudulent First International Bank as "the former accomplice" of Laurent Barnabe, the convicted fraudster.. David Springer however, was never charged; (5) David Springer's LinkedIn in mentions "staff members" at Sovereign Funding Group, while David Springer testified under oath, under the penalty of perjury, in a legal case that he was the sole employee.

Sovereign Funding Group's Better Business Bureau listing named two people, James Goldstein and Sandy Jackson, both fictitious characters, as of July 13, 2013. David Springer was deposed on June 28, 2013. When a portion of the David Springer deposition was posted on Pacer.gov, it revealed that when deposed, David Springer admitted, under oath , to creating multiple phony names James Goldstein, James Spelling, Alexander Ross, Sandy Jackson and other fake identities such as Karen Jones and Melanie Miller and the later discovered David Smithen, the attendance of the fake identities at schools (that turned out to be fabrications) and several fabricated LinkedIn profiles , Google Plus profiles and the insertion of fake names (James Goldstein and Sandy Jackson) as company contacts on the the BBB report . Evidence of David Springer's use of the alias James Spelling as early as 2008, which was in direct conflict with his June 2013 deposition and June 2014 trial testimony. The fake identity of James Goldstein was also used on Pinterest and Manta, sites which target American consumers. On March 31, 2014 I showed how David Springer's wife, "or her Facebook account" even chatted with her husband's fake character on the Sovereign Funding Group Facebook page.

The Sovereign Funding Group's BBB report on July 24, 2013, revealed the company had 9 employees, including the elusive David Springer, who finally made a real-name appearance after 13 months of fictitious aliases. By August 8, 2013, the roster shrank to two names—David Springer and the ever-mysterious Sandy Jackson, who apparently didn’t exist. In the Woodbridge case, Springer, the one-man band, testified he was the sole employee. For extra flair, he also swore under oath that he single-handedly controlled the BBB listing for the company. Quite the multitasker!

In October 2012, Sovereign Funding Group took to YouTube with ads featuring paid actresses from Fiverr.com and another testimonial service, pretending they were real customers. Spoiler alert: they weren’t. Despite being caught red-handed with their fake testimonials [see Fake Testimonials section below for juicy details], the BBB of Greater Maryland decided to sit back and do absolutely nothing useful to protect consumers from this pile of Springer-grade nonsense.

In mid May 2012, Roger Proctor of Genex had a lawyer sent me a letter in an unsuccessful attempt to intimidate me to back off researching any connection to him and Springer. The letter was sent by Jeffrey Kolansky of Archer & Greiner PC in Philadelphia after I published evidence I found online.

Only a week later, a screen shot of the Sovereign Funding Group Outlook provided by the late Nicholas John Jackson (Jackson passed in August 2024), a former consultant to Sovereign Funding Group and Genex Strategies, Inc. from Missouri, that laid evidence of a business connection between the them via SSQ (a website owned by Genex operating on the web at structuredsettlement-quotes(dot)com, that purported to be a online exchange. The screenshot clearly showed inquiries from the website going only to 3 people,  Roger Proctor, Boris Drubetsky and David Springer. A copy of an email about paid links for SSQ's SEO addressed to David Springer and Roger Proctor provided by the informant provides further support to the connection. Testimonials appeared on the SSQ website that referred to a James Spelling, a name which David Springer later admitted in a deposition in the Woodbridge litigation was one of his aliases. An SSQ rebuild published in July 2012, included "James Goldstein" as the CEO of Sovereign Funding Group, another alias with David Springer admitted in sworn testimony. That Genex would help perpetuate the fraud that Springer proliferated in creating the James Goldstein alias, such as fake academic credentials raised more questions about Genex than answers.

In September 2012, I learned that Roger Proctor's lawyer was representing Nicholas John Jackson, who was noticed to appear as a witness in the matter of Darer v Does in September 2012. I later learned that Genex paid the legal fees for NIcholas John Jackson and he was represented by the same Jeffrey Kolansky, representing Roger Proctor, who sent me the letter in mid May 2012.

Two such video testimonials were posted promoting Sovereign Funding Group on YouTube in November 2012. One featured a British lass, Katie Harvey, who accordg to Fiverr, has now done 27,000 of these sorts of videos, according to our research. Her screen name is still "Kymmy Pops", but for the purpose of the Sovereign Funding Group ad she was "Karen S". See September 29, 2014 Structured Settement Watchdog post Settlement Purchaser used Fake Fiverr Testimonial to Mislead Consumers - Structured Settlements 4Real® Blog: Structured Settlements | Settlement Planning News and John Darer Reviews (typepad.com) In another breadcrumb that David Springer cannot keep track of the plotline of his own lies, the description for the Karen S video published in November 2012, said that Sovereign had an A+ BBB rating for 10 years. If that was true then Sovereign/Springer was in business since 2002. Sovereign Funding is supressed from David Springer's Linkedin profile. Then another fake testimonial for Sovereign Funding Group here under the name Jessica P. Here's the proof of the actress named Samantha, from Buy Testimonial Services (dot)com. "Samantha's fee is $25 to say she's a customer of yours, LOL.

I then busted Einstein Structured Settlements for two paid for testimonials, one from Fiverr.com and the other from Buytestimonials.com. Read the report about fake Einstein structured settlements Review from Chip here. Read my report about fake Einstein structured settlements review from the "Hispanic client" Fabiola (a/k/a Pink Koala) here.

Are companies that purchase structured settlements, targeting and soliciting structured settlement annuitants with large structured settlements to sell their structured settlements in conjunction with unsuitable, or fanciful investment schemes? If the judges presiding over structured settlement transfer hearings knew about the approach would they approve the transfers?

I've highlighted how a number of companies were charging a structured settlement annuitant of Allstate Life Insurance Company, or Allstate Life Insurance Company of New York, a discount rate that exceeded the 8% rate for Allstate's Advanced Funding Exchange Notice (AFEN) in effect at the time prior to Allstate's sale of its life insurers, failing to explore that option with the annuitant and/or failing to tell an Allstate annuitant that they had that option.

The disclosures attached to the publicly available Petition to Transfer Structured Settlement Payment Rights in Seneca One v Cathy Ann Edwards Broward County FL CACE-16-013197 show that Ms. Edwards was being charged a 15.24% effective discount rate by Seneca One. Fortunately the case was voluntarily dismissed on August 15, 2016.

Annuitants who have (or had) Allstate structured settlements and were solicited Mr. A.D, a then 29 year old unemployable Allstate structured settlement annuitant with 2 young toddlers, who entered into a questionable cash for structured settlement deal with a NASP member settlement purchaser in November 2013, approached in me at the end of 2013, looking for, but unable to locate, a gentleman named Escobar that he thought worked as an adviser for Wells Fargo, a major US bank. The original structured settlement transfer paperwork, available at the Circuit Court of Indian River County Florida as a matter of public record, indicated that a Boca Raton based company called Client First Funding was involved as well as a Charles Yates LLC, a Wisconsin LLC that used a Madison Wisconsin UPS mailbox as its address of record. The discount rate exceeded Allstate's AFEN Rate of 8%. My call to Client First at the time confirmed that Escobar worked for Client First NOT as a financial adviser at the major US bank. But why did Mr. D think he worked for Wells Fargo? It is a question that bugged me for 2 years, until I got my hands on a copy of a letter on Client First letterhead suggesting investment services with a substantial portion dealing with Wells Fargo. Fortunately Mr. D is OK. While legal intervention was necessary to unwind a deal that was clearly not in his best interest, In the end, with the cooperation of Client First, he was able to have the court order approving the transfer vacated and his payments from Allstate restored. Prior to that, when I spoke with Client First CEO Burt Kroner, in January 2014, about the Mr D. case, he voluntarily referred me to a Wells Fargo representative that they worked with. Shortly thereafter I spoke with that individual who confirmed that Client First was a source of investment business. Client First Funding is no longer in business.

A New York structured settlement broker marketed himself and his then company as "plaintiff exclusive" to New York and Massachusetts trial lawyer community and the American Association for Justice (AAJ) while at the same time declaring under penalty of perjury that he had provided substantial services to defendants in the preceding 3 years to get on the List of eligible annuity brokers where to be consulted by United States attorneys, where the United States is a defendant. Since the statements were mutually exclusive only one could be true.

Same individual utilized a purported testimonial of 2007 Presidential candidate John Edwards, that suggested John Edwards had actually used the broker's firm, to solicit structured settlement business from New York trial lawyers, including members of the New York Trial Lawyers Association (NYSTLA), via mass distribution. Yet the timeline math showed that John Edwards became a Congress man before the subject New York broker entered the structured settlement business and thus Edwards could not possibly have used them. Furthermore, if such a testimonial were subsequently made, Edwards could not have truthfully vouched for the broker's work. Further public records research revealed that the subject New York broker was a bundler of campaign contributions for John Edwards The Edwards campaigns in 2004 and 2007 solicited campaign contributions from donors including a number structured settlement brokers however, they were not bundlers. Neither Edwards nor his staff had any public comment, would neither confirm nor deny John Edwards made the statement that the broker used to solicit structured settlement annuity business from customers, but the testimonial was hastily removed from the Edwards bundler broker's company website, shortly before the John Edwards/Rielle Hunter affair broke.

The exercise and a subsequent review by the DOJ revealed that a number of self-promoted "plaintiff exclusive" structured settlement brokers from other firms had signed and used similar "under penalty of perjury" declarations to the United States Department of Justice in an effort to get their names placed on a list used by United States Attorneys prosecuting legal cases and with authority to appoint structured settlement annuity brokers, where the United States was a defendant. At least 5 brokers were removed from the list of annuity brokers as a result.

The now retired Buffalo based individual later formed a new firm in 2012, and co-founded a settlement purchansing company called CrowFly LLC that operated between 2018 and August 2022. The Structured Setttement Watchdog was able to identify cases that CrowFly factored structured settlements that were written by John Bair through his entities through court records. In October 2018, the Buffalo based individual sent an email to one of the Structured Settlement Watchdog's sources bragging about his straddle of the primary and secondary markets. That led to research and the Structured Settlement Watchdog's uncovering a 2021 Cattaraugus County New York structured settlement transfer petition that proved that the Buffalo based individual was associated with the factoring of structured settlement payment rights from annuities issued by the same life insurance companies he or his entities were contracted with as general agent because the copy of the annuity included a copy of the annuity application with the Buffalo based individual's signature.. Read more

SuttonPark Capital LLC (SPC) is an independently owned investment firm that specializes in the origination and structuring of esoteric investment-grade assets, according to its website, "since its inception in 2010, SPC has become a leading wholesale aggregator and servicer of structured settlements in the United States. (Ibid.)

Structured settlement payment servicing is generally only necessary in circumstances where some annuity issuers will not split/dice payments when an annuitant wants to only make a partial sale of structured settlement payments ((e.g. half of a monthlky payment or half of a lump sum)..

In the wake of the well publicized troubles of its parent 777 Partners that led to the resignations of Steve Pasko and Josh Wander, in May 2024 (also see 777 Partners in crime - josimarfootball.com), and what has only recently been learned (in December 2024), the loss of an important banking relationship, SuttonPark laid off the majority of its structured settlement payment servicing unit, leaving a skeletal staff, an incredulous information void, and left a fulminating problem that started off with a trickle of calls to the Structured Settlement Watchdog in June 2024 to a Force 5 deluge of calls from mid to early December 2024. In the days prior to Thanksgiving John Darer devoted 12 pro bono hours on top of 4 hours the prior week, listening to their concerns, filling the void for payess and investors alike publishing blogs detailing how payees were affected, filling the information void for partial sellers and investors alike, and collaborated in one case with an important member of the structured settlement secondary market to assure that a payee, who had lost her job without severance the prior month received her long past due payment and did not lose her home.

Read more about the SuttonPark Payment Servicing Nightmare