Series of complaints dog Safety Harbor financial company

SAFETY HARBOR — Mitch Patel has waited three months for GCR Capital to refund him nearly $30,000.

When he calls between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., he gets recordings that tell him to try back during normal business hours.

When he e-mails, he receives apologies, excuses and promises.

Last month, he filed a complaint with the Office of the Florida Attorney General.

Last week, he tried to sic a lawyer on GCR, a Safety Harbor company that specializes in equipment leasing and commercial finance.

Neither tactic has worked.

"It's our money," said Patel, the operations manager of Comfort Inn & Suites and Sleep Inn & Suites outside of Detroit. "They owe us."

Patel's is the latest in a litany of grievances the Attorney General's Office has fielded in the past four years.

Since September 2005, that office has received 24 complaints. All have a common thread: GCR promises thousands of dollars in credit and fast cash for operational costs, equipment and other expenses. Upon receipt of hefty deposits, the complaints say GCR reneges on the original terms and fails to resolve issues in a timely manner.

One former client who filed a complaint, Robert Brodkin, said he should have known better.

He was preapproved in September for $50,000 for his medical and surgical treatment company in Lubbock, Texas. When the deal fell through, he had to wait six weeks to get his $4,000 deposit back.

"They shouldn't need money upfront," Brodkin said. "That should trigger a warning to any reasonable person, including me. In this case, it did not."

GCR president Judy DiVincenzo declined an interview with the St. Petersburg Times. Instead, she e-mailed a statement. In it, she said she would not address specific cases because that would require her "to divulge facts about our client's individual files.

"GCR will not respond to specific complaints in a public forum, even if that information would serve to vindicate our position in the dispute."

DiVincenzo said the company has processed more than 23,000 applications and funded more than $66 million in small business leases since 2004.

"With that many customers," she said, "regrettably some complaints are inevitable."

• • •

GCR promised to lease $500,000 worth of furniture, televisions, bedding and other materials to Patel's boss, Nick Patel, for his Detroit-area hotels.

Nick Patel sent in two payments, one for $19,925 and another for $7,115. The deposits were to cover the first and last months' payments.

That's when things began to unravel.

Money in hand, GCR lowered the amount of the financing from $500,000 to $30,000.

Nick Patel asked for a refund minus administrative fees, which the contract allows. The Attorney General's Office provided the St. Petersburg Times with copies of GCR's contracts as part of a public records request.

That was in November or December, Mitch Patel said. DiVincenzo promised a refund after the first of the year. That deadline passed, too.

Calls were made. E-mails were sent. Nick Patel asked the Asian American Hotel Owners Association, a national group in Atlanta that had a relationship with GCR, to intervene.

Laura Lee Blake, the organization's vice president of fair franchising and government affairs, demanded payment in strongly worded e-mails to DiVincenzo on Jan. 5, 8, 13 and 21.

Sometimes, DiVincenzo replied.

Jan. 5: I have to leave shortly for an out of office meeting but will call him back directly tomorrow to follow up.

Jan. 13: I am sorry I have not responded to him as I thought I could. I have been extremely busy with matters of grave importance over the last week, both of a business nature and unfortunately personal (death of a friend).

In a Jan. 26 e-mail to Nick Patel, DiVincenzo said "bank lines are very slow in sending funds right now."

She asked him if he would take partial payments until everything was paid in full.

He didn't agree to the terms.

"(My boss) wants to know why we cannot receive our money back in one lump sum," Mitch Patel said. "We had to pay them a full deposit up front."

• • •

The complaints to the Attorney General's Office come from nearly every corner of the country. Arizona. Colorado. Florida. Georgia. Illinois. Indiana. Kansas. Massachusetts. Michigan. Mississippi. New York. North Carolina. Pennsylvania. South Carolina. Texas.

Spokeswoman Ryan Wiggins said the number of complaints against GCR is not high.

But in June 2007, she said the office opened an investigation into the Safety Harbor company, housed downtown in a complex of office suites on Ninth Avenue N.

"This case was opened based on a pattern of consumer complaints," Wiggins said. "Some cases originate with only a few complaints, others with hundreds."

GCR settled the majority of the complaints in October 2008 and agreed to pay more than $85,000 in restitution, plus fees and investigative costs.

Despite that, more complaints have been leveled against GCR. Two, Mitch Patel's among them, arrived at the Attorney General's Office last month. Richard Bullinger's was the latest.

On Feb. 10, the Friendswood, Texas, man sent this comment:

This company made me put down a down payment and then said I needed to put down a second down payment. ... (The company) assured me once funds were issued I would get my first down payment of 1300.00 back in 3 days. That was two months ago. Now they will not even answer the phone.

No new investigations have been opened in response to the latest complaints.

"Postinvestigation complaints are frequently given to the company for handling and resolution," Wiggins said. "Unless a pattern of ongoing concern is detected, the case will remain inactive."

Complaints may be the least of GCR's worries. Litigation is active on the state and federal levels.

• • •

In her e-mailed statement, DiVincenzo said the Attorney General's Office first notified her of complaints in June 2007, when it opened the investigation into GCR.

She said she was "concerned" and worked closely with the office to resolve disputes.

"We provided refunds to the majority of the complaints, even those whose contractual agreements did not warrant them, in an effort to show that GCR was committed to customer service," she said.

DiVincenzo said some of the clients are "credit challenged" and "their expectations for the process are not realistic."

Though DiVincenzo originally said she would not respond to specific complaints, on Friday she addressed Mitch Patel's allegations in a 1 1/2-page response to the Attorney General's Office. She said that "GCR Capital now rarely receives complaints of this nature."

Meanwhile, the Asian American Hotel Owners Association has terminated its relationship with GCR, Blake said.

Mitch Patel has joined with another former GCR client and together, they are considering a class-action suit against GCR.

And Brodkin, who runs the Texas medical and surgical treatment company, said he went through another Florida company for financing.

"There was no upfront charge," he said. "With the other company, it was ultra smooth."

Times researcher Carolyn Edds and staff writer Lee Logan contributed to this report. Rodney Thrash can be reached at rthrash@sptimes.com or (727) 445-4167.