Compass National - Grant Funding review: Grant Fraud 47

Before "working" at Compass National/Interlan Financial I knew practically nothing about grants or how to obtain them. However after 35 years as a police detective and private investigator (still active) I do know a fraudulent company when I see one. My real job is with a well known Private Security and Investigative company in California with many celebrity and well-to-do clients. My firm was hired by a group seeking a rather large grant and my assignment was to investigate Compass/Interlan to determine if they were a scam or not. Much of my job had already been done by a federal law enforcement agency with whom I have made several contacts over the years. Though we don't often get credit for it, many raids on fraudulent companies are initiated by private investigators. One such raid was conducted in Oct. '09 and several companies were shut down. I was told by a trusted contact that Compass/Interlan appeared to be doing exactly what they say they do and they could find no evidence to the contrary and they looked very hard. My preliminary investigation revealed no complaints or litigations with the Secretary of State or Attorney General's Offices of Nevada or the District Attorneys Office. There are NO investigations taking place by any law enforcement agency. If they were a scam company there would certainly be a plethora of complaints registered with legitimate enforcement agencies or at the very least lawsuits filed with the DA's office. None such exist. I got a "job", as I often times do with companies I am investigating, answering phones and explaining the services. There was about a week of training and at no time was I instructed to lie to potential clients and in fact just the opposite occurred. Everyone was told to be as truthful as possible and if they didn't know the answer to something, don't talk out of your butt, get a manager to help. My professional opinion is that this company does everything possible to honor its contracts with clients by employing grant writers with the most impressive credentials who truly want to get the maximum amounts for their clients. Scam companies simply do not have this kind of overhead with over 100 employees, housed in a 20, 000 sq.ft. building, all with the latest computers, half of whom are doing research, composing very professional looking business plans, writing grants, doing non-profit filings, are teamed up with well known charities like Habitats For Humanity or are building wind farms to generate revenue in order to fund grants in house. I believe the negative comments made against this company are from one or two individuals who are trying to appear to be a mob and have a personal vendetta for a reason I was unable to determine. There is no evidence at any legitimate source that supports their allegations. It reminds me of a case I worked two years ago where a terminated employee made false allegations against the owner of a swim school. They posed as a parent who had talked to other parents about instructors fondling their children inappropriately. These false accusations nearly ruined the company and due to the nature of the allegations, through a forensic computer search, we were able to prove who was responsible and had them arrested and prosecuted. My advice is if you have doubts about the validity of a company, go visit them unannounced and see for yourself. I have never responded to a "blog" before and after much debate with my employer I was finally given permission to do so. I am not nearly as concerned about the company losing revenue as I am about the people who truly need this grant money in order for their businesses to survive but are afraid to do so out of fear of being taken. My two weeks "on the job" talking to a lot of people certainly gave me a perspective of the plight of many small business owners and farmers and it is these innocents that the blogger is doing the most harm to. You have no idea and probably don't care how many people you've caused harm to just so you can get your "pound of flesh" for getting dumped or jilted or whatever the real reason is.

just the word las vegas rings a bell for easy come easy go the fact they want the 6800.00 up front seems like a few fishing trips ive been on where the boat never left the dock ive got time to look into grants for free before i put my money on the craps table

Our business is hurting financially and recently compass national called and went thru the process of Qualifying us for grant money. They want 2, 400$ to do it tho. In return we should recieve $275, 000 grant monies. Now the logical part of me screams SCAM! but the rest of me wants to beleive this to be true because it would save our business.

To the owner of this blog, I am a "current" employee of Compas National and can tell you for a fact that you are absolutely correct in your claims that Compass National is a scam. I can not afford to lose my job, but I can tell you this, those that claim that Compas National (as of just a couple of weeks ago, is now known as Interlan Financial Corporation), are people who have paid the full $9600 dollar upfront fee for the full service (eventhough they still can not make any promises, about being able to get the grants). I also know that some of these pro Compass comments are written by Compass National employees (not all but some). I can tell you I know that anyone who pays less than the the full $9600 upfront fee gets their application dropped on a desk and gets regular followup calls, untill the day they are able to pay the full upfront fee, until then nothing at all is done with the file, except the making of empty attempts. If you take a moment, to think about the application process and research it (which they try hard not to do), you will see that the questions asked are not geared towards whether you can qualify for a grant or not, but they are purposely designed to weed out those who can pay the full $9600 upfront and those who can not.
The mentallity of the company is shovel it in and make it look honest for as long as possible. Their attempt to start a partnership with "Habitat For Humanity" is an attempt to create the appeareance of an honest company. At a meeting held by the owner of the company (BoB, but who really knows), he claimed that he would love to try to copy the structure of Habitat For Humanity, because they did not want to help the homeless only those who are hardworking and deserving. Can anyone please tell me when the homeless became non-deserving. Whether this is true or not, what does it say about the company with this man at the head of it. The "big" project ahead to build the first Solar Farm in NV, is another attempt to scam their way through to receiving themselves grant funds, that they will squander. Sometimes throwing money away is very profitable (in terms of appearence), especially if it is not your money you are throwing away. I would recommend that everyone seriously stop and take a look at the people in charge of/and making decisions for this company. Companies can appear one day and disappear the next and leave no trace of where they came from or where the went, very easily. It is not as easy for people. I would recommend that if you can not afford the full upfront fee of the $9600 (to throw away on a maybe), that you run from these people and dont look back. Also for all their claims of the excellent grant writers they have on staff (having written grants for the government, ect...), it is kept very quite that they are like homerun kings in baseball (while they often hold the record for most homeruns hit, they usually also hold the record for leading in strikeouts and often they have more strikeouts then they do homeruns), otherwise they would still be keeping their sweet jobs with the government or would have been in business for themselves where they could get a percentage write off the top of any grant they helped get. To the owner of this blog feel free to use any and/or all of this comment in any way you see fit to help enlighten as many people as possible about this company. Also to any one in business or connected to any business venture that they are involved with, I would suggest that you wear your hard hat re'ligiously around them, they make it no secrect amoung staff, that when the time comes to haul ###, the dominoes will fall where they will fall.

I was smart not to loose $10, 000.00 to pay to get a grant. The stafff names have changed time to time with the company name. Compass national is now inner circle when you call [protected] or [protected].
Steven Christopher was my grant contact person...this guy is no limit, he will find your spouse number, your work number and he is inappropriate. If you have any contact with them, please let your work to be aware about scamed calls otherwise it might cost you to loose your job.
PLEASE STOP THE SCAM!

Its simple, call the FBI...Talk to them to see if a company is legitimate or fraud. Since they say they work beside the FBI, we called the FBI to see how true that was. Of course the FBI had heard of no such company. They asked for all the information as to how much money they wanted and even took the names and numbers of the reps. we talked to at Compass. They tried to approve us for a 280, 000 dollar grant as well. When I talked to the operator I asked her if the company was legitimate and she had no response, except "Do you want me to connect you up to so and so" If you look the company Compass up on Manta, they have only been in business since August of 2010...and as well with the BBB...and had five complaints. Anyways the Operater connected us up to a Carol Andrade at extention 355. Already at that time though, we already knew it was fradulent which led us to call the FBI in the first place. Not to mention the countless slandering on this sight, from the employees defending the company...OH and the 35 year old private eye up above (Abigail Rivera) She looks no older than 18 but has been in business being a private eye for 35 years and just so happens to just go work for a client. yeah right. Tell the mumbo to somene who will believe you. Anyways, call the FBI, maybe the more compaints they get the sooner this place can be shut down. Here is the number for the FBI in Nevada Phone: [protected]

Carol Andrade at extention 855 correction