Recently, the cat has been let out of the bag that UFirst Financial, the company selling the worthless “Money Merge Account” software via a multi-level marketing business model is on its last legs. Top members of the salesforce are plotting how to oust other sales people and keep the profits for themselves. The numbers show that about 75% of MMA’s users have stopped using the software.
Now the news is that the powers that be at United First Financial are shopping the company to private equity groups. Of course, they don’t want anyone to know…. especially not their sales force. The ship is sinking quickly, and the owners are trying to offload the company before there is nothing left to sell.
Here’s the note that recently went to upper management at U1st Financial:
I know you’ve already met with Sorensen Group, but we still need them to sign the attached NDA. In fact each private equity / venture capital buyer that you talk to needs to sign this NDA.
Any leak to the field that the company is going to be sold will be devastating. We do not want anyone, including potential buyers discussing this.
Thanks.
Rex H. Huang
General Counsel
United First Financial, LLC
Of course, NDA means non-disclosure agreement. And the Sorenson Group he refers to is likely this company: http://www.sorensongm.com.
UPDATE: Donald E. Wallace, President/General Counsel of Sorenson Management Services, L.L.C. at 4393 Riverboat Road, Suite 450 in Salt Lake City, Utah 84123 says that the company he works for is not the company referenced by United First Financial in their email about the non-disclosure agreement.
I wonder if these private equity groups are doing any research on United First to see what they company is really selling? Surely they’d want to know how the product fails to help consumers, despite all efforts to convince people to ignore the hard numbers.
I guess it remains to be seen what value anyone can find in this company. One piece of broken software, a client base that’s already been ripped off, little chance of any repeat business, and ongoing server costs to support all software sold to date.
Along with the potential suits from any unhappy customers.
This may very well be the end.
UFF on it’s last legs? Founders abandoning their clients and agents? No way…. those guys are honest and loyal. Well, ok, they are scammers through and through. Hopefully anyone that looks at buying this company has second thoughts. Unfortunately, I could see a company like this surviving to scam more people. At the rate we are churning out ignorant people in this world, it could last indefinitely.
c+h
How did we miss the spelling difference? Wrong group completely.
Perhaps googling “stupid equity buyout firms” will get us the true potential buyers.
Where’s the value in UFirst? What would a buyer want? It’s not the technology they’ve developed – that’s crap. I supposed all they have going for them is some ongoing MMA payments, but whoever buys them out would presumably have to keep the MMA servers up and running in order to demand the payments keep coming in. And, they would be associating themselves with UFirst, whose name is now toxic. Who would touch that deal with a 10 foot pole?
As for Sorenson vs. Sorensen, these Scandihoovian spelling mistakes are common – I should know. It doesn’t matter who was looking to buy them – whoever it was did not do an ounce of homework before the meeting.
I’m just curious as to why these Sorenson guys got all wound up about this. Who cares if someone speculates you’re buying a company and you’re not really buying it? No one. The only ones who would care, in my opinion, are people who ARE involved and want to keep it secret.
And furthermore, I’m not counting on the geniuses at UFF to be able to spell correctly.
Seriously – would *you* like your company name loosely associated with being interested in UFirst? I’d be running in the other direction so fast, not even factorial math could keep up. Even if it was this Sorenson Group who met with UFirst, they would probably realize the worthlessness and toxicity of UFirst by now, and would want to pretend the meeting never happened.
What about Sorenson Capital? They are in UT and have a link to a page titled, “Interested In Selling Your Company?” A Utah Business Entity Search under “Sorensen” reveals other possible groups, but they don’t have direct websites.
Good catch, L2G. This is more likely to be the “group” in question. Their business type is a better fit, even if their company name isn’t.
Not a bad guess either, L2G. I can’t wait to find out who the SUCKER is!!!
I would never ask anyone to do anything illegal or unethical. But if anyone happened to find a list of
all 59K ufirst agents with their contact information in the garbage can, I know someone who might be willing to pay a finders fee.
[…] Coenen, author on fraud investigation and blogger at Fraud Files, broke the news that UFirst may be looking to cash out and are seeking a […]
Sorenson Capital in Utah is a more likely candidate, as someone else already mentioned. Sorenson is a real, bona fide private equity shop. A close friend works for Sorenson. I’m quite certain they would not be interested in a MLM scheme.
Someone from UF could have “talked” with someone from Sorenson. People talk all the time. But I’m quite certain Sorenson’s interest wouldn’t extend further than that.
Is there really still so much dumb money sloshing around that someone would buy a lame duck like this with no due dilly at all? I thought the credit bust wiped out the PE shops who would buy anything, no matter how ludicrous.