Dave Burke, He’s Back Promoting Debt Relief After Being Slammed Shut by Colorado

A tipster (send in your tips here) just sent me in a note that old Dave Burke, the guy behind the Real Talk Network that was sued out of existence by the State of Colorado, is back in business promoting his financial coaching.

Want to read the saga behind Dave Burke, click here.

To summarize, Dave Burke had this pitch to teach people how to do better financially through coaching. He sold coaching to people that turned out to be problematic at best. In the past, people that signed up for his coaching did not receive what was promised and were even sent to collections.

You can read and listen to a breakdown of his radio show sales pitch here.

The Attorney General of Colorado filed suit against Burke and banned him from “from selling, marketing or advertising any debt-relief services.”

According to the registration for his new domain name, DaveBurke.me, it is registered to:

Dave Burke
1 Main Street
Denver, Colorado 80210
303-555-1212

Nice bit of honesty there. (Yes, that is sarcasm.)

Under Burke’s old incarnations he promoted his services as doing a great service for America and his new site continues that patriotic thread.

Who knows, maybe he has learned from the beat down and fines the legal system gave him and he’s not violating the court order to not offer:

Defendants are permanently enjoined from providing, performing, selling, marketing, or advertising: (i) debt consolidation, (ii) debt elimination, (iii) credit repair, (iv) debt settlement; and (v) related counseling, in efforts to obtain money directly from consumers. For the purposes of this Consent Decree, the term “consumer” shall mean any individual natural person and not any business entity including but not limited to corporations or limited liability companies. This injunction does not prohibit David Allen Burke and Melodie Rose Burke (collectively, the “Burke Defendants”) from being employed in the financial services industry, which includes without limitation banks, credit unions, insurance companies, stock brokerages, money managers, investment firms, management consulting, or government sponsored enterprises, provided that the Burke Defendants do not have an ownership interest in or exercise any managerial control at the entity with whom they are employed. For purposes of this Consent Decree, “managerial control” includes any employment where the employee’s duties regularly consist of any combination of the following factors: financial control of the enterprise, management of the enterprise, regularly directing the work of two or more employees of the enterprise, having the authority to fire and hire employees or make recommendations of that particular weight regarding firing, hiring or advancement of employees, and regularly exercising discretionary powers.

Defendants are permanently enjoined from publishing, broadcasting, distributing or disseminating any information, including written, oral, or video, relating to debt elimination, debt management, debt settlement, debt counseling, wealth-building or credit repair services or products offered or provided to consumers in efforts to obtain money directly from consumers. – Source

In a perfect world Burke hopefully learned a valuable lesson from his past transgressions that harmed consumers and resulted in legal action against his debt free enterprises.

In past pitches the State of Colorado found that “Real Talk Network and its officers are suspected of telling consumers at the seminars that they will be able to work with the company to:

• Develop an individualize debt-reduction plan through one-on-one coaching with a trained financial adviser;
• Remove negative information from their credit reports and “explode” their credit scores; and,
• Obtain no-interest credit and low-interest loans though the special relationships Real Talk Network has with banks.”

So keeping that last bullet point in mind, imagine my surprise when I read on Burke’s Twitter feed the following.

And the statements about the money merge account, those sound familiar as well. Those issues were covered in the article “Mortgage Accelerator Plus Software and Australian Loan Reduction Money Merge Scheme.”

The State of Colorado laid out Burke’s old pitch in one of its actions against him.

In March 2010, RTN’s website contained the following representations regarding its program: Real Talk Presents: The New Banking and Credit Event

0% INTEREST ON CREDIT CARDS AND MORTGAGES? IS IT POSSIBLE? Join us for a discussion and training on eliminating the interest in your life. Are you tired of losing money? If you are paying any interest on credit cards or your mortgage, you are losing. Come learn how to win in today’s opportunistic market.

EXPLODE YOUR CREDIT SCORE AND GET CASH: Learn the secrets to your credit score from the creator of the FICO scoring model. Put $1,000-$3,000 in your bank account in 45 days using the strategies you will learn in this webinar. Boost you score instantly and much much more.

PAY OFF YOUR HOUSE NOW: Learn to accelerate the payoff of your home. No gimmicks, no games, just simple math and accountability that will have you own your home free and clear in under 10 years. If you don’t own one now, how would you like to buy and own a home with no mortgage in six years.

ELIMINATE YOUR CONSUMER DEBT AND RETIRE SAFELY: Learn and practice advance financial methodologies to wipe out all of your consumer debt and increase your monthly cash flow. Learn how to get up to a 40% raise in your household income. Wipe out your debt NOW!

According to Burke’s own website his new webinar covers:

• Complete overview of “America’s Debt-Free Solution”
• How to pay off your mortgage in a fraction of the time without changing your lifestyle
• How to pay off all your consumer debt faster than you ever imagined
• How to increase your credit scores simply and effectively
• Who can be debt free in 2 to 10 years, including a paid-off mortgage!

Call me crazy but that sounds extremely familiar to his old sales pitch.

The sales pitch under Burke’s last shuttered enterprise was “The Get Real with Dave [RTN] network of professionals are dedicated to changing the social economics of our country. We are a coaching network that provides critical financial education to families across the country.

What we do:
Our primary mission is to help families get out of debt rapidly, using advanced financial techniques. We provide ongoing coaching support to ensure our techniques are understood and provide a lifetime of empowerment.”

In this incarnation Burke is promoting he is volunteering to coach Americans to be debt free and while there is no sales pitch for money, certainly the puffery of the promotion seem very similar to what he was promoting in the past.

Burke says the reason he is doing this for free is:

I believe everyone has a life’s purpose. I believe mine is to help individuals and families become debt-free so they can pursue the things that matter to them. I help them reveal their own life’s purpose and identify their gifts so they can in turn contribute to others.

Volunteering to coach and teach as many families and individuals as I can was something I have pondered for quite some time. The flame and passion inside me was clear: This is what I’m supposed to do! This is my life’s purpose! – Source

Burke missed a redeeming opportunity to have learned from his old mistakes and turn that into education and advice for consumers about what to avoid and how to steer clear of the hype that sucks people in. Instead it appears he’s regurgitated his old program under the heading of doing it for free.

I suspect that the new “free” coaching model is an effort to promote the old program and instead of selling coaching, revenue is earned from referrals and the sale of products.

If you’ve had experience or attended his new program I’d like to hear about. Post your comments below.

Sincerely,


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Steve Rhode

Steve Rhode is the Get Out of Debt Guy and has been helping good people with bad debt problems since 1994. You can learn more about Steve, here.

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