5 Questions to Ask Before Hiring an MCA Debt Settlement Company (To Avoid Getting Scammed Twice)

The first person who took your money was the MCA funder. The second may be the company that promises to fix it.

MCA debt settlement is an unregulated space occupied by legitimate attorneys, competent financial advisors, and a population of operators whose business model depends on business owners in crisis making decisions under pressure. The legitimate practitioners and the fraudulent ones use the same vocabulary. They promise the same outcomes. They advertise on the same platforms. Distinguishing between them requires asking questions that the fraudulent operators hope you will not think to ask.

The New York Attorney General's investigation into Yellowstone Capital revealed, among other things, the case of Mark Csantaveri, who operated a purported debt settlement firm that stole $3.4 million from clients and gambled away over a million. His clients were business owners already drowning in MCA debt who paid Csantaveri to negotiate on their behalf. He did not negotiate. He took their money and disappeared into a casino.

This is the extreme case. The more common version is less dramatic and equally damaging: a company that collects monthly fees, instructs the merchant to stop paying funders, and fails to achieve any settlement, leaving the merchant in worse financial position than before engagement.

Five questions separate the legitimate from the predatory.

Is the Company an Attorney or a Law Firm?

MCA debt settlement involves legal analysis, contract review, litigation defense, and negotiation with parties who have attorneys on the other side. A non-attorney settlement company cannot file motions to vacate confessions of judgment, cannot assert usury defenses, cannot litigate counterclaims, and cannot represent the merchant in court.

A non-attorney company can negotiate. But negotiation without the credible threat of litigation is negotiation without leverage. The funder knows the difference.

If the company is not a law firm, ask who provides the legal work. If the answer is "we have attorneys on retainer" or "we work with a network of lawyers," the company is a middleman. You are paying the middleman's fee and the attorney's fee, and the middleman's contribution to the outcome is the introduction.

What Happens to Your Payments While the Company Negotiates?

Many debt settlement companies instruct clients to stop making MCA payments and instead deposit funds into an escrow or reserve account managed by the company. The theory is that the accumulated funds will be used for a lump-sum settlement offer.

The practice has two risks. The first is that the escrow account is not protected. If the company is not an attorney, the account may not be held in a client trust account subject to bar association oversight. The money may be commingled with the company's operating funds. The second risk is that while the merchant stops paying, the funders continue to accrue the accelerated balance, file judgments, and freeze bank accounts. The merchant's position deteriorates while the settlement company collects monthly fees.

The company collected twelve months of fees. The funder collected a judgment.

Ask where the funds are held, by whom, under what regulatory oversight, and what happens to the money if the engagement terminates. If the answers are vague, the funds are not safe.

What Is the Fee Structure?