Ring™ Cameras Missed the Latest NAMFS Crime Wave

May 20, 2024

The National Association of Mortgage Field Services (NAMFS) has been actively involved in attempting to get its membership levels up to par, lately. In fact, the latest NAMFS #FraudFest was a veritable who’s who of firms whom publicly have disavowed NAMFS and their practices while heaping tens of thousands of dollars into the NAMFS coffers. One contractor noted the two stepping by several Prime Vendors and forwarded over a list of attendees. For those curious who supports $5 inspections and $25 grass cuts, here is the list,

61 Inspections, LLC First Rate Field Services National Mortgage Field Services, LLC, A City Suburban Service Inc. Freddie Mac P 4 Management, LLC, ABC Premier Services, Inc. Freedom Mortgage Pat Neff & Associates LLC, Guardian Asset Management Accurate Property Services Global Strategic Patriot Exterior Pros, ADEvantage Technologies, Inc Gryphon Group LLC Penny Mac, Allied Field Services, Inc. Pillar Ascension Group, Altisource Home Guard Supply (formerly Carrdan) POV Preservation
Asset Preservation & Restoration Services Home Shield Solutions DBA: Kando Group Precision Field Services, Auction.Com Homegenius \ Radian Real Estate Management Promise Solutions, Bank of Oklahoma HomeSource Real Estate Asset Services Inc. PWM Construction, Inc, Barnes Notary & Field Services, Inc. HUD R A N O LLC, Beers Construction Partners IMS Datawise Real RE Group, LLC, Black Dome Services Infinite Homes & Services Respectable Property Maintenance, Bluebook/Repairbase Innovative Field Services Restb, BNM Enterprises ISN, Corporation R-Eyes Asset Management, BOSSCAT Home Services & Technologies iVueit RLL Field Services, Brookstone Management JGM Property Group RPR Services, LLC., Carrington Mortgage Services JJ Real Estate Solutions Sand Castle Field Services, CJ Patrick Key Asset Solutions Inc Schnabel Inc, Claims Recovery Financial Services, LLC Kline Consulting ServiceLink Field Services, LLC, Construction Gallery USA L&O Construction Inc. SingleSource, Cyprexx Services LCCO PROPERTIES LLC So Cal Inspectors, Inc, DhanInfo LoanCare, LLC Solid Foundation Properties, East Coast Property Services, LLC Lone Star National Bank Specialized Loan Servicing, Electronic Real Estate Services, LLC Luis Ferrer Inc. Spring Tooth Preservation LLC, Elite Properties and Landscape Contr. MCS Steele Management Solutions Inc, ExpertData eServices International MFS Supply LLC The Bassani Group LLC, Extreme Property Management Group LLC Michaelis Inc The Master’s Builder, Inc, Falcon Rappaport & Berkman LLP Mid-Atlantic Property Services LLC US Bank, Fannie Mae Miles Preservation Vendor Resource Management, Inc., Fay Servicing MMC Contracting Services, Inc. Verisk, Field Pros LLC Moore Services LLC Web-Fair Inc., Financial Inspection and Completion Services, LLC MSI WeWomen, First Allegiance Myhomes360, Inc Xperience Roofing, First Freedom Preservation National Association of Default Professionals York Jersey Underwriters, First Midwest Property and National Field Representatives LLC.

The Gang of 100, so to speak, met to hash out the anti-trust issues and enjoy a drink in a dark corner after flying in with jet lag setting in. Take, for example, Joyce Milaszewski, CEO of JGM Property Group. Last year, Milaszewski’s failed Security Administrator, Brandon Kirkham, allowed their email servers to be hacked and as a direct result allowed virus laden emails to be distributed to many firms, including the International Association of Field Service Technicians (IAFST). HUD Acting Deputy Chief Procurement Officer, Craig Karnes, stated there was no issue with this as HUD’s servers were not impacted. Hmnn, a HUD M&M FSM Awardee whose IT has been compromised is not an issue?! Gets better, though. Milaszewski wasn’t content with simply a HUD award. She bankrolled P 4 Management, barely formed in June of 2022, to take over the JGM business. Showing the typical shitshow that Joyce is so famous for, the P 4 Management website is a Wix spam magnet. Moreover, though, ALL of P 4 Management’s filing documents are missing on Michigan’s LARA system. One of the major complaints about Joyce still calling the shots over Jessica Plunkett are the non compete agreements which had to be signed by some contractors. Not only is JGM playing both sides of the coin when it comes to violating Federal Acquisition Regulations and the HUD M&M FSM itself, but non compete agreements are a clear example of employee misclassification.

The very same trolls who bought the ticket and took the ride over at NAMFS slithered up over at the IMN conference today. What some of them did not like was being ambushed by IAFST Members and confronted about their fraudulent ways. The irony was thick as thieves because the very firms being pitched by the NAMFSter firms had already been landed by a few of the IAFST Members.

The game is changing. Jet setting around on Labor’s dime is rapidly coming to an end. The Chief Executive Officer, Chief Operating Officer, and the Senior Vice President arm-in-arm knocking back the booze as the SVP’s inch thick Texas make up begins to crack is no longer palatable to most investment firms. Today, relationships are built on trained Labor. The overhead and profit that most of these archaic firms engorge on no longer support the quality work required by those outside of the Industry. Waiting weeks to find someone willing to do tenant turns for pennies while fronting all of the expenses only to have a chargeback issued have come to an end. In fact, Altisource and ServiceLink appear to be the last remaining firms worth working for.

In our latest discussions with firms working direct for Abodea, Elara, NTMB, TriCon, and others the pay is roughly 12 times that of our Industry. Elara, in particular, will pay you for your bid! Yeah, and there is no 60 days later pay under the fear of chargebacks! Most pay is as soon as your invoice is processed. While certain projects require training, with some of it provided through White Labeled IAFST University, the reality is that both the inspections and basic tenant turns do not.

If you are tired of the NAMFSters stealing your money through chargebacks and spending the cash on booze and hookers at conferences, then why not make a clean break today? If you need help getting onboarded, reach out today for a Retainer.

For those curious how bad it is at NAMFS, here is their latest tax return,

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The Fix to No Emails From WordPress Website

Paul Williams

May 19, 2024

So, you launched your website on WordPress. It was a wise move as WordPress is used by 43.2% of all websites. Among those created with a known CMS, the market share is even higher — 62.8%! The reality is that when it comes to your business, your website is virtually the only thing that brings in work. People come to verify that your company is what it says it is. They look for things such as photos of you and your Team and previous projects you have completed on your About Us page. The second most important thing to ensure is working is the Contact Us page. Why, you might ask? Most initial contacts are email based and if your website is not properly set up to dispatch email to you, well you have no work!

Earlier this month, I had a Client reach out to me on Digital Matrix Group, where I do most of my web development from for both for profit and non profit firms. They had asked me to investigate why they had not been receiving any emails from their Contact Us page. When I solved their issue, I decided to write a post on the issue.

Last week, we discussed how to access Amazon AWS Lightsail from the command line in order to fix a collapsed critical error. Today, we are going to walk through how to fix email issues. First, we need to find out what your MX records are. Your host will provide them or you may simply check your website’s DNS. These are the IP addresses to where your email comes and goes from. The MX records are going to define whether or not you are using Google Workspace, Microsoft Outlook, or your host’s email servers. We are going to go with the scenario where your host’s email is used, but the solution we will discuss works regardless. You will need to set up an email address through cPanel.

You will need to set up an email address through cPanel. Then, you will need to reach out to your host and obtain the following information: SMTP Host Name, is the Encryption SSL or TLS, SMTP Port, Email Address and Password.

Now, we are going to upload a WordPress plugin called WP Mail SMTP. Simply go to your WordPress admin dashboard, select Add New Plugin, type in the title above, install and activate. It will begin a wizard for installation. When it asks you for SMTP provider, simply select Other SMTP and the bottom. Then proceed to enter the information you obtained from your host. That’s it! There is no need to buy the paid version unless you are running Google Workspace or Microsoft Outlook. In that case, you will have different MX records and information to enter into WP Mail SMTP.

Amazon AWS Lightsail Critical Error on WordPress

Paul Williams

May 16, 2024

About 36 hours ago, a well used plugin in the WordPress ecosystem wreaked havoc across the internet. As of January 2024, 8.8 million websites worldwide use Elementor, which is 3.7 million more than in 2022. This includes 3.6 million websites using the Elementor Pro version, and more than 13 million websites built with Elementor. The free Elementor plugin has more than 5 million active installs, and over 260 million overall installs since its launch. To put this better into perspective, WordPress is used by 43.2% of all websites. Among those created with a known CMS, the market share is even higher — 62.8%! So, when an add on to Elementor known as the Elementor Header & Footer Builder had some bad code shipped out, there was a catastrophic failure across the web.

Normally, most folks would simply go into their cPanel — a Linux-based web hosting control panel that provides a dashboard to manage a website or server — and edit the wp-config.php file, set the WP_DEBUG entry to true and track things down. The issue several of my Clients had was that they run their WordPress instances on Amazon AWS Lightsail. The difference between Lightsail and say shared hosting on GoDaddy or TMD Hosting is that you have to understand shell script on a UNIX/Linux operating system. Thus, when they were unable to reach their tech personnel overseas, they reached out to Ghost on Demand. 😉

The dreaded There Has Been a Critical Error on Your Website error was afoot. Many call it the White Screen of Death (WSOD) similar to the Windows Blue Screen of Death (BSOD). With WSOD, though, there is light at the end of the tunnel. The primary coding language used in WordPress is PHP — Hypertext Preprocessor.

Amazon AWS Lightsail is a barebones server that allows for a one click deployment of WordPress. While there was initially a fairly steep learning curve, today it is as simple as plug and play. The challenge with Lightsail is that there is no real graphic user interface (GUI) like with shared hosting or cPanel. Today, we are going to focus on simply getting inside the server, diagnosing the problem, and fixing it.

Triage

After logging into the Lightsail application, you are going to first try a series of actions to simply see if it is an AWS server issue which hung things up or not. Our first level of observation is Triage. First, login to your Lightsail. Then, let’s click the three red dots in the upper right. Then, let’s try to Reboot the system. It may take a few minutes. In another tab, try to reopen your website. If the error is still there, let’s repeat the process, this time selecting Stop. Once the server is stopped, let’s click the three dots again and then select Start. Try to open your website in another tab again. If this didn’t solve the issue, then we are going to move to the operating theater.

Operating Theater

What we learned during triage is that our error is not associated with the Lightsail system. Now, we need to dig in and figure out what the issue is. So, let’s click the Command Line button next to the three red dots. It is going to open up the Bitnami Server Command Line in a pop up window. From the command line you are going to type: cd ~/stack/wordpress/ and hit enter. Then, you are going to type: sudo nano wp-config.php and hit enter. Using your manual cursor from the keyboard, you are going to locate the define( ‘WP_DEBUG’, false ); statement and change the false to true. You will then hit the Ctrl and X keys simultaneously. It will ask if you want to save the file and simply hit Y.

Go to a new tab and reload your website. It will publish a bunch of errors citing file names and line numbers. Here is where the fun starts. Somewhere in the errors it is going to cite a file or plugin. In our case it was this,

An E_COMPILE_ERROR error was caused in line 32 of file /home/grlu3439/public_html/wp-content/plugins/header-footer-elementor/header-footer-elementor.php. Error message: require_once(): Failed opening required ‘/home/grlu3439/public_html/wp-content/plugins/header-footer-elementor/vendor/autoload.php’ (include_path=’.:/opt/alt/php74 /usr/share/pear’)

The key here was the directory structure. We know that the error was kicked from a WordPress plugin called header-footer-elementor. It is an add on to the Elementor plugin. So, we are going to go back to our Bitnami Server pop up window and type clear. We are going to now enter cd. Now, enter cd ~/stack/wordpress/wp-content/plugins followed by dir. It will display the files in the plugins directory. In our case, we are searching for header-footer-elementor. Now, we will enter sudo rm -rf header-footer-elementor. The reality is that you could replace the file we used with any file, but make sure that it is the one that is needed as you could do a lot of damage otherwise. Try reloading your website. It may look a bit different, but if it loads and the error is gone, then we know what the issue is.

If the website loads, you are going to login as the Administrator. You will probably have an error that the plugin we removed has been deactivated from WordPress as there is no longer a folder for it. You will have to do some due diligence on the offending plugin to see if there is an update to correct the error. If so, simply re-install it, clear any cache plugins and you may sign out.

A side note here: If you caught the fact that the PHP was set at 7.4 and not 8.1.x you get a gold star. PHP 7.4 has hit end of life and is causing a lot of problems on many platforms as dev’s attempt to bring their creations into the new dawn of PHP 8.x. We will probably cover that down the road as it is an easy fix!

Now, we need to type cd followed by clear in the Bitnami server pop up. Then, we will reverse the debugging on the website by entering cd ~/stack/wordpress/ in the command line. Now, type sudo nano wp-config.php and define( ‘WP_DEBUG’, true ); statement and change the true to false. You will then simply hit the Ctrl and X keys simultaneously. It will ask if you want to save the file and simply hit Y. Then, reload your website to make sure that the debugging statements are gone. If they are, log out of your Lightsail.

That’s it! Code is Poetry!

Why Not 1099 Clients For Chargebacks? NAMFS and HUD are Worried!

Paul Williams

May 14, 2024

Eleven Contractors filed 1099’s against their Clients for over $100,000 last year, for chargebacks. Not a single one was objected to. In historic interviews which built upon a framework I proposed challenging chargebacks, last fiscal year, began a turning point in fraud. Many may ask what was different about 2023’s IRS filings that triggered this event? To be brutally honest, when Assero, owned and operated by Eduardo San Roman, decided to 1099 Labor for work San Roman never paid for, it was the final straw. As many know, San Roman owns and controls the 24 Family of Companies including 24 Asset Management, a recent HUD M&M FSM Awardee, which has been struggling to perform upon the Award.

With the average inspection now paying around $6 and a typical initial grass cut for an acre or less running $35, one would think that it would be profit enough for these predators. It isn’t, though. Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and HUD all pay $30 for an exterior inspection and $45 for an interior inspection. Freddie Mac pays $525 for an initial grass cut over 10K square feet. The chargebacks are simply yet another line item for profit, with much of the money going to pay the Vendor Manager’s bonuses.

1099’s always have been a legal way to shift the burden of taxation upon the shoulder’s of those whom owe the tax. In the case of our Industry, it now has become a legitimate tool to utilize when fraud, waste, and abuse are levied upon Contractors. The primary reason that your Clients will not challenge them is because of the auditing process. While you may be the only one to 1099, the reality is that an IRS audit may uncover many, many more errors.

A final note on this article. Without the permission of those whom I receive emails, texts, or interviews from, I do not release their names. I do not dispense legal or financial advise. I do Consult, but only directly to Clients whom have entered into legally binding agreements. Legitimate businesses all have expenses. Because yours did not make the proper decisions to protect your investment does not mean that your lawyers may email me requesting information to benefit your case — free of charge. If you have no history of Donating to support these articles, chances are slim to none that I will drop everything to help out. In fact, I have been doing my best to get out of reporting on this Industry and into the Education and Development side of things for over a year, now. I fear, with the recent influx of illegal alien labor in our Industry, it will only get worse.

Price of Inspections Lowered By Prime Vendors

Paul Williams

May 13, 2024

At a time when grocery prices are up 26% and fast food meals are up a whopping 33%, firms like GIS Field Services have lowered pricing on inspections. GIS Field Services, owned by Mortgage Contracting Services (MCS) parent company, Littlejohn & Co., have recently been taking over the Five Brothers portfolio. As many recall, Foreclosurepedia reported upon MCS purchasing Five Brothers making it the largest conglomeration of industry firm purchases and ensuring an anti-trust investigation . . .

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