Home > Junk fax profiles > Optima Funding

Optima Funding (aka "Mortgage Services")

Attorneys suing them:

  • Brian Manson, CA, 818-906-0080
  • John H. Donboli, CA (619) 230-7757

Proof that they order junk faxes to be sent:

SLAPP suit that they file against people who try to sue them (and win):

Injunction preventing them from sending faxes after June 8, 2005:

Amazingly, they were still faxing after the preliminary injunction. If you complain, they want to know YOUR number so they can take you off the list.

Here's the final resolution:

Look at the date of this letter from Optima's lawyer...it's after the injunction! So if Optima isn't supposed to send of ANY faxes to ANYONE, then why would they want to know Sutton's fax number?

Mortgage Services is a name call centers use to disguise the real company.

Depending on how you answer the questions (or sometimes not), they'll transfer you to one of their paying customers, like Optima Funding.

Optima gets all their fax leads by "buying" them from a third party. Subsequent to fax.com, they have contracts with at least 3 different leads companies.

CAUTION: we've seen "Mortgage Services" ads sent by various broadcasters, so you have to go through the drill to find the company at the other end to be sure.

Optima funding response numbers include:

800-455-1351
800-485-2917
800-663-1064
800-709-0768
800-709-6901
800-730-9459
800-730-9485
800-737-1681
800-797-0166
800-909-6938
800-928-0882
866-485-2917
866-573-5186
866-807-8310
866-807-8312

also these numbers supplied by Jim Sutton:

800-670-6024
800-670-6036
800-697-0996
800-709-0768
800-730-9485
800-752-3770
800-909-6938
800-928-0882

But you should be sure to verify that by calling the number, giving your info, and waiting to be transferred to a loan agent.

Optima's main number: 714-549-6300.

Offers include:

  • We have only $15 million dollars available to lend at this special start rate
  • Instant phone approval in 24 hours (or 5 minutes!!!!!)
  • To: All Employees Re: New Loan Program
  • From: Equity 1
  • Please call me as soon as possible. Rates may change!!
  • [x] urgent   [x] please reply
  • Equity 1: America's Most Progressive Lenders
  • ATTENTION  ALL HOMEOWNERS which has  callback number of 800-928-0882

A friend of mine got the following fax on 8/26/05 after the injunction:

I called the response number listed 800-798-0693 at approximately noon on 8/26/05. I said I was from California and I was hot transferred to Art at Optima Funding who gave me his direct line: 714-549-6361. I subsequently verified that that phone number is a phone number at Optima.

But looks like the lead broker is also selling my name to a second buyer (who pays less for the lead than the primary buyer). On the following Monday, at 2:30pm I got a call from "Ed" who said he was from Home Loans USA, Inc. He said they are a direct lender and had the best prices. He said they had no website. His cell was 714-881-9002. His office number is 714-538-4601 which is the main number for Home Loans USA.  Website (never created): www.homeloansusa.org. 7536 East Chapman Avenue, Orange, CA 92869.

here are some emails:

Have you ever encountered a fax by "Mortgage Services"? No headers, only an 800 number (800-709-0768)? I could retire on what these guys sent me so far. Thanx-

I've gotten a ton of these as well, and (for me) they have always resolved to Optima Funding in Santa Ana. In my case, the faxes always have been sent by Fax.com (and prodgeny) and contain the removal number 800-658-8133.

Mortgage Services is a non-existent company that is actually a piece of Fax.com that handles inbound calls for the faxes sent.

You can see the Secretary of State's listing for Optima at: http://kepler.ss.ca.gov/corpdata/ShowAllList?QueryCorpNumber=C2538985

It is possible that FDC is selling leads from your area to someone other than Optima (but I doubt it). You should call the interest number, give a fake name and call-back number, and feign interest. Keep notes of your conversation and ask the loan officer with whom you are connected the name of the company with which you are speaking. Half the time with Optima you get lucky and initially get put on hold with elevator music and voice-over telling you that you've reached Optima. In that case, just note that and hang up.

The real goal here is to determine who is the ultimate beneficiary of the unsolicited fax.

My money is on Optima Funding.

In passing, I had a conversation with Ali (the President of Optima) on April 16th, and he freely admitted that the faxes were his but claimed he wasn't liable because he didn't actually do the faxing. This is obviously a bogus legal argument, and, in making it, he admitted full knowledge that unsolicited faxes were being sent on Optima's behalf.

Jim Sutton

Here's their website:

Optima Funding Cure for your mortgage headaches

ALI SHAH VELAYATI (aka Ali Shah aka Ali Shaw) is the President. 1-866-333-7334 or 714-668-8550 or 714 327 4500 (main #):

Optima Funding aka Streamline Escrow aka Shah Enterprises, Inc.
5 Hutton Centre Dr STE 120
Santa Ana, CA 92707

Other names associated with Optima include: Shah Velayati, Ali Manesh, Ali Shah Shah. It is likely that Ali Manesh is a different person than Ali Shah.

Affidavits regarding Optima. Their strategy is to not show up, wait for a judgment, if it is against them, then they move to vacate claiming some sort of excuse. Or they will try to get it consolidated with a really slow moving case in Superior Court to wear you out (per small claims judge's benchbook, judges are supposed to ignore such requests). That way, they delay the judgment, and only bother to show up in cases where they lost the first round:

Here is Ali Shah's deposition:

Ali is the sole officer and shareholder. Here's a summary of the depo:

He denies he does any faxing. First he starts out saying he used Light Point (2 words in the depo) for leads, and stopped using them as soon as he found they were faxing. In the end, he never says who is doing their faxing now.

First he claims he didn't use any other similar lead generation services. Later he admits he "may have used" Live Leads and, later yet, Impact Marketing. But he consistently maintains that he never knowingly caused faxes to be sent and stopped doing business with anyone who he found had sent faxes.

It appears Terri Breer pretty much dominated the depo--clearly putting words into Ali's mouth. They brought almost none of materials subpoenaed for the depo; they either claimed it didn't exist (see below) or that it was covered by attorney-client privilege. It seemed Terry was arguing that anything Ali had given her (e.g., demand letters) was now covered by attorney-client privilege. Both Brian Manson and David Amkraut vociferously disagreed with this and kept threatening to get a motion to compel.

He did admit that all of the demand letters came to him and that he opened and looked over them, although he claimed he never fully read them before forwarding them to his lawyer (they didn't ask which lawyer). They did go over my first demand letter and my affidavit with him, but he kept up the defense that Optima never faxed, told their lead-generation companies not to fax, and fired them when they found out they did.

Of course, it seemed quite suspicious that he said he had no contracts with any of the companies, no invoices, no records of any communications, etc. Elsewhere he says they were paying $100-$200 per lead and buying 300-400 leads per week--so that means he's paying out $30K-$80K per week with no records....sounds pretty unlikely, especially since you couldn't deduct that expense from your taxes.

He starts off by saying they never have gotten hot transfers from lead generation companies, but later he describes the process which includes getting hot transfers.

Used to use fax.com (via LiveLeads).

April 7, 2005: Mark Klein had Bridgette and Terri in court today, and I was there as a spectator. This was on a motion to vacate. Contrary to Ali's depo, they produced a contract (dated 2/5/2005) with Link Point (signed by Richard LaMarre, President). Although they never got into the contract, clearly the point was that the contract stated (several times) that neither company was an agent of the other. There was also an addendum at the back that supposedly spelled out Optima's rules--including not violating the TCPA). I would expect this to turn up in future cases 

Here's the bullshit contract they use to cover their ass: OptimaLinkPoint-2-5-2005contract.PDF.  

The language about one not being the agent of the other is pure BS. Agency is not established by what you say, but what you do!!! The fact Optima accepts the fax leads from Linkpoint and knows it is from faxing (how could they NOT know) makes them liable. 

Incidentally, has anyone noted that this contract demonstrates that Optima has control, or at least BELIEVES they have control over the actions of Linkpoint? Doesn't that constitute "agency"? And, of course, the document itself is an admission that faxes WERE transmitted on Optima's behalf beginning in October of 2004. ;O)

And a final factor is that Richard LaMarre is just a strawman. He has NOTHING to do with Linkpoint. This is a guy whose name they use. Since he cannot be found, you can never subpoena him as a witness since he can NEVER be personally served.

Ali drives a Ferrari; business is good!

Optima is currently being sued by:

Brian A. Manson
The Law Offices of Brian A. Manson
14156 Magnolia Boulevard
Suite 200
Sherman Oaks, CA 91423
Phone: 818-906-0080
Fax: 818-906-0085
bmanson@mansonlaw.com

Terri Breer of fax.com fame is handling the case for Optima.

Hi there. I think I was the first case where she wanted to delay things to third-party Link Point. The advantage for Plaintiffs with this tactic is that she is pretty much putting all her eggs in one basket with this defense:

1.) She admits that Optima was sending faxes through an agent.

2.) She says that the Agent was a "renegade agent" they hired in October.

3.) She maintains that no faxes were sent prior to October.

Here's where that fails: we can show that Optima was regularly sending faxes prior to October. So, the agent they hired in October wasn't renegade at all; they were doing what they were hired to do. And, Optima admits that they hired them, and they were sending faxes.

We win.

See, give them enough rope and they'll hang themselves. This is particularly true with Bridgette who can't hardly finish a sentence without contradicting herself.

Because Terri Breer/Ali appear to be adopting the posture that they have been "mislead" by Link Point Marketing, who they "instructed" not to send faxes. When I brought up the fact to Terri that my faxes had originated with Fax.com, she went off on the fact that there was no real evidence linking FDC to Lighthouse Marketing, Impact Marketing, Data Research, etc.

Now, first they have a problem that I think Link Point Marketing (whomever they may be) is associated with their new fax blaster (since FDC died). In various court filings, depos, etc., they have claimed that they started doing business with LP Mktng last summer or at the beginning of 2003. All of my information (phone call with Ali mentioning Lighthouse and Impact, the fact that Ali referred me to Impact to complain, the subpoenas that show the interest numbers went to Lighthouse and Data Research) supports the linkage we know was there.

Optima used to be a fax.com customer before fax.com went out of business. Here are the faxes that they had fax.com send out for them in 2003 and 2004 (qxd is quark express). 

E-mail from Jimmy Sutton to Optima's attorney 10/3/05

Mr. Pistone, today I received your letter re Optima Funding and my small
claims cases. I don't wish to get into a full discussion as to the merits
of my cases, but there are a few things worth pointing out.

You incorrectly state that my intention is to get Optima and its agents to
stop sending me junk faxes. My intention is to cause Optima and its agents
to comply with the TCPA. That means to stop sending junk faxes to everyone. That means to stop using prerecorded messages. That means to comply with all of the other requirements of the TCPA and regulations promulgated under the TCPA. By my estimate, Optima has caused at least 20 million junk faxes to be sent, resulting in unwilling conversion of about $2 million of recipient's resources.

I personally have received about 130 unsolicited faxes that Optima caused to be sent. I have personally sent Optima and Mr. Shah about a dozen letters (starting January 21, 2004) complaining about the faxes sent on Optima's behalf and explicitly pointing out both the violations of the TCPA and the fact that Optima was responsible for the actions of their agents. In the following 18 months, neither Optima nor Mr. Shah have taken even the
slightest initiative to contact me or to stop the actions of their agents.
Optima has continued to benefit from these illegal actions during this whole
period, thereby ratifying the actions of those agents. Mr. Shah has so
testified in court and in a deposition.

In April of 2004, I called Optima to complain about the continuing barrage
of unsolicited faxes. I was transferred to Mr. Shah. During the course of
that call, Mr. Shah stated multiple times that he knew faxes were being sent
on Optima's behalf. Mr. Shah also named two companies (both part of
Fax.com) who were sending faxes on his behalf. Mr. Shah gave me a specific person's name and phone number at one of the companies so that I could call him to further discuss the faxing-which call I did make. If one is dealing with an organization that is part of Fax.com, one would hardly expect they were sending out direct mail.

I have subpoenaed Optima's records dealing with lead generation during that period on multiple occasions; Mr. Shah and Optima have refused to produce the subpoenaed documents.

I believe Optima lost its case to JNS Copy Service because of similar failure to produce requested information in discovery.

On every occasion when I have called in response to a fax and have been
hot-transferred to Optima, I started my conversation by stating that I had
received a fax and directly read a portion of the offer from the fax. I
never once had an employee say Optima didn't send faxes. Some Optima
employees even offered that they sent "millions" of faxes.

The FCC, federal law, agency theory, and California case law all make it
perfectly clear that Optima is the primarily responsible party for these
illegal actions.

As for your assertion that "these claims are being fabricated"-- that is
interesting--not true, but interesting. Would you care to share any
evidence you may have to support this claim?

I'm not "affiliated" with anyone else filing claims for TCPA violations
against Optima; to the extent I even know of others, it is because of Optima's and Mr. Shah's continuing egregious violations of the TCPA and his apparent absolute disdain for the law.

As for your request to inform you of the fax numbers from which the faxes
were sent-I would love to, but in violation of the rules promulgated under
the TCPA, none of the faxes have that number on them.

As for your request for my fax numbers-first, I've now shared 42 faxes with
Optima representatives in court, containing my numbers many times over. Second, my goal is to get Optima to comply with the TCPA. If Optima were to choose to become law-abiding, it would not send any unsolicited faxes, so the simple answer is that Optima shouldn't care about my fax numbers--it should simply stop causing faxes to be sent. As I have stated before, my numbers are private, unlisted, and on the DNC list, and I consider it both an invasion of my privacy and an encouragement to Optima to continue its illegal activity to give you my numbers.

JUST STOP OPTIMA'S FAXING!

E-mail from Steve Kirsch to Optima's attorney 10/3/05

I've sent you the information you requested in 2 previous e-mails.

Now I wonder if you can help me out since I've helped you.

You see, I've been doing this fax stuff for many years. You seem to be on the same page as me in helping to enforce the law.

However, based on your letter, you seem to have discovered some techniques that even I do not know about!! Will you share your techniques with me?

In your letter to Wayne and Jimmy, you say:

"it is impossible to 'stop' any alleged unlawful faxing when you deliberately conceal your fax number, making it impossible to either police any faxing, or to verify whether or not any fax has been sent to you."

That implies that if I gave you their fax numbers, it would THEN be possible for Optima to stop the unlawful faxing. Can you explain exactly how that works? You see, when I want to stop the faxing, I always ask for the number that sent the fax, not the number that the fax was sent to. And then I sue the sender.

It seems really counter-intuitive to get the recipient's fax number. So maybe I am missing something. How can you stop the faxing if you don't know the sender? What do you do with that fax number once you have it?

Secondly, how do you "police" any faxing. What do you do to do that?

Finally, if you know the recipient's fax number, how are you able to perform the verification in the second clause? You've said Optima doesn't do any faxing and doesn't deal with vendors who do, so what process do you use to verify that a fax had been sent?

The only explanation I can figure out for your statements is that Optima is responsible for sending the faxes so you want the fax numbers of these people so you can have Optima's vendors remove the numbers.

But if there is an alternate explanation, please provide it along with the techniques you have discovered. I would be a great aid to all of us in our fight against junk faxes.

Thank you.

I never received a reply.

E-mail received in Oct 2005 from someone who claims to be a former Optima employee

Well, I recently quit due to my own dislikes of the company. The voice on the recording isn't Ali. Ali Shah owns the company, but the president, right under him, is Z. That's all he goes by is the letter Z. I believe his last name is Nafei and from many rumors around the office, I've heard he's been in prison before for some kind of fraudulent activity (I can't be sure though.. I never found out the truth). He's the one that spoke to you.. I know his voice anywhere. He's loud and boistrous, and walks around the office trying to keep people pumped up. And yes, they know about the faxes. They have a company contracted to fax over that stupid 1% sheet to hundreds of people a day, and these poor people would be getting the faxes 3-4 times a day. I was a loan officer there, so by the time the receptionist transferred the call to me, I had horrible angry people yelling at me, but it was in no way under my control. I hope this info is helpful, and if you don't mind, I'd rather remain anonymous. I was irritated with the way they ran their company, but kept peace when I left. Good luck

Declaration of Ali Shah: We've stopping sending junk faxes as of Sept 1, 2005

Finally, Ali Shah says that as of September 1, 2005, he's not sending out faxes anymore: OptimaLetterWrittenByShah9-1-05.pdf. I'm glad to hear that. You are only being sued on faxes you sent before that date. Just because you've stopped doing it doesn't mean you can't be held liable for your past actions.

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