Richmond Capital Group Lawsuit: 7 Things to Do in the First 72 Hours

A lawsuit caption naming Richmond Capital Group carries a documented history that most merchant complaints lack. Federal enforcers and a New York court have both examined this enterprise and its successor names on full records, and the findings give a served borrower a sharper starting picture than the summons alone provides.

Seven tasks below organize the first seventy two hours. Each stays conditional on your own papers, since the cited decisions bind the parties before those courts rather than deciding your file in advance.

Confirm the Plaintiff Behind the Caption

In June 2021, federal enforcers filed an amended complaint alleging that merchant advance provider RCG Advances, formerly known as Richmond Capital Group LLC and also doing business as Viceroy Capital Funding and Ram Capital Funding, made repeated unauthorized withdrawals and violated the statute barring deceptive acquisition of bank account information. The FTC account of the amended complaint states the allegations plainly and notes the case would be decided by the court, which is the frame every later development inherits.

Names in this network shifted across entities and brands, so compare the caption against the counterparty on your own agreement before assuming which obligations are even at issue. The plaintiff you research, or fail to research, in the first day sets the accuracy of everything after.

Read the Papers for a Confession

A New York court examining Richmond agreements found that the enterprise routinely filed confessions of judgment against individual guarantors upon payment defaults, supported at times by false affidavits the court held to be fraud (the docket is larger than the passages quoted here), as the court decision on the Richmond motions recounts across its thirty three pages. Filing false affidavits is not collection pressure. It is fraud as the court stated it. That record, being trial level and party specific, does not prove your papers contain the same instruments, though it establishes exactly what to look for.

New York permits entry of judgment on a signed sworn affidavit stating the debt, subject to county of residence limits and a three year filing window under the confession of judgment procedure. Examine whether any affidavit in your file states the correct sum, names the correct county and bears a valid execution date, since defects in that paperwork have decided cases before the merits were ever reached. The affidavit paperwork is extremely easy to misread under pressure, and seldom does a confession defect announce itself.

Reconstruct the Debits

The federal complaint alleged withdrawals continuing well past the promised total, in one instance taking more than seventy five thousand dollars without permission, alongside daily sweeps of pledged accounts at fixed amounts rather than at any percentage of actual receipts. Your ledger either matches that pattern or refutes it, and the comparison requires complete bank records rather than memory. A ledger resembles a flight recorder more than a diary. Nobody reads it for pleasure, and after an incident it is the only witness that cannot revise its story.

List every debit against the purchased amount stated in the agreement. Where the outflow exceeds the stated total, mark each excess item, since overcollection documented to the dollar negotiates differently from overcollection described in general terms (the agreement was, if we are being precise, the only honest baseline either side possesses, and both sides will argue from it).

Calendar the Response Deadline

Deadlines in the summons run without regard to the research project this article proposes. Transcribe every date onto a calendar visible to someone other than you, and treat the earliest one as the only one that matters until counsel says otherwise. Seventy two hours is an extremely short period for the work described here, which is why the order of tasks matters.

There is a particular stillness in an office on a Friday afternoon when a deadline falls on Monday. I have watched borrowers spend that weekend reading commentary instead of assembling exhibits.

Hold the Phone

Resist the urge to call the funder and explain. The federal complaint alleged collection conduct that included threats of physical harm and lurid false accusations deployed in order to extract payment without litigation, allegations that counsel the same caution as any docket entry: any communication with the other side, even casually, can alter the posture of the case against you.

State that you want counsel on the line and say nothing further. Consumer collection protections cover specified consumer debt, and business paper falls outside that frame, which leaves an unrepresented borrower with fewer shields than the volume of advice on the internet suggests.

Assemble the Agreement File

Gather the advance agreement with all amendments, every personal guaranty, the payment ledger, bank statements and all correspondence with the funder or broker, and gather and preserve every amendment (defenders of the industry will call the Richmond record an outlier, a label that changes nothing about your documents). How courts read reconciliation has moved since the early merchant cases, and the Richmond record shows where it landed. The Richmond court weighed reconciliation provisions closely, finding mandatory reconciliation never occurred on that record and permissive reconciliation on request simply insufficient there, alongside specified percentage terms left blank in some agreements and guarantees framed as performance rather than payment.

Whether your documents contain the same features decides which defenses exist. Counsel should review and analyze the reconciliation mechanics, the stated percentage and the guaranty language before forming any theory, since the 2020 appellate factors on absolute repayment and reconciliation continue to shape how New York courts read these contracts.

Engage Counsel and a Settlement Path

The 2022 federal settlement that permanently barred RAM Capital Funding and its owner from the merchant advance and debt collection industries shows how these matters can conclude at the enforcement level, as the FTC account of the RAM Capital settlement describes, though your private case follows its own docket and timetable. Written arbitration provisions, where present, are generally enforceable under federal law subject to ordinary contract defenses, as the federal arbitration provision states, and counsel should assess formation, scope and waiver before anyone elects a forum. Whether the federal allegations end in penalties is for the court rather than for this article.

Delancey Street is a debt relief company, not a law firm, and it focuses on merchant cash advance and business debt problems with a free confidential initial review, coordinating with independently licensed counsel where litigation defense is required. The objective is to ensure the response is timely and to ensure no statement is made without counsel present, and consultation is where this conversation begins.

What you preserve, or fail to preserve, shapes the months that follow. The week builds the file or loses the case, and the records you assemble now will speak in rooms you never enter. Silence preserves options. Silence also forfeits deadlines.