Real estate investing seminar scams

What it is

A mailer, an infomercial or a social media ad invites you to a free seminar about making money in real estate. The presenters are often people you recognise from home-flipping television. You go. The seminar turns out to be a sales pitch for a workshop that costs about a thousand dollars. The workshop turns out to be a sales pitch for advanced training and coaching that costs tens of thousands.

At each step the promise is the same: learn the system, flip or wholesale a few houses, and repay the cost many times over. The FTC’s enforcement record says the promise was not backed up. In one case, a court found that claims about special access to funding and ready buyers were false or misleading. In another, the FTC’s survey of customers found that over 95 percent had paid the company more than they cleared in real estate deals.

The pages that follow describe patterns documented in FTC and Utah enforcement actions against three operations. Those actions ended in court orders and settlements, not trials, and the point is the shape of the funnel, not any one company.

How it actually works

1. The free invitation

   Mailers, infomercials and social media ads promote a free “seminar” or “preview event” in your area, often featuring television personalities from home-flipping shows. The FTC’s Zurixx and Ganadores cases describe the same opening.

2. The seminar is the pitch

   The free event is not education, according to the FTC’s complaints. It is a sales event for a paid workshop: $1,997 in the Zurixx case, roughly $1,000 in the Response Marketing case, hundreds of dollars in the Ganadores case.

   Where it could have stopped

   Before paying anything, ask for the written disclosure document and, if anyone quotes earnings, the earnings claim statement that the FTC says sellers of business opportunities are legally required to provide. A seller who cannot produce them, or whose spoken promises contradict them, has already answered the question.

3. The workshop is another pitch

   Attendees are pushed toward advanced training costing tens of thousands of dollars. The FTC’s consumer alert on the Nudge case describes the sequence plainly: preview event, workshop of more than $1,000, then advanced training.

4. The credit card

   The FTC and Utah alleged that Zurixx presenters encouraged consumers to open new credit cards to pay for the training and promised that profits from flipping or wholesaling would quickly pay off the debt. The purchase is financed by a debt that does not depend on whether the system works.

5. The coaching upsell

   A telemarketing call or in-person offer sells one-on-one coaching: up to an additional $30,000 for the exclusive “Inner Circle” in the Response Marketing case, more than $28,000 for “by the hand” mentoring in the Ganadores case. Both were allegedly pitched as limited or personal.

6. The tools and the mentoring

   According to the FTC’s Ganadores complaint, the mentoring often took place in large group calls, and customers were told to use public websites such as Google or Zillow in place of the company’s often faulty software. In the Response Marketing case, a court found false or misleading the claims about special access to a funding network, letters for cash offers and buyers lined up for flips.

7. The refund wall

   When customers asked for refunds, the FTC alleges, one company relied on a clause giving them only three days, while another required refund recipients to sign agreements barring them from talking to regulators or posting negative reviews. Two celebrity defendants were alleged to have helped bury online complaints.

8. Enforcement, years later

   The Zurixx lawsuit was filed in September 2019; refund checks went out in July 2024. Response Marketing was sued in November 2019; refund payments began in March 2024. The last Ganadores defendant settled in June 2025, two years after the lawsuit.

Why it works

The seminar is free, so nothing feels risky. The person who attends a free event is not yet a customer and does not think of themselves as at risk. Every later purchase is small compared with the promised return.

Celebrity gives instant credibility. Familiar television personalities stand in for a track record the seller cannot otherwise show. This is the reason the FTC’s 2023 Response Marketing action included the celebrities who endorsed the programs, its first monetary settlements with celebrity endorsers.

Each step is sold as the fix for the last. A workshop that has not produced a deal is followed by an offer of the coaching that will. The FTC’s consumer guidance lists upsells among the red flags of a coaching scam.

Credit card debt is available immediately. Presenters who encourage new credit cards make the purchase possible for people with little cash. In the Zurixx case the debt was the buyer’s, whatever happened to the promised profits.

Buyers rarely compare notes. The FTC alleges that Zurixx barred refund recipients from speaking to regulators and posting reviews, and that celebrity defendants in the Response Marketing case helped bury complaints online. The person researching the company found a wall of praise.

Where it comes from

These are domestic, openly operating businesses rather than hidden networks.

Utah and Florida anchor the documented cases. Zurixx was sued in the District of Utah and Response Marketing was described by the FTC as a Utah-based company; both cases were brought by the FTC together with the Utah Division of Consumer Protection. Ganadores was a Florida operation sued in the Middle District of Florida, with help from the Orlando Police Department.

The model recurs with the same people. The FTC’s 2023 Ganadores complaint alleges that three people in Ganadores’ leadership had previously participated in Zurixx, and that two of them had also taken part in FBA Stores, another scheme sued by the FTC in 2018. It states that the Ganadores operation closely mirrors those prior schemes. These are allegations from the complaint, and the resulting orders resolved the case by settlement.

It reaches specific communities. The Ganadores complaint alleges marketing and sales conducted largely in Spanish, with contracts and key disclosures often in English only, despite many customers having limited or no English fluency.

Some of it dates back more than a decade. Response Marketing’s predecessor began selling real estate investment training packages in the early 2010s, according to the FTC.

Enforcement is civil. Each case here was brought under consumer protection law, and the outcomes were bans, money judgments and asset surrenders, not prison sentences.

Real cases

Red flags

• A “free seminar” that is really a sales event for a paid workshop.
• A celebrity or a television show offered as the reason to trust the system.
• Promises of large or guaranteed returns from a proven system, or the claim that you can make five or six figures if you follow it.
• A staircase of ever more expensive offers: workshop, advanced training, then coaching.
• Encouragement to open a new credit card to pay for the program, or a promise that profits will quickly repay it.
• Pressure to decide now, or a claim that spots in the coaching program are limited.
• “One-on-one” mentoring that turns out to be group calls, or software that is replaced by free public websites.
• A refund policy that expires in days, or a refund that comes with a promise not to complain.
• No disclosure document or earnings claim statement when you ask for one.

If it’s happening to you

Do not sign or pay anything at the event. A legitimate offer is still there after a day of thought, and pressure to commit that night is itself a warning.

1. Ask for the paperwork first. A seller of a business opportunity must provide a disclosure document, and one making earnings claims must provide an earnings claim statement. The FTC’s guidance suggests checking your state attorney general’s office for complaints and searching the company online for reviews and scam reports.
2. If you already paid by credit card, contact your card issuer quickly to dispute the charge and keep every document, brochure, recording and message.
3. Check the cancellation terms in your contract right away. The FTC’s Ganadores case describes a refund window of only three days, and the FTC’s Cooling-Off Rule is among the laws it cites.
4. Do not sign a refund agreement that bars you from complaining to regulators or posting reviews without reading it. The FTC alleged exactly that clause in the Zurixx case.
5. Report it to the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov and to your state attorney general. See where to report for other countries.
6. Watch for a refund notice. The FTC refund programs described on this page paid out years after the payments. The FTC never requires you to pay money or provide account information to get a refund.

Where the money goes

Straight to the seller, with no hidden route to trace. The consumer pays a company, often on a credit card, and the money is spread across a set of related companies and their owners.

In the Zurixx case, the FTC’s judgment covered six corporate defendants and three owners plus entities associated with them, including Puerto Rico LLCs. By the time of the settlement the corporations were defunct and in receivership, with about $5 million left against a $104.7 million corporate judgment. Utah’s consumer protection director put the recovery this way: “pennies on the dollar” compared with the harm.

The other cases followed the same pattern of a large judgment and a much smaller recovery. Ganadores’ companies and two owners agreed to surrender about $6 million in funds, real estate and other assets against a $29,175,000 judgment that was partially suspended on grounds of inability to pay.

By the numbers

No published dataset breaks this scheme out as its own category yet, so there is no chart to show. The data page explains which agency categories exist and why some schemes are invisible in official statistics.