My name is tymeka smith i have filed a police report and I have attached wire and cashier receipts on my behalf and text messages for proof proving how he is avoiding. I sent seperatly in email the 2 articles i recieved from Robert Angland the private investigator as i told the representative John A. Common is on cre8rain platform is using a cre8rain llc to con and scam people out of money his name is John A. Common.
He has conned me out of 19k in a 4 month span. he is advertising that he is a real estate mogul looking to help investors flip houses but once you pay him he becomes a ghost and conversation goes astray I paid him 5k to find a property he conned me into believing while I was waiting to close on my 1st property i could secure another he told me i was pre approved i paid him another 5k for the second property that i did not end up closing on.
After i closed on my initial property he told me that he knew workers to do the rehab and for me to wire him 9k at that time i trusted him and looked at him as a mentor so i sent it it has been almost 2 months no work has been done at the property i been asking him to send me back my 9k he has yet to do so. I found a private investorgator out of Arizona who did an article on john common and his fraudulent services.
Article written by private investigator Robert angland in regatds to con man john common Common faced personal legal issues Robert Anglen, The Arizona Republic In 2002, John Common's estranged third wife was dying of breast cancer. She pinned her hopes for survival on a radical stem-cell-transplant surgery. Weeks before the planned operation, Janice Common discovered that her husband had allowed her health-insurance policy to lapse.
The move violated a court order to pay for Janice's spousal maintenance and health care, and Seattle lawyer Jerry Kimball said he asked the court to jail Common for contempt. "He is a one-man wrecking crew," said Kimball, who represented Janice in her divorce case. Court records show Common blamed his inability to pay on a separate lawsuit filed against him in federal court. He also told the court that his wife had jewelry and furnishings that could be sold.
Common's background, pieced together from computer record searches, court documents and more than a dozen interviews, shows that he is 54, has been married four times and has eight children, including an adopted daughter. Records show that he owes about $52,000 in past-due child-support payments in the state of Washington, where officials have tried unsuccessfully to garnishee his wages since 2007. They also sought to suspend his driver's license in 2009 for failure to pay.
He owes millions of dollars in unpaid court judgments, and thousands of dollars in state and federal tax liens have been filed, with no record of payment, records show. Birth records and interviews show that Common was born in Colorado in 1957 to Iranian parents. Common's birth name was Anush Sharifi Hosseini. In the 1960s, his parents divorced and he moved with his mother to Europe. Common took the name of his adopted British father, John Common Sr., who moved the family to England.
Common refused to discuss his past. But relatives say that trouble in England caused Common to move in the late 1960s to to Tehran, Iran, where he prospered in the burgeoning radio and television industry. "He was a wonderful young man," said his first wife, Shirin Nassehi, who met and married Common in Iran. "He was well-known on IRT TV (Iran Radio Television)." Nassehi, who now works as a real-estate agent in Dallas, said her husband was a hero during the Islamic Revolution in the late 1970s, putting himself in danger by helping Americans to escape the country.
Nassehi said she and her husband fled the country and moved to Seattle. She said Common immediately got work as a disc jockey at a small radio station there. Common soon set his sights on advertising, Nassehi said. It wasn't long before he was putting together his own deals and talking about running his own business. Common's breakthrough involved setting up call-center operations employing hundreds to market car warranties to customers throughout the country. His marriage to Nassehi ended in divorce in the early 1980s.
In 1985, shortly after marrying his second wife, Common was convicted on burglary charges stemming from a domestic issue and sentenced to probation and community service. The conviction marked the beginning of a string of offenses, including failure to appear in court, driving with a suspended license, reckless driving and contempt-of-court charges. In 2002, a Seattle family-court commissioner, Kimberly Prochnau, described how Common failed to pay for his dying third wife's health-insurance premiums, while affording himself luxurious meals, trips and personal purchases.
Prochnau jailed him for contempt. Court records show Common blamed his inability to pay his spousal support on the federal-court lawsuit. The suit, brought by American International Group, claimed that Common used money from a $30million line of credit, which was supposed to back car warranties sold through his company, on lavish personal expenses. Common told Prochnau that his company, Warranty USA, had been placed in receivership and that the federal judge in the case prohibited him from spending company money.
Prochnau cited purchases that contradicted both federal and state court orders. Those purchases included a new home in Nevada and $87,000 on furniture. The judge in the federal case also held Common in contempt for continuing to spend company money on personal purchases after being ordered to stop. Common refused to discuss the cases with The Republic. Court records and an interview with his fourth ex-wife, Elizabeth Muelhaupt, indicate Common was attempting to set up a new life for himself in Nevada even as he drove the Seattle company into bankruptcy.
Muelhaupt said she was already living in Nevada in 2002 and remembers the day John called and told her that he had been jailed in the family-court case. "He told me to start selling furniture to raise money. That night I called an auction company, and by that weekend they had sold everything in our house," she said. After a brief stay, Common was released from jail after the furniture was sold, Muelhaupt said. The money from the sale was supposed to help pay for Janice's breast-cancer treatment, court records show.
But according to Kimball, ultimately it was AIG that stepped in to help Janice get treatment. Even as the company sued her husband, it released its claim on funds to help raise the $60,000 needed to pay for Janice's stem-cell operation. Janice died in 2002, facing multiple debts and lawsuits related to her husband's business, Kimball said. Her death came just days before the divorce was to be finalized by the court.
Valley man at center of storm He keeps opening businesses despite string of fraud claims Robert Anglen, The Arizona Republic A Scottsdale businessman who has been accused by attorneys general in Arizona and seven other states of defrauding customers and illegal operations has not faced criminal charges and continues opening businesses that victims say cost them tens of thousands of dollars. John Common, whose loan-modification company was shut down and sued by the Arizona attorney general four years ago, is being dogged by new allegations of fraud by customers, business associates and relatives.
They have filed reports with police, complained to state and federal authorities and posted warnings on consumer websites. "We are aware of John Common, and we continue to look into his business dealings," said the spokeswoman for the Arizona Attorney General's Office, Stephanie Grisham. Call 12 for Action first wrote about Common in February 2012. A new investigation found Common has since opened call centers marketing fuel additives, health-care financing and credit financing in addition to an auto repair shop and other businesses in Arizona and New York.
All but one has closed amid complaints. Common, 57, did not respond to interview requests left via phone and e-mail at the financing business he operates in New York City. Because of legal actions, Common has told associates he cannot put his name on corporate documents as a company owner. Former business partners say he persuades them to act as proxy owners for companies he controls. Records and interviews show that Common, who used Internet dating sites to attract women into relationships, in at least one case persuaded a woman to establish and bankroll a business for him to run.
His former girlfriend Michelle Austin of Anthem said he persuaded her to finance a business in 2012 and he then used company funds for personal expenses, leaving her $40,000 in debt. She said she was forced to repay customers who did not receive purchased products and suppliers who were not paid. On consumer websites, customers accuse him of failing to deliver services, and former employees report he did not pay them.
The owners of a Scottsdale complex say he defaulted on rent and abandoned his office in 2012 after writing a $10,000 bad check using the alias John Khavari. Maricopa County Superior Court issued an arrest warrant in 2013 for failing to pay child support. Throughout it all, Common has moved from one business to the next despite the legal challenges. Common's 27-year-old daughter in Dallas said she complained to police about her father in January, accusing him of identity theft and racking up $32,000 of debt in her name without her knowledge.
Common's fourth ex-wife, Libby Muelhaupt of Scottsdale, accused him of wrongfully taking his 11-year-old daughter in 2012. Muelhaupt recently won a $500,000 default judgment against him in a case involving his creation of websites using her name; the sites falsely stated she committed various misdeeds, court records show. She said she's given up on prosecutors. "Authorities don't do anything. Nobody ever does anything about him," Muelhaupt said in an interview last week. "If you ... got away with whatever you felt like doing, why would you ever stop?" Judgments, liens, child support Common has been a defendant in nearly 100 lawsuits.
He owes more than $26 million in unpaid court judgments, hundreds of thousands of dollars in state and federal tax liens and more than $100,000 in unpaid child support in Washington and Arizona. A Call 12 investigation in 2012 documented how Common has moved from one closed business to another over the past 15 years in Arizona, Nevada and Washington followed by allegations of fraud. Authorities across the country have filed lawsuits and issued orders to shut down at least two of his companies.
They have accused his companies of making false and misleading statements, failing to provide promised services and unlicensed activity. Arizona's attorney general sued him in 2010, alleging that homeowners paid $5,000 each to Common's company for "guaranteed" home-loan modifications they never received. The case was settled when Common's partners, including Muelhaupt, agreed to cease operations and pay a fine. Authorities for more than a decade have treated cases against Common as civil matters. Records show authorities ended investigations and closed cases after filing civil lawsuits and imposing fines that his former partners and relatives are often forced to pay.
He has not faced any criminal charges related to his businesses. It is much easier for authorities to go after companies civilly by imposing fines or closing down businesses with deceptive operations. The threshold to make a civil case is much lower than what is needed for a criminal case. To prove criminal fraud, authorities must show that business owners encouraged their employees to lie to consumers. In Common's case, he has kept his name off company-formation documents, making it difficult for authorities to prove he is involved. Common's business partners also give him access to company accounts, making it difficult for authorities to prove that purchases, even of the most personal nature, were not authorized.
Relatives, former business partners, employees and other associates describe Common as a smooth-talking genius who persuades investors to put their names on businesses that he controls. Once businesses are up and running, he is accused in case after case of draining company credit lines and bank accounts to pay for lavish personal expenses. He has left business partners and at least three of his four ex-wives facing mounting debt and legal trouble only to start new ventures with financial backing from new partners. In the aftermath of the federal and state investigations, Muelhaupt said she found herself thousands of dollars in debt to company suppliers and facing fines from state regulators.
She said she also learned her husband had used the fees people paid for loan modifications to fund a secret life. Company financial records and interviews showed Common spent company money to position himself as a millionaire jet-setter who could afford to shower women with expensive trips and luxury gifts. Credit-card receipts show he bought $1,000-a-night hotel rooms, trips, gifts and airline tickets in eight women's names during a six-month period in 2010. Financial records and interviews showed he used company money to buy a car for one woman and to lease a house for another woman near the home he and Muelhaupt shared with their four children.
"Who has a reference for something like this? Nobody," Muelhaupt said last week. Ex-girlfriend: He 'ruined me' Austin, who met Common through an online dating website, said the romance cost her a small inheritance, left her facing thousands of dollars in debts and damaged her health. "I was flabbergasted that I was taken so badly," the 47-year-old single mother said in an interview last week. "I do accounting for a living. ... What happened?" Austin said Common was the first person she dated after her 25-year marriage ended in divorce. He moved into her house with his daughter Jacqueline, then 11. Common quickly turned the relationship into a business opportunity.
Austin, who often had thought about owning a business, said she willingly put up the money and let Common handle the day-to-day operations of More Miles 4 Less, a Scottsdale call center marketing fuel additives for cars. "Being the charmer he is, I got caught up. ... I thought he was worldly and knowledgeable," said Austin, who manages financial accounts for dental offices. "It's been a cluster of errors." When Common was arrested in 2012 on suspicion of failure to pay child support, Austin said she posted $6,000 bail to get him out of jail. It wasn't long after that she realized her company was in financial trouble. Austin said she discovered customers were not getting their orders filled and suppliers were submitting invoices for bills she thought had been paid.
"Now ... John is telling me that he needs another $25,000," she said. "I made him go through the accounting while I was sitting there." She said she ended their relationship, but Common wasn't done with her. Austin returned from visiting her ailing mother in California to find her Mercedes was missing. She immediately filed a police report. Records show Scottsdale police arrested Common and returned Austin's car. No charges were filed against him, she said. Austin said she took evidence from the company, including financial records, to investigators with the Arizona Attorney General's Office and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
She said authorities kept her phone, her purse and computer data. "They've told me they are still investigating, but that more important cases keep coming up," she said. Austin cried while talking about the emotional and financial toll of the relationship. "That was my inheritance. That was money my dad left me," Austin said. She said of Common, "He just ruined me terribly." Austin said she never expected to hear from Common again. But about three months ago, her phone rang. "It was John. He wanted his Armani suits back," Austin said. "He said he was in the financial market in New York. ... He said he was starting a business and he needed his suits."
Austin told Common she sold them at a secondhand clothing store. New businesses Financial records and interviews show Common went from the fuel-marketing business into financial services. Records and interviews show he opened a business in New York City called Secure Payment Funding, which promises companies they can increase revenue by 27 percent by providing alternative loans to customers. "Stop losing customers and start making more money today," the company website states, indicating an address on Wall Street. Essentially, Common's company offers to finance customers without relying on standard credit scoring.
That's different from the way most lenders operate. The company pushes non-FICO-based lending using an electronic check system to debit customers. The company offers to provide businesses with up-front money and give clients up to a year to repay loans by writing a single check and authorizing deductions from accounts. FICO refers to the company that developed the most popular form of credit scoring in use. The company does not appear to market directly to consumers, but rather to businesses that pay to use the system.
Calls to the business at various times were routed to voice mail. Numbers for sales and customer service were not answered by a person. No names or company officials are listed on the website or the phone service. Before starting his New York business, Common started marketing alternative loan financing through another call center in Scottsdale, records show. Business records, including marketing scripts obtained by Call 12, indicate that Common was attempting to sell his new credit system to health-care providers and other businesses. "I'm with IQ Payment Systems," according to scripts intended to be read by telemarketers. "I'm sure that with your current credit financing you are losing business through declines. ... The good news is our company turns those declines into approvals through our non-FICO-based lending program."
It is unclear from the paperwork whether Common was able to launch his payment system before being evicted by the building owners, who sought to oust him after he wrote a $10,000 check that could not be cashed. Common vacated the office leaving behind handwritten notes, extensive paperwork and business strategies written with grease pens on glass partitions and windows inside the office. The lease agreement shows Common used his real name, which was later struck through and changed to Khavari. He listed his place of business on the lease as Fountain Hills Master Tech, an auto-repair shop that billed itself as "the home of the free oil change."
Calls to Master Tech's number last week were routed to an answering service for Common's former business associate. The answering service said it had no information about Master Tech or Common. Messages left for Common and his associate were not returned. Customers raised concerns about Common and the automotive business on consumer websites last year. "John is peddling free oil changes in Fountain Hills," a Phoenix poster wrote on the Pissed Consumer website. "Once you get in and start the oil change, he will tell you that you need or your car requires synthetic oil and he will charge you extra. ... He will now have access to your info (credit card, name, phone, vehicle make, etc.)."
Family's allegations Common's daughter Alexandra Long said she wasn't surprised to find out last year that her father appeared to have stolen her identity and taken out loans in her name. "It's a pattern of behavior for him," she said. Long, 27, was reviewing her credit in January when she discovered a $32,000 lien had been filed in Maricopa County against her and her father for an unspecified loan. She said she never authorized the loan and had no idea what it was for. She said in 2010, a similar lien appeared on her credit report for $250,000 and she took steps to remove it. At the time, she could not connect it to her father.
Long said she filed a police report in January and talked to detectives in Dallas and at the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office. In that report, she accused Common of identity theft, she said. Long said she is not interested in punishing her father but needs to protect herself, and the police report will enable her to remove the lien from her record and clean up her credit report. "I have no interest in seeing my father in jail, or seeing him anywhere at all," she said. Long said she is far more concerned about her half-sister Jacqueline, whom Common took from Muelhaupt's custody in 2012. "Libby (Muelhaupt) was basically her mother.
She raised her since she was 3 years old," Long said. Jacqueline is the fifth of Common's eight children. She is the daughter of Common's third wife, Janice, who died of cancer in 2002. Long's concerns were echoed by Austin. "I took care of her," Austin said of Jacqueline. In a declaration filed in a Washington court just before her death, Janice begged a judge not to allow Common to have custody of the girl. "If you are reading this I am no longer in this world to protect her. I fought as hard as I could to do so while I was here," Janice wrote.
"Now, I must trust the court to protect Jacqueline from her father and all of the (pain) he brings to others' lives." The court awarded Common custody after Janice died. He married Muelhaupt and they divorced in 2011. Muelhaupt was awarded primary custody of the children, and Common was granted visitation rights. Muelhaupt said Common took Jacqueline during one of those visits. Records show she attended school for several months, and Muelhaupt said Jacqueline had sporadic contact with her siblings. That changed in 2013, when Jacqueline stopped going to school and they lost contact, Muelhaupt said.
"It's everything I can do to stop from crying," she said. "I don't know how she is and I don't know where she is." Robert Anglen Consumer investigations azcentral | The Arizona Republic PART OF THE USA TODAY NETWORK Mobile: 602.316.8395 Office: 602.444.8694 [email protected] Twitter @robertanglen Facebook: Robert Anglen azcentral.com
JackRainmaker Reviews
My name is tymeka smith i have filed a police report and I have attached wire and cashier receipts on my behalf and text messages for proof proving how he is avoiding. I sent seperatly in email the 2 articles i recieved from Robert Angland the private investigator as i told the representative John A. Common is on cre8rain platform is using a cre8rain llc to con and scam people out of money his name is John A. Common.
He has conned me out of 19k in a 4 month span. he is advertising that he is a real estate mogul looking to help investors flip houses but once you pay him he becomes a ghost and conversation goes astray I paid him 5k to find a property he conned me into believing while I was waiting to close on my 1st property i could secure another he told me i was pre approved i paid him another 5k for the second property that i did not end up closing on.
After i closed on my initial property he told me that he knew workers to do the rehab and for me to wire him 9k at that time i trusted him and looked at him as a mentor so i sent it it has been almost 2 months no work has been done at the property i been asking him to send me back my 9k he has yet to do so. I found a private investorgator out of Arizona who did an article on john common and his fraudulent services.
Article written by private investigator Robert angland in regatds to con man john common Common faced personal legal issues Robert Anglen, The Arizona Republic In 2002, John Common's estranged third wife was dying of breast cancer. She pinned her hopes for survival on a radical stem-cell-transplant surgery. Weeks before the planned operation, Janice Common discovered that her husband had allowed her health-insurance policy to lapse.
The move violated a court order to pay for Janice's spousal maintenance and health care, and Seattle lawyer Jerry Kimball said he asked the court to jail Common for contempt. "He is a one-man wrecking crew," said Kimball, who represented Janice in her divorce case. Court records show Common blamed his inability to pay on a separate lawsuit filed against him in federal court. He also told the court that his wife had jewelry and furnishings that could be sold.
Common's background, pieced together from computer record searches, court documents and more than a dozen interviews, shows that he is 54, has been married four times and has eight children, including an adopted daughter. Records show that he owes about $52,000 in past-due child-support payments in the state of Washington, where officials have tried unsuccessfully to garnishee his wages since 2007. They also sought to suspend his driver's license in 2009 for failure to pay.
He owes millions of dollars in unpaid court judgments, and thousands of dollars in state and federal tax liens have been filed, with no record of payment, records show. Birth records and interviews show that Common was born in Colorado in 1957 to Iranian parents. Common's birth name was Anush Sharifi Hosseini. In the 1960s, his parents divorced and he moved with his mother to Europe. Common took the name of his adopted British father, John Common Sr., who moved the family to England.
Common refused to discuss his past. But relatives say that trouble in England caused Common to move in the late 1960s to to Tehran, Iran, where he prospered in the burgeoning radio and television industry. "He was a wonderful young man," said his first wife, Shirin Nassehi, who met and married Common in Iran. "He was well-known on IRT TV (Iran Radio Television)." Nassehi, who now works as a real-estate agent in Dallas, said her husband was a hero during the Islamic Revolution in the late 1970s, putting himself in danger by helping Americans to escape the country.
Nassehi said she and her husband fled the country and moved to Seattle. She said Common immediately got work as a disc jockey at a small radio station there. Common soon set his sights on advertising, Nassehi said. It wasn't long before he was putting together his own deals and talking about running his own business. Common's breakthrough involved setting up call-center operations employing hundreds to market car warranties to customers throughout the country. His marriage to Nassehi ended in divorce in the early 1980s.
In 1985, shortly after marrying his second wife, Common was convicted on burglary charges stemming from a domestic issue and sentenced to probation and community service. The conviction marked the beginning of a string of offenses, including failure to appear in court, driving with a suspended license, reckless driving and contempt-of-court charges. In 2002, a Seattle family-court commissioner, Kimberly Prochnau, described how Common failed to pay for his dying third wife's health-insurance premiums, while affording himself luxurious meals, trips and personal purchases.
Prochnau jailed him for contempt. Court records show Common blamed his inability to pay his spousal support on the federal-court lawsuit. The suit, brought by American International Group, claimed that Common used money from a $30million line of credit, which was supposed to back car warranties sold through his company, on lavish personal expenses. Common told Prochnau that his company, Warranty USA, had been placed in receivership and that the federal judge in the case prohibited him from spending company money.
Prochnau cited purchases that contradicted both federal and state court orders. Those purchases included a new home in Nevada and $87,000 on furniture. The judge in the federal case also held Common in contempt for continuing to spend company money on personal purchases after being ordered to stop. Common refused to discuss the cases with The Republic. Court records and an interview with his fourth ex-wife, Elizabeth Muelhaupt, indicate Common was attempting to set up a new life for himself in Nevada even as he drove the Seattle company into bankruptcy.
Muelhaupt said she was already living in Nevada in 2002 and remembers the day John called and told her that he had been jailed in the family-court case. "He told me to start selling furniture to raise money. That night I called an auction company, and by that weekend they had sold everything in our house," she said. After a brief stay, Common was released from jail after the furniture was sold, Muelhaupt said. The money from the sale was supposed to help pay for Janice's breast-cancer treatment, court records show.
But according to Kimball, ultimately it was AIG that stepped in to help Janice get treatment. Even as the company sued her husband, it released its claim on funds to help raise the $60,000 needed to pay for Janice's stem-cell operation. Janice died in 2002, facing multiple debts and lawsuits related to her husband's business, Kimball said. Her death came just days before the divorce was to be finalized by the court.
Valley man at center of storm He keeps opening businesses despite string of fraud claims Robert Anglen, The Arizona Republic A Scottsdale businessman who has been accused by attorneys general in Arizona and seven other states of defrauding customers and illegal operations has not faced criminal charges and continues opening businesses that victims say cost them tens of thousands of dollars. John Common, whose loan-modification company was shut down and sued by the Arizona attorney general four years ago, is being dogged by new allegations of fraud by customers, business associates and relatives.
They have filed reports with police, complained to state and federal authorities and posted warnings on consumer websites. "We are aware of John Common, and we continue to look into his business dealings," said the spokeswoman for the Arizona Attorney General's Office, Stephanie Grisham. Call 12 for Action first wrote about Common in February 2012. A new investigation found Common has since opened call centers marketing fuel additives, health-care financing and credit financing in addition to an auto repair shop and other businesses in Arizona and New York.
All but one has closed amid complaints. Common, 57, did not respond to interview requests left via phone and e-mail at the financing business he operates in New York City. Because of legal actions, Common has told associates he cannot put his name on corporate documents as a company owner. Former business partners say he persuades them to act as proxy owners for companies he controls. Records and interviews show that Common, who used Internet dating sites to attract women into relationships, in at least one case persuaded a woman to establish and bankroll a business for him to run.
His former girlfriend Michelle Austin of Anthem said he persuaded her to finance a business in 2012 and he then used company funds for personal expenses, leaving her $40,000 in debt. She said she was forced to repay customers who did not receive purchased products and suppliers who were not paid. On consumer websites, customers accuse him of failing to deliver services, and former employees report he did not pay them.
The owners of a Scottsdale complex say he defaulted on rent and abandoned his office in 2012 after writing a $10,000 bad check using the alias John Khavari. Maricopa County Superior Court issued an arrest warrant in 2013 for failing to pay child support. Throughout it all, Common has moved from one business to the next despite the legal challenges. Common's 27-year-old daughter in Dallas said she complained to police about her father in January, accusing him of identity theft and racking up $32,000 of debt in her name without her knowledge.
Common's fourth ex-wife, Libby Muelhaupt of Scottsdale, accused him of wrongfully taking his 11-year-old daughter in 2012. Muelhaupt recently won a $500,000 default judgment against him in a case involving his creation of websites using her name; the sites falsely stated she committed various misdeeds, court records show. She said she's given up on prosecutors. "Authorities don't do anything. Nobody ever does anything about him," Muelhaupt said in an interview last week. "If you ... got away with whatever you felt like doing, why would you ever stop?" Judgments, liens, child support Common has been a defendant in nearly 100 lawsuits.
He owes more than $26 million in unpaid court judgments, hundreds of thousands of dollars in state and federal tax liens and more than $100,000 in unpaid child support in Washington and Arizona. A Call 12 investigation in 2012 documented how Common has moved from one closed business to another over the past 15 years in Arizona, Nevada and Washington followed by allegations of fraud. Authorities across the country have filed lawsuits and issued orders to shut down at least two of his companies.
They have accused his companies of making false and misleading statements, failing to provide promised services and unlicensed activity. Arizona's attorney general sued him in 2010, alleging that homeowners paid $5,000 each to Common's company for "guaranteed" home-loan modifications they never received. The case was settled when Common's partners, including Muelhaupt, agreed to cease operations and pay a fine. Authorities for more than a decade have treated cases against Common as civil matters. Records show authorities ended investigations and closed cases after filing civil lawsuits and imposing fines that his former partners and relatives are often forced to pay.
He has not faced any criminal charges related to his businesses. It is much easier for authorities to go after companies civilly by imposing fines or closing down businesses with deceptive operations. The threshold to make a civil case is much lower than what is needed for a criminal case. To prove criminal fraud, authorities must show that business owners encouraged their employees to lie to consumers. In Common's case, he has kept his name off company-formation documents, making it difficult for authorities to prove he is involved. Common's business partners also give him access to company accounts, making it difficult for authorities to prove that purchases, even of the most personal nature, were not authorized.
Relatives, former business partners, employees and other associates describe Common as a smooth-talking genius who persuades investors to put their names on businesses that he controls. Once businesses are up and running, he is accused in case after case of draining company credit lines and bank accounts to pay for lavish personal expenses. He has left business partners and at least three of his four ex-wives facing mounting debt and legal trouble only to start new ventures with financial backing from new partners. In the aftermath of the federal and state investigations, Muelhaupt said she found herself thousands of dollars in debt to company suppliers and facing fines from state regulators.
She said she also learned her husband had used the fees people paid for loan modifications to fund a secret life. Company financial records and interviews showed Common spent company money to position himself as a millionaire jet-setter who could afford to shower women with expensive trips and luxury gifts. Credit-card receipts show he bought $1,000-a-night hotel rooms, trips, gifts and airline tickets in eight women's names during a six-month period in 2010. Financial records and interviews showed he used company money to buy a car for one woman and to lease a house for another woman near the home he and Muelhaupt shared with their four children.
"Who has a reference for something like this? Nobody," Muelhaupt said last week. Ex-girlfriend: He 'ruined me' Austin, who met Common through an online dating website, said the romance cost her a small inheritance, left her facing thousands of dollars in debts and damaged her health. "I was flabbergasted that I was taken so badly," the 47-year-old single mother said in an interview last week. "I do accounting for a living. ... What happened?" Austin said Common was the first person she dated after her 25-year marriage ended in divorce. He moved into her house with his daughter Jacqueline, then 11. Common quickly turned the relationship into a business opportunity.
Austin, who often had thought about owning a business, said she willingly put up the money and let Common handle the day-to-day operations of More Miles 4 Less, a Scottsdale call center marketing fuel additives for cars. "Being the charmer he is, I got caught up. ... I thought he was worldly and knowledgeable," said Austin, who manages financial accounts for dental offices. "It's been a cluster of errors." When Common was arrested in 2012 on suspicion of failure to pay child support, Austin said she posted $6,000 bail to get him out of jail. It wasn't long after that she realized her company was in financial trouble. Austin said she discovered customers were not getting their orders filled and suppliers were submitting invoices for bills she thought had been paid.
"Now ... John is telling me that he needs another $25,000," she said. "I made him go through the accounting while I was sitting there." She said she ended their relationship, but Common wasn't done with her. Austin returned from visiting her ailing mother in California to find her Mercedes was missing. She immediately filed a police report. Records show Scottsdale police arrested Common and returned Austin's car. No charges were filed against him, she said. Austin said she took evidence from the company, including financial records, to investigators with the Arizona Attorney General's Office and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
She said authorities kept her phone, her purse and computer data. "They've told me they are still investigating, but that more important cases keep coming up," she said. Austin cried while talking about the emotional and financial toll of the relationship. "That was my inheritance. That was money my dad left me," Austin said. She said of Common, "He just ruined me terribly." Austin said she never expected to hear from Common again. But about three months ago, her phone rang. "It was John. He wanted his Armani suits back," Austin said. "He said he was in the financial market in New York. ... He said he was starting a business and he needed his suits."
Austin told Common she sold them at a secondhand clothing store. New businesses Financial records and interviews show Common went from the fuel-marketing business into financial services. Records and interviews show he opened a business in New York City called Secure Payment Funding, which promises companies they can increase revenue by 27 percent by providing alternative loans to customers. "Stop losing customers and start making more money today," the company website states, indicating an address on Wall Street. Essentially, Common's company offers to finance customers without relying on standard credit scoring.
That's different from the way most lenders operate. The company pushes non-FICO-based lending using an electronic check system to debit customers. The company offers to provide businesses with up-front money and give clients up to a year to repay loans by writing a single check and authorizing deductions from accounts. FICO refers to the company that developed the most popular form of credit scoring in use. The company does not appear to market directly to consumers, but rather to businesses that pay to use the system.
Calls to the business at various times were routed to voice mail. Numbers for sales and customer service were not answered by a person. No names or company officials are listed on the website or the phone service. Before starting his New York business, Common started marketing alternative loan financing through another call center in Scottsdale, records show. Business records, including marketing scripts obtained by Call 12, indicate that Common was attempting to sell his new credit system to health-care providers and other businesses. "I'm with IQ Payment Systems," according to scripts intended to be read by telemarketers. "I'm sure that with your current credit financing you are losing business through declines. ... The good news is our company turns those declines into approvals through our non-FICO-based lending program."
It is unclear from the paperwork whether Common was able to launch his payment system before being evicted by the building owners, who sought to oust him after he wrote a $10,000 check that could not be cashed. Common vacated the office leaving behind handwritten notes, extensive paperwork and business strategies written with grease pens on glass partitions and windows inside the office. The lease agreement shows Common used his real name, which was later struck through and changed to Khavari. He listed his place of business on the lease as Fountain Hills Master Tech, an auto-repair shop that billed itself as "the home of the free oil change."
Calls to Master Tech's number last week were routed to an answering service for Common's former business associate. The answering service said it had no information about Master Tech or Common. Messages left for Common and his associate were not returned. Customers raised concerns about Common and the automotive business on consumer websites last year. "John is peddling free oil changes in Fountain Hills," a Phoenix poster wrote on the Pissed Consumer website. "Once you get in and start the oil change, he will tell you that you need or your car requires synthetic oil and he will charge you extra. ... He will now have access to your info (credit card, name, phone, vehicle make, etc.)."
Family's allegations Common's daughter Alexandra Long said she wasn't surprised to find out last year that her father appeared to have stolen her identity and taken out loans in her name. "It's a pattern of behavior for him," she said. Long, 27, was reviewing her credit in January when she discovered a $32,000 lien had been filed in Maricopa County against her and her father for an unspecified loan. She said she never authorized the loan and had no idea what it was for. She said in 2010, a similar lien appeared on her credit report for $250,000 and she took steps to remove it. At the time, she could not connect it to her father.
Long said she filed a police report in January and talked to detectives in Dallas and at the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office. In that report, she accused Common of identity theft, she said. Long said she is not interested in punishing her father but needs to protect herself, and the police report will enable her to remove the lien from her record and clean up her credit report. "I have no interest in seeing my father in jail, or seeing him anywhere at all," she said. Long said she is far more concerned about her half-sister Jacqueline, whom Common took from Muelhaupt's custody in 2012. "Libby (Muelhaupt) was basically her mother.
She raised her since she was 3 years old," Long said. Jacqueline is the fifth of Common's eight children. She is the daughter of Common's third wife, Janice, who died of cancer in 2002. Long's concerns were echoed by Austin. "I took care of her," Austin said of Jacqueline. In a declaration filed in a Washington court just before her death, Janice begged a judge not to allow Common to have custody of the girl. "If you are reading this I am no longer in this world to protect her. I fought as hard as I could to do so while I was here," Janice wrote.
"Now, I must trust the court to protect Jacqueline from her father and all of the (pain) he brings to others' lives." The court awarded Common custody after Janice died. He married Muelhaupt and they divorced in 2011. Muelhaupt was awarded primary custody of the children, and Common was granted visitation rights. Muelhaupt said Common took Jacqueline during one of those visits. Records show she attended school for several months, and Muelhaupt said Jacqueline had sporadic contact with her siblings. That changed in 2013, when Jacqueline stopped going to school and they lost contact, Muelhaupt said.
"It's everything I can do to stop from crying," she said. "I don't know how she is and I don't know where she is." Robert Anglen Consumer investigations azcentral | The Arizona Republic PART OF THE USA TODAY NETWORK Mobile: 602.316.8395 Office: 602.444.8694 [email protected] Twitter @robertanglen Facebook: Robert Anglen azcentral.com