Here's my story of how I was scammed by Jeff Berwick and TDV Passports / TDV Immigration / TDV Media:
On December 17, 2013 I entered into a contract with Jeff Berwick's TDV Media for his 4-year Paraguayan passport program. (I signed the contract on the 17th. Berwick signed the contract on the 18th.) I opted for the payment plan instead of paying the full amount upfront, just in case things turned sideways. I sent a $3,000 Paypal payment to get the ball rolling.
The contract I signed was between me and TDV Media. Here's the letterhead on the contract I signed:
Here's an excerpt of the contract that outline the payment structure:
Here's Jeff Berwick's signature at the bottom of the contract:
Note that the agreement makes no mention of TDV Immigration or TDV Passports. The contract is solely between me and Jeff Berwick and TDV Media.
I traveled to Paraguay in February the following year and met Bettina. She ushered me around Asuncion. I got all of the paperwork done and received my residency card a couple months later. (It seems I'm lucky because every other victim of TDV Immigration I've corresponded with said they never even got their residency.)
I made all payments on time as required by the contract. Since Paypal limits the length of payment subscriptions, each payment subscription could only last 2 years, at least that's my understanding. After the first 2 years were paid off, my plan expired and I requested a new one to continue the payments.
Here's the email I sent to get that reply. It was cut off when I made the screenshot.
(Side note: Jeff Berwick has claimed on several occasions that he has nothing to do with TDV Immigration for years. If that's the case, why was his employee, Michael Bach, setting up a payment plan in 2016? I should also add that all of my payments were going to finances@dollarvigilante.com.)
I resumed making payments on the 2nd Paypal subscription. The last payment made was in August 2016. I was supposed to have an automatic payment go through in September but it didn't, so I sent Chris Martin an email:
I'm a pretty patient person, so that wasn't a problem. I waited a couple months and decided to email Chris Martin. I got no response. I then contacted the general email address for TDV Immigration and got no response. I also tried the phone numbers on the TDV Immigration website. Those numbers were either non-working or answered by someone speaking an Asian language.
The funny thing is that I really wanted to pay TDV Immigration. There's a clause in the contract that states all accrued interested will be wiped out if the client pays the full amount of the program before the start of the 4th year. The 4th year was about to start in December.
After trying to contact Chris Martin and TDV Immigration for a couple months, I feared I was scammed. I had paid for almost 3 years and now that the 4th year is approaching, the year I'm supposed to get my passport, the company cancels my payment plan and becomes non-responsive.
I began to doubt whether TDV Immigration's Paypal account was actually closed due to government intervention or whether TDV Immigration, Berwick or Chris Martin canceled my payment plan. I called up Paypal and they said the owner of the account canceled the payment plan.
I then recalled seeing Chris Martin's profile on Linkedin.com. I checked the site and he was completely wiped off of it. Also, any mention of Chris Martin was removed from the TDV Immigration site.
Then I created a thread on Liberty.me to put pressure on Jeff Berwick and TDV Immigration. After a couple months, he did post once in the thread but completely ignored my case. I also tried contacting him via Facebook,Skype, Youtube, etc. He refused my Skype request and routinely deleted my Youtube and Facebook accounts. He also blocked on those accounts.
I tried contacting TDV directly but communication stopped when I mentioned I was a TDV Immigration client. Here's one email I sent that Michael Bach responded to:
I didn't get a response after that. Then I emailed them again with a different email address with the vague email subject of "subscription." I got this response:
Things seemed to go nowhere so I decided to see if Paypal could chargeback some or all of the amount I paid. I was able to get $1200 back of the $12,600 I paid.
Here's another screenshot showing my subscription:
Here's one of the chargebacks that went through:
Here's a list of the chargebacks I submitted:
After posing as a prospective client, I got a couple responses from someone by the name of Phalla Try over at TDV Immigration. The responses were relatively useless due to her limited understanding of English.
Then about a month ago, I got an email from Jeff Berwick. He claimed that this was the first time he had heard of my problem. (His email included the last email I sent to Michael Bach.) He seemed genuine, so I decided to see if I could get a resolution. Nothing much happened except for long delays between emails. Most of them were me asking if he could respond to the info I provided him.
Berwick contacted Chris Martin about the matter. Martin sent me this email:
I replied:
There's a couple things interesting about Chris Martin's reply. Whenever I had a question, Martin would usually reply within 48 hours. However, he became non-responsive after my payment plan was canceled. Also, I was told by Phalla Try that Chris Martin was no longer with TDV Immigration. However, the email I got from Chris Martin came from cmartin@tdvimmigration.com. If Chris Martin is no longer associated with the company, why does he still have a company email address?
So, that's the story. To this day, I have not received a refund aside from $1200 in chargebacks. BTW, no one from TDV Immigration or TDV Media responded to the Paypal chargebacks.
If anyone has questions, PM me or post in the comments section.
P.S. Check out my update here: https://steemit.com/berwick/@rich-meister/hitting-jeff-berwick-and-tdv-immigration-in-the-wallet