Litigation

Having just returned from an enjoyable 2 days in Nashville, this "Grand Ole Mockry" is a fitting "tribute" to one of Nashville's local yokels.

Rhonda Bentzen, a factoring broker who places enormous weight on her former status as structured settlement broker, along with making admitted payoffs to 90% of her structured settlement industry referral sources, to help get referrals for her structured settlement factoring business, has cemented a notorious reputation as an industry gossip.  Last month the joke was on Bentzen when she changed the name of her "industry gossip" column to "industry news". See "A Rose By Any Other Name" August 6, 2008.

In the last week, a profound and unprecedented event in the history of our country and industry took place. Those rushing to get the latest "news" (er gossip) from Rhonda Bentzen were treated to part 2 of an interview with Christi Fried. No offense to Christi Fried or her company, Continental Trust Services, but the fact that the heavily weighted Fried "news" came at the expense of "that other HUGE event" announced on September 16, 2008 (the $85B bail out of American International Group, Inc.) is a credibility killer. Readers had to wait a month for part 2. Would waiting another day on the Fried story push us over the edge of our seat into the abyss?

While competitor, Andrew Cravenho of Settlement Quotes, LLC stepped up to the plate on September 17, 2008 and took a stab with " Should You Sell Your AIG Structured Settlement Annuity Payments", Rhonda Bentzen appears to have publicly done zilch. Cravenho admonishes structured settlement recipients to be cautious about selling their rights to their annuity payments and does a fair job of explaining why. While Cravenho can be excused due to fewer years in practice for not being aware of how structured settlement recipients' interests WERE PROTECTED in the noted Chapter 11 case of Monarch Capital Corporation, in addition to other occurences, there is no excuse for Bentzen who milks her claim to being "the only structured settlement broker on the "factoring" side" as a value proposition.