Much of this is fact, much of this is my own opinion. I will leave you, the reader of this story, to determine which is which. As far as who I am...well, those who need to know already know, those who don't need to don't, and those who are directly connected with me can glean it from context if they don't already know. All you need to otherwise know is that I used to work for this company.

As for why I'm doing this, I'm putting this page up here on the 'net for people to find for one simple reason - I want people researching LTD to find it and see what their employees went through. See, the owner, Geoffrey Delgado, is an interesting man. At the same time he spends extravagantly on himself and his children, he not only avoids investing money into his own company, but also tends to abuse his employees verbally - so morale is always at a general low. Now what you do with that bit of data is entirely up to you.

So anyway, on with my story of working for Geoffrey Delgado.

In February of 2002, I was hired on by Legal Tax Defenders Group, Inc. as a case manager. It seemed to be an interesting job - effectively, help people with getting out of trouble with the Internal Revenue Service by way of an offer in compromise or otherwise defend them or find solutions to such problems within the bounds of the law. Starting pay at this job was $9 per hour during the probationary period, with the promise of benefits to come as soon as the owner got around to finishing them up.

Simple enough, right?

Not so.

Within a week, I came to some interesting conclusions. For starters, I was placed at a desk, and just told to get to work - after being told I would be trained in what to do. I never received any of this training.

The two hundred or so cases I was assigned to had been neglected by the previous employees for one reason or another - so needless to say, I had about 200 disgruntled clients to try and calm down. Well... maybe that's not so accurate. Many of these people were also in trouble because they themselves were negligent with their trouble, and didn't want to understand what we could and could not do. I had one doctor who felt that the prior year's bank statements were just as good as the current ones (this was in April of 2002 when I got into this argument), I had a furniture maker in northern California somewhere - as well as his wife - not understand why they couldn't get out of trouble when they weren't working with us. That's just the tip of the iceberg.

My favorite of these negligent clients? One guy in Cathedral City (I believe) who not only refused to file his taxes, but expected us to solve his problems anyway, down to calling me a liar after I had shipped documents to him. While he was on vacation on Catalina Island.

So I can't totally fault my former employer for the shit I went through on this.

What I will talk about then is my interactions with him. In March of 2002, I walked into his office to find that he had apparently been smoking something. I can only assume it was crack cocaine, one of his drugs of choice - I understand the other one to be heroin. He went to jail shortly thereafter for a probation violation.

At that time, I was also looking for work elsewise. Didn't find it, but he offered me an immediate raise from $9 to $12 per hour for the purpose of doing work elsewise in the office - this was apparently an incentive to stay on. So at that time, in his unaddled state, he seemed to understand that I could not function without the training; on the other hand, he didn't seem willing to train me. So I went on to working elsewise in the company.

And shortly after that, I went on and got a raise to $15 - owing to the fact that I somehow saved him much money.

During this time, however, I watched many things transpire, not many of which seemed to be his fault. Employees left, employees came on, a lot of stuff happened.

Oh yeah. Remember the benefits? Still working on them.

Much of this same stuff continued. He returned to jail, and was released in fall of 2003. The usual cycle happened of people leaving and being hired.

Then in March of 2004, he laid me off. OK, no biggie. Do a few things to get myself into a "survival" mode.

As an incidental, it was shortly before this that I learned through rumor that there is no workers' compensation policy for the company. Very bad. Never mind the fact that I had never seen an invoice from companies who would otherwise broker such a policy.

And then two days later I got rehired. He wants to do mortgage loans now. So we get ourselves situated with this mortgage lender out in Cypress and get that started. And this company would be called LTD Financial Group, and all would be good.

Which starts OK, of course. But quickly goes downhill. In Geoffrey's hubris, he seems to think that just by getting into mortgage lending he is going to be a sudden millionaire.

Oh yeah, and the benefits? Still working on them.

So I was recently discharged again. This time it was owing to the fact that he seemed to think I couldn't learn my job. The problem in this was it's a half truth - I couldn't learn my job because he wasn't issuing me the tools to do so. See, this is like giving a mailman a route and a truck, but no mail to deliver. I don't mind getting paid for nothing, personally, but there are complications here.

Let's also focus on the fact that he was doing three point mortgages. For those of you who have never gone into mortgage lending on ANY end, a "point" is a percent of a loan that a lender charges for the privelege. It is their fee. So for instance, on a $250,000 loan for some reason, the lender will charge $2,500. That's one point - one percent of a loan. 1% is, in fact, the de facto standard. Now, Geoffrey was not only charging three percent, but was also trying to up the interest rates a little bit to get extra kickbacks (rebates) from the banks. Now, let's focus on simple economics - "lowest bidder, stupid!" If I can go to somebody and get charged either 3% with a high interest rate, or 1% with a low interest rate, I'm going for the latter.

Maybe he was finding a way to get me out, I don't know.

As it stands, it's no longer an issue. I have since been re-employed. The details of this are not relevant, you only need to know that I am not in financial dire straits for now.

And the benefits? He's still "working on them".

But as of this time, I can only recommend shying away from this company. Let's put aside that the Better Business Bureau considers this to be unsatisfactory in its behavior, and concentrate on the fact that not only does he make promises he doesn't keep, but treats his employees like garbage.

So what becomes of him, I don't know. It's been said for the past two years that the business is failing, but I have to admit that it's quite admirable of him to keep himself afloat against that. But maybe the time is coming where the company will fold.

I have here on my desk the one thing I took home from the company. It was a coffee cup that a vendor gave to me as a gift. It's actually a good cup, so I think I'll keep it.

Epilogue, as written on 14Dec2004

Last night at about 20:45 PST, I rode by their offices there off of east Cerritos and south State College. On the windows at the time I looked them up were two placards from the Orange County Sheriff - and they said, for all intents, "don't come round no more".

LTD has been evicted from the ir offices.

Knowing Geoffrey, he'll pop up in some other location, possibly change the business name, and definitely continue what he does best. Mostly scamming people. So it's an issue of chasing him down.

In more pleasant news, I managed to sue him in August, got a judgement in September, levied in October, and received the funds in December.

Additional note

Many people have been asking me about what's been happening. I've sent a slightly different message with additional details to these people, as outlined behind this link.