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November 23, 2009

Last year, April 18th of 2008, my husband and I met with three men that wanted to take over our company. Our company has been doing business since March of 2003, creating functional food ingredients for healthier manufacturing.

The men had been looking at our operations, website and product for a while and they asked all the right questions.

My husband and I are both chemists and are not educated in business, so we were looking for someone to take our products to the next level. As a small company, we had outsourced our manufacturing to a plant in Wisconsin and started selling at a volume of 1 ton every few months to 1 ton every month to 100,000 #’s a month…we had evened out when these men came along and were doing okay in the market, about 150,000.00 gross profit in a year and employing either directly or indirectly about 10 people, not including ourselves.

During this time of growth, my husband maintained a job as a safety trainer, and I was teaching voice in order to make ends meet.

We agreed to a licensing agreement with these three men effective June 1st, 2008 in which they would take over our product operations for a fee per year and they would pay me a consulting fee per product I would have to work on. They took two of our products…”The Original SugarBlend” “SweetR! Gourmet” Both low glycemic sweeteners, diabetic friendly, all natural and functional both in health and cooking.

The licensing fees for SugarBlend was 300,000.00 per year (We had made 100,000.00/month on that particular product) and for SweetR! Was 125,000.00 per year (This one Hershey’s had asked that we come up with to comply with Military and School Lunch Parameters). My consulting fees were agreed upon at 50,000.00 per contract.

The week before June 1st, I handed over everything to Sawgrass, LLC in order for them to take over our company. In return, we were suppose to receive the fees to execute the agreement.

SawGrass, LLC. was having a hard time getting their act together and said they would pay us when they found their funding…and gave us a letter of intent.

Because we had loans at the local bank, SawGrass, mainly the attorneys, talked to the bank and gave them the “letter of Intent” stating that since they took our “wages”, they would take over the liability for our Company…”HomeBlend Gourmet, LLC”

The manager of the business taking over was a former attorney, his brother was the attorney for their company and for ours at the time and put the contracts together, and then a local doctor was the investor for Sawgrass, LLC.

For months after we signed the contracts, we went without wages to pay our bills. I taught voice lessons, I worked undercover at a plasma center for a publisher, I did anything to get the majority of our bills payed, waiting for our fees from these men.

The main investor for Sawgrass, LLC had invested quite a bit of money into Sawgrass and he was becoming anxious as well and started calling me about their company. I put a lot of free time and effort into their company as well, so the investor wanted to talk to me about the day to day operations of their company.

About December of 2003, the investor became suspicious of his “partners” and broke off his contributions to them. We had gone without payment of any sort from Sawgrass and became suspicious as well of these two attorneys.

About that time, the bank DLEvans of Idaho (A TARP bank receiving 19.9 million in funds), foreclosed on some of our property to pay debts. Since we had gotten a “Letter of Intent” stating that Sawgrass was taking on the liabilities…we asked the two attorneys about this procedure and they said that they would talk care of it. I called every week, asking the main attorney about the foreclosure and he assured me that he had talked to the banks attorneys, he had talked to the judge about the case and that everything was fine.

One of the attorneys had had a mental breakdown of some sort and was unreachable. The manager  had been the one to run the company, take the funds and manufacture our product. They had come to me in December and told me that the Investor was trying to steal our formulas and that they would cut him out to preserve our working relationship and that they were still working on investment money in order to pay off their debt to us and not to contact the investor for any reason.

In March of 2009, the client list that I had turned over in June of 2008 started calling me saying that they had ordered product but had never received it, they had tried calling SawGrass, LLC but the phone was disconnected and did I know anything about it.

When I finally was able to get in touch with the manager of SawGrass, LLC, he told me they were done, bankrupt and that they had no one looking for sales any more and that our line of credit at the bank along with the property that had been seized by the bank was our responsibility and that they would not be paying any fees for my work (Since June 1st of 2008…100,000.00) or for the licensing fees for SugarBlend or SweetR! (425,000.00).

What a punch in the gut! I had worked since 1984 to put this company together. We had taken the equity from our homes, we had taken our retirement and invested it (425,000.00), we had worked…our whole family had worked for years without a paycheck to get it to a profitable point, and these two men had totally destroyed not only our company, but our lives.

The bill at the bank was 120,000.00 and they had foreclosed on a piece of property, 10.99 acres down by the snake river. Realtors said that other property in the area was selling for 130,000.00 and we had old water rights making that property valuable. When the bank foreclosed on that property, they should have sold it for at least 120,000.00, that was what all the other properties were selling for that were comparable…they sold it for less than 68,000.00 and then came after us for the rest.

They garnished my husbands paycheck and left us with not enough to pay our mortgage. When we had to file for bankruptcy, DLEvans Bank of Idaho, a TARP bank that took taxpayer money, paid attorneys to come after us again, contesting our bankruptcy.

Since we have put everything into our company…we don’t have much. Our house is over leveraged…we didn’t have that many bills and our kids had worked and saved in order to buy their cars so they could go to school and college. Now the bank is going to take their cars because our names were on them. Our kids now look at banks and the government as culprits in their lives…they worked, they saved their names were on the titles, but because their parents were being targeted by the bank, their property was taken from them..now they have no way of getting to school or college or work. (We live miles away from school, college and work).

DLEvans Bank of Idaho accepted the Letter of Intent…during the time of transition, we had another bank and banker with Wells Fargo. These men gave the letter of intent to Wells Fargo, Idaho Falls, Idaho and talked to them as well.

When all this happened,  Wells Fargo Bank encouraged us to go to the Attorney Generals office and file a complaint, said that SawGrass had sought to defraud us. They had taken all the profits from our company and spent it on themselves, paying their bills and buying Mercedes Benz for their wives but had left the liabilities to the company that they took over untouched. They had stated that they would pay those bills, but did not.

We went to the Attorney Generals office…they said that we needed to hire an attorney ourselves. We were left destitute, we had no way of doing that. We went to the Bonneville County Prosecuting attorney, they said the same thing so we were left holding the financial bag and are losing everything that we have ever had.

We have a 2001 Yukon with over 150,000 miles on it…we have a Ford Truck with over 200,000 miles on it…our kids cars that they worked to buy…a Suzuki with over 185,000 miles and a Bonneville with over 230,000 miles. We live in a small home, we don’t have a lot of stuff that other people have because we gave that up trying to build this business.  We have no “toys”, we have not taken a vacation since 1984 when we got married, we have no savings, we have no retirement and now, we have no hope.

The bank tactics leave us with nothing. My husband can’t get promoted because of security clearances, so he can never get paid more that what he has now. I’ve had cancer twice and health problems restrict me to do what ever I can do to earn money.

Obviously, we had to lay off all 10 people in our staff, our company is bankrupt and all that we have worked for since 1984 is gone. Even at minimum wage, the bank that TARP money funded as destroyed 10 jobs worth 141,120/year to the economy. 10 people out of work.  What a shame!

I know that the Federal Government is pushing hard to collect taxes, which makes the states push hard to collect taxes and those banks that took TARP money are pushing hard as well. I don’t think its that prudent for DLEvans Bank, the third strongest bank in Idaho to take 19.9 million in Tax Payer Money, and then pay out 10,000 to 20,000 in attorneys fees to harass individuals to financial death only to come away with a Suzuki worth 200.00 and a Bonneville worth 500.00. This is not normal procedure according to Wells Fargo Bank.The banker at Wells Fargo said that DLEvans bank is harassing us for some reason. I truly understand all those people in the news now, that are killing their families and themselves because there is no hope. These legal proceedings that we have had to go through, the bank harassing us and taking what little money we have to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table for our kids…this must be a depression because our whole family is depressed and so our countless others out there like us…and DLEvans Bank of Idaho, a bank funded by Tax Payer (TARP) bailout money doesn’t help!

Thanks for letting me rant!

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