The History of Credit Bureaus and How to Win the Credit Game

Rondi Lambeth dives deep into the history of credit bureaus, debunking common misconceptions and revealing surprising facts. From their origins as merchant groups tracking unpaid debts to their evolution into massive data-collecting agencies, Rondi uncovers the truth behind credit reporting. He discusses the "Big Three" (Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion), their revenue, and their global reach. He also shares a personal connection to Experian's founding and explains how these agencies gather and sell consumer data, including details about the "Welcome Wagon" and the power of store loyalty cards. Rondi then reveals a proprietary method for disputing credit report errors, emphasizing the importance of understanding the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Finally, he offers actionable steps to protect your identity, including opting out of pre-screened offers and freezing your credit report.

Learn more:
creditmojo.ai
FortressU.com
rondilambeth.com
winningthetaxgame.com

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
76% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and according to
Forbes, 93% of business owners pay more than legally required
to pay an income tax. And nearly 50% of all Americans
have bad credit, but not you, atleast not anymore.
See, this is the school of wealth where you learn how to

(00:21):
maximize your credit, minimize your taxes, and multiply your
assets so you can create generational wealth.
Hi, I'm Romney Lambert, certified FICO credit
professional, author, speaker and tax strategist.
For the last 20 years, I've helped 10s of thousands of
Americans just like you take control of their money, fix

(00:42):
their credit, wipe out their debt, cut their taxes by 50% and
multiply their assets. If you're ready to break free
from the rat race and start building a life of freedom and
abundance, then you're in the right place.
Welcome to the School of Wealth.Hello and welcome to the show.

(01:03):
So good to be here with you today.
On today's show, I have a special show, no guest, just
simply me and going over the history of credit bureaus.
Now, the reason I want to spend this time going over the history
of credit bureaus is there's a lot of misinformation and a lot
of confusion of what is a creditBureau?

(01:24):
What does a credit Bureau do? How did we come up with the
credit bureaus? Who are they?
And it's a lot like a lot of people think it's this, you
know, these hidden people up in these big ivory towers or like
the the Wizard in the Wizard of Oz hiding in the shadows.

(01:45):
And really, that's not even close to being accurate.
In fact, let's start with one ofthe big misconceptions of credit
bureaus. There's actually no such thing
as a credit Bureau. There are credit reporting
agencies, also known as Cras, credit reporting agencies, which

(02:08):
in the early 1950s or so, when the FBI came out with the
Federal Bureau of Investigation,they changed their name through
marketing to a Bureau in order to intimidate U.S. citizens into
thinking they were part of the government.
But they're not part of the government.

(02:30):
They are public and private traded companies.
So are publicly traded and private companies, and there are
hundreds of them in the United States and hundreds of them
throughout the world. There used to be thousands of
them in the United States. Each little individual community

(02:52):
would have their own credit Bureau and we'll just call it
credit Bureau, even though it's actually credit reporting
agency. You probably have heard of
three, Equifax, TransUnion and Experian.
And I'm going to give you a little bit of history of those
three. Those are the big three.
Like I said, there's hundreds more.

(03:14):
There's if you live in Mississippi, for example,
there's the credit Bureau of Biloxi.
If you live in Texas, there's inVenice.
So some cities in some states still have their own credit
bureaus, but by and large, they buy and sell data from the big
three. Think about it like a car

(03:35):
manufacturer. There's the big three, Ford,
General Motors, and Dodge, but then there's lots of other ones.
So I'm going to go through some of the history.
I have it written down because some of this I know it, but I, I
want to make sure I'm thorough. So I'm going to read from my
phone from a little bit. So the big three, I'm going to
start with the smallest one, which is TransUnion.

(03:56):
It's also the youngest one. TransUnion was incorporated in
1968. They do about $4 billion a year
in revenue. They have over 13,000 employees.
They monitor over 1 billion files worldwide in 30 different
countries and including in those1 billion files is 200 million

(04:20):
U.S. citizen files. Not every citizen 200, two, 100
million of them and over 65,000 businesses.
See with credit you have a personal credit report and then
businesses have business credit reports and as soon as you get
your EIN number, employer identification number, that's

(04:44):
sent off to Dun and Bradstreet or they'll scrape it from the
IRS website and then that creates your business credit
profile. Now most businesses never build
out their business credit profile, therefore they never
actually have established business credit.
But the credit bureaus still monitor your files.

(05:05):
And if you really want to get unlimited funding for your
business, whether it's for operating capital, for
marketing, or for expansion, youreally need to work on building
your business credit because it doesn't happen on its own like
personal credit. And I'll do a show in the future
just talking about business credit and how I'll go through

(05:25):
the steps. There's really five things that
you must do to build a business credit credit report.
So which is separate, again, it's separate from your personal
credit. And if you actually have a good
business credit file, a thick credit file, business credit
file, you can actually get business credit cards, business
loans, lines of credit, corporate credit cards without

(05:47):
using your personal Social Security number and without
using personal finances, your tax returns, etcetera.
The second credit Bureau is Equifax.
Equifax was founded in 1899, so they're 126 years old.
They were founded as the retail credit company.

(06:07):
This could be important because the big name changed in 1970.
So Equifax was created in the 1899 the retail credit company.
They do over $5 billion a year in revenue, have over 11 billion
in assets, employ over 15,000 employees in 18 different
countries. They monitor over 800 million

(06:30):
consumer files and 18,000,000 USbased business files and they
operate in over 24 countries. So they do a little bit more
revenue, but they have a little bit less files than TransUnion
does and they've been around for50 + 60 years, 60 years longer

(06:52):
than TransUnion. That was technically, Let's see,
1968, so 69 years longer than than TransUnion, so Equifax
1899. Now they are the smallest of the
three as far as files, but they're in the middle for the
revenue. And then there is Experian

(07:12):
experience, the biggest one. And see, when this first started
out with the credit bureaus, when I said there used to be
thousands of them, what's happened over the last, you're
going to find out 200 years is these companies merge with other
credit bureaus throughout the world and they start gobbling

(07:34):
them up, if you will. So instead of now being
thousands of credit bureaus nationwide in every city, every
county, every state, now primarily the the four big ones,
Equifax, TransUnion, experience in Venice, but they're still
always buying these small ones. So Experian was founded in
eighteen, 26200 years ago, 18/26.

(08:01):
It was founded by a group of merchants in London, England who
started to keep track of consumers that didn't pay them.
One was a blacksmith, 1 was a suit maker, 1 was a Shoemaker, 1
was a retail store. Here's a cool story.
According to ancestry.com, my family's actually from London.

(08:22):
In fact, there's a city named after my family, Lambeth, which
is South London. There's a bridge called the
Lambeth Bridge. There's the Lambeth Castle.
There's the Lambeth Waltz, whichis the largest group of Catholic
Bishops that get together one year.
Not the Lambeth Waltz, the Lambeth Convention.
That's where all the bishops forthe the Catholic Church, they

(08:45):
get together this big. It's the biggest Catholic Church
convention. And so one of my family members,
according to ancestry.com, was one of the original founders of
Experian. Isn't that cool?
I didn't know that until years ago.
I started the company now almost20 years ago, but I didn't know
this until about two or three years ago when I started really

(09:07):
digging into experience history.And then I was like London.
Well, my family's from London. So anyway, small world.
Now I don't have any money from it, but because it was, it
wasn't like a direct relative like my great, great, great,
great grandfather. It was like a great, great,
great something uncle or cousin or something.

(09:30):
So, but they, it was started 1826200 years ago by a group of
merchants like I said. And So what they did is they
started keeping track of people that, you know, ordered some
shoes or ordered their horse to be a shoed or they ordered a, a
suit to be made and then they didn't pay it.
And so they start sharing this information with all the other

(09:50):
merchants. And it's the very first credit
Bureau that we know of on history.
So in 1897, there was a small law firm in Dallas, TX and
eventually this Dallas, TX law firm.
They created their own credit Bureau and started keeping track

(10:11):
of Dallas, TX residents. Well, they eventually merged
with Experian from London and sonow in 1897 we have Experian, a
London company now in America. Then in 1957 TRW which was an
aerospace company, a spy company, they launched the very

(10:34):
first spy satellite into orbit and their primary business was
spying on the Russians in the 50s.
So in 1957 they also got into the credit reporting business
and started monitoring U.S. citizens credit files.

(10:56):
Then 1961 they were featured. The founders were featured on
Time magazine and their story was in the future.
They predicted in this this article that Americans would be
cashless based. Think about pretty much we are
cashless based. Now here's an interesting fact

(11:18):
for you. No business in the United
States, no business in the United States can refuse to
accept cash. It is illegal.
That's why if you look on your dollar bill, your Federal
Reserve note, it says this note is good for all debts, public
and private. So it's actually illegal to

(11:38):
refuse to accept cash. Remind the coffee shop.
I've seen that a couple times atcoffee shops to remind them,
'cause why else wouldn't they accept cash?
You know it is illegal though. So in 1996, TRW, the spy
company, merged with Experian. Now Experian monitors over 1

(12:01):
billion consumer files, which include 235,000,000 American
credit reports, 23 million businesses in America.
They're in over 100 countries with over 22,000 employees.
They do over $7 billion a year in revenue and have over $12

(12:23):
billion in assets. Now that's the credit bureaus.
So the oldest one that we have on file is Experian at 199 years
old. Isn't that cool?
It's a almost a 200 year company.
It's not the oldest company in the world.
In fact, there's a Japanese company that's over 1500 years

(12:43):
old. One of the things that I do with
my coaching clients, my tax, my tax clients and asset protection
clients is try to teach them howto think in years, think of
goals as in 100 year goals and to create the fortress business
structure that will last 500 years.

(13:04):
And we used to think that way asa society.
And it was John D Rockefeller, JP Morgan, the shift brothers,
which these individuals by the way, were the founders of the
Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve, if you
don't know who they are, they are banking cartel.

(13:26):
It's not federal at all. They have no reserves.
They're basically an accounting banking cartel that creates
money, primarily digital now andthen charges the United States
interest on that made-up money called Fiat currency.

(13:47):
The IRS was also created in 1913when the Federal Reserve was
created. Interesting fact about the IRS.
They are the collection arm of the Federal Reserve.
See, when we pay taxes, that money actually doesn't go to pay

(14:07):
for things in the United States.It actually goes directly to the
Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve bills the
United States for the money it issues the United States.
It's made-up money, Fiat currency.
Fiat means to make up and so they bill it and then the United

(14:28):
States pays interest through Fiat electronic money to the
Federal Reserve. So I don't want to digress too
far into the Federal Reserve, but the guys that change the way
we think as a society with creating dynasty companies got

(14:49):
us convinced that we should do our own companies, and yet they
did the dynasty. John D Rockefeller is known for
saying own nothing, control everything.
And one of these days I'll do a podcast on how I set up business
structures to where I own nothing and yet I control

(15:10):
everything. I don't own this microphone.
I don't own this boom mic. I do not own this desk.
I do not own this. Technically, I guess I own the
glasses because I haven't conveyed that to my company.
I do own this Echo water bottle,but everything in the studio is

(15:31):
owned by a company that I don't own.
I control it. See, I live by the own nothing,
control everything. And because I live by that
motto, if I was to be sued, whether it's a legitimate
lawsuit or a frivolous lawsuit, you can't take anything from me.

(15:56):
You can't take the Ferrari that I control, the airplane, the
house that I live in, the almost2000 doors that I control in my
apartment complexes, my hunting property.
It's not mine. It's owned by an LLC that I
control. I don't own it, but I can
control it. You can't take the Jeep that I

(16:18):
drive, or the Mercedes or the Toyota or the motorcycle.
Are you catching on? You can't take the watches that
I have that are worth some of them are worth more than
people's houses. You can't take any of that from
me because it's not mine. I don't own very much of

(16:39):
anything. In fact, everything I do own
would maybe bring $1000 at a yard sale.
That's it. So if you sued me and got a
default judgment and tried to take something from my bank
account, not going to find anything because I don't even
have a personal bank account. I have a trust, I have AC Corp

(17:01):
that I control. I have numerous LLCS that I
control and I have bank accountsunder EIN numbers, not Social
Security numbers. Later on I'll talk about that a
little bit more, but how I digress to that was John D
Rockefeller truly believed own nothing, control everything and

(17:22):
he set up his companies that would last hundreds and hundreds
of years and his family now is worth way more money than they
were before. They say that Elon Musk is the
wealthiest man in the world and I'm here to break some news to

(17:42):
you. Elon Musk is not the richest man
in the world. Elon Musk is the richest man in
the world. That lets the world know how
much money he has. And he doesn't really have a
choice because he owns publicly and privately owned companies
and people know how much these companies are worth and they

(18:03):
know how many shares he has so they can estimate his net worth.
Where the Rockefellers everything is in trust.
LLCS and hidden corporations, the Rothschilds, the family
that's dominated the finance world for now, 400 years, 350

(18:26):
ish years. We don't know how much money
they have. The Saudi Princess or the oil
barons, we don't know how much money they have because they
don't want anybody to know. So to say that Elon Musk is the
richest person in the world is really not true.
But he's just the only one that he's the richest man that
reports. So back to changing that

(18:51):
mentality. And so I teach my clients 500
year plans versus A50 year plan on what you can do with
yourself. Do you have collections, charge
offs, even repos on your credit report?
Let me tell you what not to do. Don't ignore it and don't
overpay it. See, most people either panic or
they pay full price, or they bury their head in the sand and

(19:12):
let their credit rot until they get sued.
At Fortress, we help you restructure your debt, settle it
for a fraction of what you owe. And because of the way we
negotiate with the banks and thecollection companies, we often
can get it removed from your credit report as well.
Now, a lot of the time, the creditor will agree to delete it

(19:34):
upfront. This isn't a trick, it's a
strategy. So click the link in the bio to
learn more or go to fortressu.com.
So experience been around almost200 years, but that's really not
when credit was created. Credit's been around for

(19:57):
thousands if not 10's and hundreds of thousands of years.
I personally believe that humanshave been on this earth for
about 300,000 years. I believe that the pyramids,
based on what I'm seeing now, were built in the beginning of

(20:17):
time when everybody spoke the same language and they were a
very advanced. Civilization way more advanced
than we are now. I don't think it was Jewish
slaves that built the pyramids like many of us were taught.
Many people believe. I don't believe that at all.
I don't believe it was built by aliens.

(20:40):
I believe that it was influencedby angels sent by God to help
humans live on earth. That's what I believe and that's
what the Bible references. So I'm a born again Christian.
I've been a Christian since childhood.

(21:01):
I read my Bible every day and I believe that prior to everyone
speaking the same language, we have the the tower of Babel.
And that's when people in the world spoke the same language
and God said they were building buildings so powerful that they

(21:23):
could reach the heavens. And the pyramids are built in a
way that if you actually start studying them, they have those
pillars that go down hundreds and hundreds of feet below and
wrapped in coil like, and something that creates energy.
And then the rooms they're believing now, those are not
burial rooms, but rooms that would vibrate when filled with

(21:48):
hydrogen and water, which would create electricity, and they
could be connected worldwide where the other pyramids were.
See, I believe that if you read the Bible, it says this, that
God sent angels, also known as demons, when they revolted.
But God sent angels to protect humans and to teach them.

(22:13):
So that's my belief. Now whether or not or you think
I'm crazy or not, that's OK. If you're an atheist, that's
cool. Atheist, you got to believe in,
you know, you believe in one miracle happening as a
Christian. There's millions and millions of
miracles that happen every day. I don't think we just poof,

(22:34):
we're here 'cause nothing creates nothing.
Anyway, I digress. So I believe that the credit
credit has been around since Adam and Eve days.
And here's what I mean by that. Since the beginning of time, I'm

(22:55):
good at a few things. I saw my brother, he's I have a
brother, he's 10 months younger than me.
His name's Jeremy. So him and I are same age, 2
months out of every year. We're known as what's called
Irish twins. And growing up we were best
friends because he's 10 months younger than me.

(23:15):
And what I did, he did, what he did, I did.
And so we always work together and we were really together like
that up until quite frankly, about 6-7 years ago.
And he has, he got some mental illness challenges in and out of
mental hospitals, suicides and alcohol and drug abuse.

(23:36):
And so now he's kind of he's kind of out there and as long as
he takes his medication, doesn'tdo any types of drug at all,
including marijuana, doesn't have any alcohol.
He's great to be around. But the moment he has one sip of
alcohol, it it just, it switcheson him and and he goes schizo.

(23:59):
So I don't spend that much time with him.
I did get to see him last weekend.
He got out of jail the last episode he had a an episode he
beat up some cops and beat up his landlord and some nurses and
doctors. So he got 3 felonies and you
know, lucky for him, he lives inOregon.
So with three felonies, they ended up giving him 90 days in

(24:21):
jail and then they let him out after 30 days.
So 3 felonies, you get 30 days in jail.
He got out. So I went and saw him and we
were just talking about stuff and he's like, will you, you
know, you're really good at certain things.
And I'm and I said there's certain things I am good at.

(24:41):
My brother isn't an exceptional fisherman.
Exceptional. I've never in my life ever met
someone as talented as my brother in mushroom hunting,
woodworking and fishing. He is incredible.

(25:02):
The other thing is he is very outgoing and very polite.
Everybody loves him. If he's stays off drugs and
alcohol like he can become your best friend instantly.
People love him. Unlike me.
I'm not that way. I'm what I would refer to as an

(25:24):
introverted extra. I'm a introverted or a
extroverted introvert, so I'm not someone who makes friends
easily. Most of the time people think
that I'm intimidating. They say that they thought I
didn't like them and that I was pissed off because for whatever
reason. But my brother on the other

(25:44):
hand, it's not like that. Not me for fishing, I like
fishing. I'm not a great fisherman.
I like doing it. I have a 5 acre pond in my
backyard. I go out there and I have bass
fish all the time, but I'm not great at it.
So imagine back in Adam and Eve days, I might be good at making

(26:07):
shelters and my brother's good at fishing.
And let's imagine that you were part of the civilization after
they got kicked out of Garden ofEden and you were really good at
making spear making and your brother was really good at
making clothing. So instead of your brother going

(26:27):
out and trying hunting and fishing and shelters, he would
instead make clothing for everyone and we would trade,
also known as bartering. That's a form of credit.
So if the spear maker, I'm good at hunting so and building
shelters. So if but I'm not good at making

(26:48):
Spears. So I would go to the spear maker
and say, hey, if you make me a, a spear, I'll go out and kill
the woolly mammoth. And then I'll pay a percentage,
say I don't know, 10% if I have good credit with him, 5 percent,
3%. Or maybe I pay 50% if I'm known

(27:08):
to not pay my bills because maybe I'm not a very good hunter
and I lose the spear and I don'tget anything hunting.
This was the forced, the first form of credit, but it was fully
developed by my ancestors and the other gentleman in London,

(27:29):
England in 1826. So that's the history of the
credit bureaus now. Like I said, there's hundreds of
them. I remember my first, the first
house I bought in Little or in Parker Co.
So my first house I actually bought was in John Day OR it was
a three bedroom trailer. That man I wish I'd have kept it

(27:50):
because I did the math the otherday because it's still there.
By the way, it is A50 plus year old trailer.
If I would have kept it, I'd have brought in over $300,000 in
rent. I paid 15,000 for it.
I sold it a year later for like $15,000.
I, I wish I would have kept it and I'd be making, you know, a
lot of money, like 15 grand a year in rent because of how

(28:15):
inflation works. But anyway, the first single
family home I bought in Coloradowas in Parker, Parker, Co in
1998. And I remember one day I was at
home, there was a knock at the door.
I go to the door as I was a fireman at the time.
So it was on one of my 20 days off and I go to the door, answer

(28:37):
the door, and there's these three beautiful ladies with this
big basket of cookies and chips and jerky and all this stuff.
And they had clipboards and they're like, hi, Mr. Lambeth,
we're in the with the welcome wagon and we just wanted to come
by welcome you to the neighborhood and wanted to give

(28:58):
your family this big basket. And then we also have all these
coupons from local banks and merchants.
And if you have a couple minutes, we'd like to ask you a
couple questions so we would know how to introduce you to the
other people in the neighborhoodand just get the most out of the
community. I was like, cool, this is great

(29:18):
cookies. And they're so nice and they're
so pretty. Come on in.
So I was 2027 years old, I had three kids, I was married.
I'm like, come on in. And I got my wife to come down
and we're talking and they're asking us all kind of questions.
Where do you work? Oh, that's got to be fun.
How long have you been there? Oh, you know, do you commute?

(29:39):
Do you guys drive? How many cars do you have?
How many kids you have? How old are the kids?
Do you guys travel very much? Or you got the kind of people
that just pay cash for everything or, you know, is this
your first house? They're asking me all of these
questions and it's just so natural.
And they sucked me in, my wife in and where we're from and how

(30:01):
many siblings we have, the wholething.
And like 30-40 minutes goes by. They're like all right, it's so
great to meet you. And then they go outside and of
course I shut the door and I go sit down.
Then I find out after about, we'll see.
That was 1998. So about 25 years later, I found

(30:26):
out they're actually working forExperian.
Yeah. The welcome wagons were
employees of the credit bureaus.And what they would do is when
someone would buy a house, there's a public entry on the
county records. And so they'd send these these

(30:46):
attractive young women, sometimes older women, but they
would send them out in the communities and pretend they
were part of the neighborhood. And they would control the
entire conversation. So you really couldn't ask them
much and they'd flatter you. And they had photographic

(31:07):
memories. I know this sounds kind of like
sci-fi, right? But they would hire these semi
attractive photographic memory women, send them out in the
communities and ask them all thequestions.
And then they would go back to their car and then they fill out
their sheets and then turn it into the credit bureaus and sell
that data to the local banks andbusinesses.

(31:28):
And so now the banks and businesses and credit card
companies, insurance agents would buy this data and then
start marketing and sending you junk mail.
That was 1998. Now with the Internet, the way
it runs everything now, they don't have welcome wagons
anymore, but they still make their money gathering

(31:49):
information about you and I and our businesses and they sell it
to marketers, to banks, to insurance companies.
You ever wondered why you get somany, so many packages, junk
mail packages, like how did theyget your information?
Especially like the ones that says congratulations, you're pre
approved for a credit card. What does that mean by the way

(32:13):
you're pre approved? It means nothing, absolutely
nothing. It's like saying to a woman,
congratulations, you're pre pregnant.
Because after all, aren't all women pre pregnant from the

(32:34):
month, the moment they come out of their mother's womb?
All women, all females are pre pregnant.
So that's what that means on that credit card you're pre
approved but they haven't pulledyour credit yet.
They have no idea what your actual credit score is.

(32:56):
They know the range of your credit score.
See, if I wanted, if I was a marketing company for Capital
One, I would reach out to Experian and say, hey, I would
like to buy a list of 10,000 people who live in the 89139 zip

(33:17):
code that make over $100,000 a year that have a 720 or higher
credit score, that don't alreadyhave one of the credit cards.
And you can, you can literally say everything.
They have two dogs and three cars and over 55 years old.
You can literally lay out exactly what you want.
And then Experian will sell you that list and then you take that

(33:40):
list, you put it in your marketing and now you're sending
out postcards and letters. They've never pulled your
credit. So how would they know if you're
pre approved? You're not.
There's no such thing as pre approval.
It's like being pre pregnant. So now with the Internet and how
everything is connected, they they monitor everything.

(34:03):
I mean everything. They monitor what kind of
toothpaste you use, how many bottles or tubes of toothpaste
in a year you go through, What'syour favorite toilet paper?
How many rolls do you go through?
You might think I'm joking. I'm not joking at all.
They literally monitor every single thing that you buy at a

(34:27):
grocery store. All of it, all of your data,
just like Facebook does, just like Instagram does and YouTube
does. It's about the data.
Let me explain how they're able to monitor this.
She might be thinking, well, howmany rolls of toilet paper I buy
every year that's not on my credit report?
I didn't say it was. I said they'd monitor it.

(34:48):
And then they sell that data to someone who wants to buy it to
sell you marketing and ads to get you to buy more of the
toilet paper or they sell it to the competitor.
Here's how it works. I typically shop at Costco for
most of my food, Winco for some things, and then Albertson's for

(35:09):
things I can't get at Costco or or Winco.
I don't really shop at Walmart because there's nothing close by
and I like the quality of food at Albertson's better.
A lot more local farmers. But I can tell you when I go
into Albertson's, when I go to cash check out, what do I do?
Probably the same thing you do. Enter your phone number or

(35:32):
scanned your loyalty card. You type in your phone number.
Why would Albertson's want your phone number?
Why would Albertson's give you so many discounts and coupons?
Cause 'cause they're not wantingto make as much profit?
No, it's because they make moneyby selling your data.
So when you type in your phone number and then they give you

(35:52):
the automatic coupons, they keeptrack of in their system what
you're buying, and that's on some spreadsheet somewhere.
And then they sell that to the credit bureaus or they sell it
to marketing companies or insurance companies.
That's how they're making up forgiving you the coupons for

(36:13):
giving you the discounts. In fact, the largest credit
reporting agency is unknown. They don't actually sell credit
files, but they sell profiles with credit.
Here's another credit reporting agency check systems.
That's another one that people don't even realize they're a

(36:36):
credit reporting agency. They keep track of whether or
not you write bad checks or if you had a bounce check.
Also, if you've ever gotten a mortgage when the mortgage
company pulled your credit, the mortgage company doesn't have an
account with Experian that there's a middleman, NCO, Old

(36:58):
Republic, and many not even as Exactus and there's thousands of
them. They're also a credit reporting
agency. In fact, one of my proprietary
ways of increasing my client's credit scores 100 to 150 points

(37:20):
in less than 30 days. No one else that I know of knows
how to do this. There's thousands of credit
repair companies out there, and I don't share how I do it, but
I'll share with you what I do see the mortgage company, when
they pull their credit, if I canget a hold of that credit
report, that's actually credit Bureau.

(37:42):
They're a small credit Bureau. And the Fair Credit Report Act
says the big three have up to 45days to respond to your dispute.
But the small ones, because they're small companies, they
should be able to handle disputes faster.
So they get 5 days, 45 days or five days.

(38:06):
Who would you rather dispute with?
Small credit Bureau? Here's the problem.
If you dispute with them, they're going to immediately
fire off a letter that says we are not a credit reporting
agency. Contact Experian, Equifax and
TransUnion. Here's where it gets juicy.
That's a violation of the Fair Credit Report Act.
You can immediately file a lawsuit and they will lose 100%

(38:29):
of the time because they are a CRA and they're required to do a
reasonable investigation. And if they don't, you can
instantly sue them. So we immediately respond back
with the letter quoting the FairCredit Report Act, showing that
they're really a credit reporting agency and threatened
to sue them if they don't removethe items on the credit report

(38:50):
that they really don't. They have two choices.
Yeah, technically 3, but it's going to only result in two
things. They can ignore us and we're sue
them and then we can force them to remove it.
Or they respond and they remove the items that we asked them to
remove. Whether it's a a late payment, a
charge off a collection, a judgement, A repo, A

(39:10):
foreclosure, A bankruptcy tax lien.
Judgement doesn't matter. They have to remove it because
they violated federal law by notdoing the investigation in a
reasonable time. How cool is that little hack?
I don't know of a single credit repair company doing that and
it's because most of the credit repair companies aren't really

(39:31):
interested in fixing your creditbecause they bill you monthly.
I charge, I got two programs. I either charge you per item I
get removed or you go with our done with you program where it's
just 40 bucks a month including the credit monitoring.
I give you access to my softwareand you simply print the
letters, mail them on your own. That's for people on a limited

(39:53):
budget and they got time. But if you want to buy a house
in the next 45 days and you got a budget of say $2500 because on
average clients have about 20 items.
Now, if you only have one or twoitems, we charge $150.00 per
account. So if you got one account, well,
it's 150 bucks. But it's rare that someone comes
to us with just one account. It's usually 8 to 10 accounts on

(40:15):
all three credit bureaus. So it ends up being about two
grand. And yeah, you can do payments on
that after we get it deleted, but I only charge you after I
get deleted. So if I dispute it with this
small Bureau and they don't do anything and then I have to file
a lawsuit, I don't bill you until after they remove it.
If I send them a letter and theydo remove it and I pull your

(40:38):
credit and it's no longer there,I'm going to send you a bill.
You then get your house and you can pay for my bill through your
mortgage. How cool is that?
So that's just a little hack that we use a little one of our
tools. So there's more than just the
three bureaus. There's thousands of them
through the United States. They've been around for credits,

(41:01):
been around for hundreds of thousands of years.
Credit reporting technically hasbeen around 199 years.
They track files on billions of people in over 100 companies,
100 countries. It's a big industry, guys, huge
industry. And then they're tracking and
they're making money off of tubes and toothpaste.

(41:23):
How much gas you buy 'cause theygive you discounts at the gas
station, at least the the gas stations where I live, Shell,
you get up to $2 off a gallon depending on how much how many
points you have. I get gas in my truck, my
Ferrari, my and my motorcycle atCostco.

(41:45):
But my Jeep is a diesel. So I get that at the Shell and I
wait till I got that $1.00 off coupon and I just go to the
local Shell down the street and that's where you get my diesel.
So they keep track of all that stuff.
They're tracking everything now.What can you do to stop all of
the junk mail, to stop all the pre approved offers that don't

(42:08):
matter? You can go to opt out
prescreen.com, that's optoutprescreen.com.
These links should be in the show notes as well,
optoutprescreen.com and you can opt out of receiving marketing
for five years. Now why would you want to do

(42:28):
that? One is less, less garbage
because there's less mail going to your mailbox which then just
goes in the garbage or the recycle bin.
So less of that two, it's also going to protect your identity.
And the reason why it'll help protect your identity is you do
not need a Social Security number to get approved for a

(42:50):
credit card. You only need a birthday.
How crazy is that? You don't need a social, you
need a birthday. Well, how do you get the
birthday? Facebook.
You know how many people go on Facebook and it's happy
birthday. Happy birthday.
If you go and look at my birthday on Facebook, it's not
my real birthday. It's not the right year, it's

(43:11):
not the right date. It's one day of every year.
But on my public profile, it's not the right date, not even
close. Why do I do that?
Because I'm a public figure. People know me.
Millions of people know who I amthrough social media and TV and
radio and magazines, etcetera. I've been on stages all across

(43:35):
the world. I'm on 25 to 50 stages
throughout United States everyday.
In fact, I've spoke at Harvard three times, Penn twice, San
Diego State, I think it's now three times.
So I speak on stages all over. So I changed the identity that
is on Facebook to not be my realbirthday.

(43:55):
You can still wish me happy birthday and I'll say thank you.
It's just not my real birthday because you don't need a Social
Security number to get a credit card.
You need a birthday. So if someone is really stalking
you, and here's the facts. 70% of all identity theft, 7 out of
10 times it's friends and family.
It's friends and family. It's not some crackhead going

(44:20):
through your trash so you got toblock everything out and put it
through the shredder. 70% of thetimes it's friends and family.
The other 30% of the time, it's the North Koreans, the Chinese,
the Russian, Ukrainians. It's the professional hackers.
And they're not actually going through your mail.
They're hacking into the HVAC system at Target, or they're

(44:45):
hacking into your insurance company system and they're
grabbing millions of Social Security numbers.
Fact. Every year there's 50 million
debit cards replaced in America,50 million due to breaches.
You ever wonder why one day you get the mail and there's a new
debit card? It's like there's a new debit
card and you're like, well, the other one didn't expire because
the data was breached and they paid a ransom to not use all the

(45:09):
credit cards. So they'll get 10 million credit
cards or debit cards and say, hey, give us $5,000,000 and we
won't use these otherwise we're going to sell them on the dark
web. That's how that thing works.
You already know the game is rigged, but what you might not
know is there's a legal way to flip the script.
I'm also in a live three day workshop called Winning the Tax

(45:30):
Game. Inside, I'll show you exactly
how I've paid just a few $100 inincome tax over the last 10
years. Legally, ethically, and by the
book, You'll learn how to turn your biggest expenses into the
biggest business tax write offs.You'll learn how to bulletproof
your assets from frivolous lawsuits and how to play by the

(45:51):
real IRS rulebook, the one the wealthy use.
If you're a business owner and you're sick of giving 30 to 50%
of your profit over to your silent partner, the IRS, then go
to winningthetaxgame.com and reserve your seat.
If you're listening to this right now, use promo code SCHOOL
of WEALTH at the checkout to get$100 off the price of admission.

(46:14):
Let's stop donating to the IRS. It's time you learn how to win.
So go to winningthetaxgame.com and get registered today.
So 70% of identity theft is friends and family.
So if you opt out of, if you go to optoutprescreen.com and opt

(46:34):
out, there's less likelihood that your friends or family will
open your mail or your employee will open your mail and then
apply for a credit card in your name and then when they get it,
they make sure they pay the bill.
This happens all the time. Most, I shouldn't say most, many

(46:57):
of the celebrities that hire me in the athletes, in the
Instagram folks, the social media stars, most of them that
hire me, it's friends and familystole their identity.
Bradley is a great example. Bradley, host of Dropping Bombs.
Very good friend of mine. When I first met him he had a
561 credit score. Now he's in the eighth.

(47:20):
I think the last time he texted me it was 837.
He spent thousands of dollars with attorneys trying to fix his
identity theft and got nowhere. I had it fixed in less than 72
hours. Identity theft is extremely easy
to fix now. You might be thinking he just
shared Bradley's credit score. Oh my gosh, is Brad going to be

(47:42):
pissed off? No, Brad talks about it in his
book. The credit guy he's talking
about in the book, it's me. Brad and I have shared stages,
many shared stages together. He tells everybody.
I've been on his podcast now three times talking about his
credit. So what I just shared with you
is not breaching confidentiality.

(48:04):
Now, there are many other celebrities that I can't tell
you that hired me. If you go on my social media,
you can probably figure it out because you see me with a lot of
them, a lot of athletes, a lot of social media stars.
And to help almost all of them with either maximizing their
credit, protecting their identity, fixing identity theft,

(48:26):
or minimizing or eliminating their taxes.
I helped a client today. He made $2,000,000 net.
His CPA finalized the tax returns, says here's what you're
going to owe. So he came to me and he's like,
what can you do? And I said let me do my magic.
I took him from Owen, $868,000 in taxes to 08, $168,000 in

(48:53):
taxes to 0. What did that investment cost
him for me to do that was $35,000.
Was that worth it? When it's all said and done?
He saved 800, $1000, which then he was able to reinvest that in
real estate, which now he's got.He'll be able to have millions

(49:16):
of dollars in new assets that essentially the IRS paid for.
So I do three things, maximize credit, minimize debt, multiply
and protect assets. Those three, the M3 program.
So if you want to protect your identity, optoutprescreen.com.
If you want to eliminate identity theft, like 99.99999%

(49:43):
likelihood you will eliminate and prevent identity theft.
Here's how you do it. You go to
annualcreditreport.com. Lifeline absolutely hates this.
They created a company worth hundreds of millions of dollars
by scaring people into thinking that someone's going to steal

(50:06):
your identity. No one steals anyone's identity.
No one walks up to you, puts a gun in your face and says give
me your identity. No, what they do is they commit
fraud. They commit banking fraud and
most of the time doesn't cost usas consumers anything on the
front end because it's fraud andwe don't have to pay for it.
It cost us on the back end in our retirement accounts if our

(50:29):
if we have mutual funds with thebanks, it cost us an interest
rates because the banks got to make up the prop to make up the
loss. So they charge us higher
interest rates. So it does cost us, but not
necessarily if someone goes and buys $100,000 car, which one of
my celebrity clients, one of hisfamily members bought over 26

(50:51):
cars at the same dealership. Talk about an inside job.
True fraud, right? Was an identity theft is fraud.
But if you want to prevent it from ever happening, the
LifeLock doesn't like this because this would eliminate
their business because you don'tneed to have a LifeLock.

(51:12):
You can do this for free thanks to Donald Trump. 2017 Donald
Trump changed the Fair Credit Report Act, which allows us to
freeze our credit reports for free.
The credit bureaus used to charge $90.00 for it.
Now it's free. How do you do this?
You go to annualcreditreport.com.

(51:36):
Annualcreditreport.com Then you click on the button that says
freeze and you freeze your Experian, your Equifax, and your
TransUnion. It's going to have you create a
digit, so many 911 digit code that can't be your birthday and
it can't be your social. So you need to create a code.
This combination may be your address, maybe your birthday,
like a number that you won't forget.

(51:58):
Make sure you put it in your phone because if you lose that
code, it's not the end of the world, but you wish it would be.
After spending hours on the phone, listen to horrible hold
music to only get told call backtomorrow, Eventually you'll get
it unlocked. So you freeze your account, you

(52:19):
get your pick your code and thenit's now frozen.
Which means nobody, no one out there can pull your credit
except the credit card companiesyou're already with.
Those are called soft inquires. And your credit card companies,
you might not know this, but they're actually pulling your
credit every single month. Every month they do this, they

(52:41):
pull your credit. That's why people will call me.
They're like, Randy, last month I had a $10,000 credit limit.
Now I got a $500 credit limit. What the hell happened?
I'm like, did you miss a paymenton one of the other credit
cards? Well, yeah, but why did my
$10,000 card drop down to 500? Because they pulled your credit

(53:02):
and they saw you missed a payment and they're afraid
you're going to default on all your credit cards.
So they protected themselves, limited their liability, and
dropped you from 10,000 to 500. Wait two years and your credit
limit will come back. So credit credit card companies
pull your credit every single month.

(53:23):
Your insurance company pulls it generally twice a year.
They pull it in July, they pull it in January.
Why July? Because July is when most people
have the lowest credit score. In January is when most people
have the lowest credit scores. Why does credit scores matter to
insurance companies? Because your credit score

(53:45):
determines how much you pay in Car insurance, renter's
insurance, health insurance, life insurance, mortgage
insurance, all insurance you have a credit score.
For insurance, all of you have it.
There's different types of scores.
There's credit card scores, mortgage scores, recreational
vehicle scores, bankruptcy scores, insurance scores.

(54:09):
So your insurance company pulls it twice a year and the lowest
time of the year is January and July.
Now why would it be the lowest in January?
Because of Christmas. People maxed out their credit
cards and Christmas, therefore the lowest is in January.
By June, they've had that creditcard paid off.
And then what happens in June? They travel, they do all of

(54:32):
their summer vacations, they buytheir trips, they buy pay for
the hotels, and now they have maxed out credit cards again.
When you Max out a credit card, you lose 165 points.
And so then they base your premium going forward on your
insurance credit score, which isa direct result of how much you
owe on credit cards. How crazy is that?

(54:55):
That's all intertwine, interconnected.
Now you might be thinking, well what does that have to do with
car insurance? What does that have to do with
my credit score? Think about it like this.
You got two people, same age, same neighborhood, same job,

(55:17):
same family. Everything is exactly the same
in their life with exception to one thing.
They make the same money, everything is the same.
They have sex with their wife the same amount of times per
month. I mean everything is exactly the
same except for one thing. One person has collections, late

(55:43):
payments, charge offs, and it's got horrible credit.
The other one has great credit, manages money like nobody's
business. One's got a 450 credit score,
1's got an 850 credit score. Which one of those two identical
humans is more likely to have aninsurance claim?

(56:05):
The one with the 450 credit score struggling financially or
the one with the 850 credit score?
The one with the 450. FICO can prove that over and
over and over and over again because people with poor credit
scores are more likely to commitfraud.
Insurance fraud and more likely you have an accident because

(56:30):
they're tired. They're stressed out, and
they're distracted when they're driving.
Well, why are they tired? Because they're not sleeping.
Because they're stressed out over the collection companies
calling them at work, at home. They're brothers, sisters,
aunts, uncles. They're distracted when they're
driving because they're getting text messages and phone calls

(56:51):
from collection companies and creditors calling them.
This is why your your insurance score and your credit score
dictates how much you pay in carinsurance.
It's not interesting. So I talked about scores before
and I'll talk more and more about credit and scores because

(57:12):
that's the, it's the foundation of building a fortress around
your finances. I call it the fortress
structure. We got to build the foundation
and it starts with credit because if we can have the
highest possible credit score, you can get the lowest interest
rates on your debt, which means you have more money in cash flow

(57:36):
to buy more assets. And if you have more money to
buy assets and higher credit scores at lower debt, you can
buy more real estate and other types of assets that then lower
your income tax. If you can lower your income
tax, you have more money to reinvest in businesses and real
estate, which then lowers your income tax lower and lower.

(57:57):
And this is the flywheel. You save 100 grand on your
taxes. You buy a $500,000 Airbnb.
If you bought the $500,000 Airbnb, you get save another
$125,000 on your taxes. Now you're saving 200 grand on
taxes, which means you buy two more rentals and the thing just
starts spending. It is so cool if you invest the

(58:19):
money in real estate or assets, businesses, energy, tax credit,
energy stuff, gold, silver, not gold, well, gold mining, oil
mining, solar, etcetera. If you do what the government
wants, you pay no income taxes. Last week I wrote a check to the

(58:40):
Internal Revenue, technically U.S.
Treasury. I wrote a whopping check of
$356. Three and a half million dollars
of income, net income, three anda half million dollars of net
income. I paid $356 in tax.

(59:01):
No federal tax, no state income tax.
It was $356 in self-employment tax on $2000 a profit from
selling one of my cows at my farm, or the farm, I should say,
the farm that I control because I don't own anything.

(59:21):
I'm 53 years old, so I'm trying to break that habit of saying
mine because nothing is mine. That's why you can sue me, get a
judgement against me, and you can't take anything from me
because I don't own anything. So what else can I tell you
about the credit bureaus? Let's talk about the dispute

(59:42):
process and then I'm going to wrap it up with that.
And then later I'll get into like really how to dispute
things on your credit. But I want you to let you know
how it kind of works. There's three major credit
bureaus in in America. They get sued every day.
They receive, each one of them receive about 40,000 dispute
letters a day. That would be virtually

(01:00:04):
impossible, if not impossible, to hire enough people to read
every letter. And they don't.
It comes in on convey on dumpsters and they dump it on
the conveyor belt, goes down theconveyor belt.
There's a machine that opens theletter, pulls the paper out of
the envelope, runs it through a scanner called an OCR machine,
optical character recognition. That scanner then reads that

(01:00:28):
letter that you wrote. You might spend an hour writing
this letter and they instantly assign a three digit code to
that letter that is then immediately sent via E Oscar to
some other country to maybe a non-english speaking person,
whether it's Brazil or India or the Philippines, Costa Rica.

(01:00:50):
That person then has to do 80 investigations an hour.
So if you spent hours writing this letter and it's a 20 page
letter and it's documenting why it's identity theft and here's
all the proof. And here's the police report and
the CFPB and the FTC identity theft.
And here's the person that stoleyour identity and here's the

(01:01:11):
court file of them getting convicted of identity theft.
And you lay it all out within seconds.
It's attached to a three digit #70% of the time it's .001,
which means consumer state's nothis or not mine.
So 00 one, 70% of the time, that's what they're coded, not
mine that's sent off to India. That person now has to do 80

(01:01:34):
investigations an hour and they're going to literally they
don't call anyone because they have no phones.
They can't e-mail anyone becausethey have no access to e-mail.
They then must do an investigation, 80 of them an
hour, otherwise they're fired. These are in third world
countries that they need their job, that families depending on

(01:01:58):
them for money to buy food. What would you do if experience
says you either click 80 things an hour and click verified or
we're going to fire you? It's just verified, verified,
verified, verified, verified, verified 80 times an hour.
That is the disputing process. And then when they click

(01:02:19):
verified, it sends back a letter.
You get it about 3 weeks in the mail, says we did investigation,
we found this as frivolous, suspicious.
We've alerted the authorities and we're not going to remove it
from your credit report. Have a good day.
That's basically what it says. And then you as a consumer, like
they're going to alert the authorities.
What did I say? Did I say the wrong thing?
Am I in trouble? Is someone to show up and knock

(01:02:41):
on the door and arrest me? Literally.
I have people freak out and callme in tears.
I got this letter. They said they're alerting the
authorities. What did you guys say in the
letter? Well, I'm going to get in
trouble. No, no, no.
They alerted the authorities like at Experian, like they
alerted their boss. They did the investigation.

(01:03:02):
That's all it means. Kind of like pre approval
letter. That's all it means.
It's nonsense. It's a scare tactic.
I love those letters. I love it because it's an
immediate lawsuit that we can dobecause they did not do a
reasonable investigation as required under the Fair Credit
Reporting Act of 1970. But if you don't write the

(01:03:25):
letter the right way, send it the right way to the right
address, and then respond immediately when we received the
notification back in a particular way, the court
system, which is primarily controlled by the credit
bureaus, the court system will reject your lawsuit.
Now, what do I mean by there's controlled?

(01:03:47):
Who do you think pays helps pay for these judges campaigns?
Experian, Equifax, TransUnion. In fact, the credit bureaus are
the third largest campaign contributioners to Congress and
to judges. First we have pharmaceutical,

(01:04:09):
then we have oil, and then we got credit bureaus, and then we
got banks. Credit report.
Credit reporting agencies donatehundreds of millions of dollars
to politicians every year in an attempt to not have to respond
to the literally thousands and thousands of lawsuits filed

(01:04:31):
against them every single day. Remember I said experience got
over 1 billion consumer files 235,000,000 American files
actively in 100% of all credit reports contain mistakes, errors

(01:04:54):
and misleading information 100% of the time.
In fact, I will challenge you. I will send you, I will wire you
$10,000 if you can send me a credit report, your credit
report, not a doctor and credit report, but your credit report

(01:05:16):
that has no mistakes, no misleading information, no
inaccuracies. Zero. 100% of all credit reports
have mistakes, inaccuracies and misleading information, 100% I
will send you $10,000. No, I will send you $100,000, No

(01:05:39):
1099. I'll just wire it to you.
I've been saying that now for almost 20 years on stages across
the world. My radio show used to be
syndicated on 42 different stations.
I had hundreds of thousands of people listen to me every day.
And not once, not one time, has anyone, including politicians

(01:06:01):
that I've challenged them with this Congress, senators,
representatives, judges, not onetime has anyone ever shown me a
credit report with no mistakes on it, including my own.
So I challenge you that $100,000in cash via wire, no taxes for

(01:06:22):
you to pay. I'll pay the tax on it so you
don't have to pay. If you can give me a credit
report with no mistakes, I will sleep good tonight knowing that
I don't have to send anybody 100grand because it's impossible.
They don't exist. 100% of all credit reports contain mistakes
and accuracies and and errors 100% of them.
So with that my friends, I'm going to sign off for the day.

(01:06:45):
I look forward to doing some more episodes with you and if
you ever need any help with yourcredit, you can go to credit
mojo dot AI. That is the done with you AI
version. It's only $40 a month.
It includes 50, 50 hours of financial education along with
the software that we use everyday to fix hundreds of
thousands of people's credit. 3995 a month, no discount code

(01:07:07):
because it's 3995. If you have less time and more
money and you want us to do the paper delete, which means you
simply pay us a one time setup fee of $397.00.
After that we create all the letters, send them out 30 days
later, check your credit. Based on what we got deleted,
we're going to bill you $150.00 per account if you want to do

(01:07:27):
that one, fortressu.com, that's Fortress shoe.com.
And then lastly, if you're a business owner that makes over
$100,000 a year and you want to take your income tax to 0,
regardless of what CPA you use and regardless what state you
live in, and if you're in PuertoRico for the tax reasons, you
can come back to America and live anywhere in America,

(01:07:49):
including California and pay no personal income tax.
If that's you, go to my website,ronnielambert.com.
That's ronnielambert.com. All right, see you later.