Outcries from mortgage brokers across the nation are being stirred by a Web site using a Roanoke address that charges $1,000 or more for lists that supposedly identify dozens of prospective customers.

Clients of the site's operator, which calls itself Telextra.net, claim that the business leads are mostly bogus.

"The complaints come from all over the country," said Julie Wheeler, president of the Better Business Bureau of Western Virginia. Because Telextra.net lists its address as a private mailbox on Franklin Road in Roanoke, the complaints have flowed into Roanoke and to state officials in Richmond from Colorado, Florida, Michigan and other states.

Tony Anderson, a Roanoke attorney who specializes in criminal defense cases, represents the company. He commented briefly: "Telextra views any allegation very seriously and it will promptly investigate and respond to any complaint that it receives."

But mortgage brokers and a consumer agency official interviewed by The Roanoke Times have vastly different views of Telextra's responsiveness.

Telextra.net, on its Web site, offers to send mortgage brokers fresh leads for a fee of $1,000, (some clients said they paid up to $2,000) in advance.

Internet-based companies that furnish leads for all sorts of businesses are an emerging online presence and, to be sure, customer loyalty abounds.

Marc Savitt of Winchester, a board member of the National Association of Mortgage Brokers, said he buys leads from InfoUSA, an Omaha, Neb.-based concern that sells databases of consumer names. "They're a great company. The leads are fresh and reasonably priced. I get 5,000 names for $200," he said.

InfoUSA's Web site states that it employs more than 600 people in database compilation worldwide who "constantly" update the company's files on 250 million consumers and 14 million businesses in the United States and Canada. Nearly 4 million clients use InfoUSA's information to find customers and for other direct marketing, telemarketing, customer analysis and credit reference purposes, according to the Web site.

Savitt said he checks out such companies by talking with other brokers who have used them.

"I wouldn't just go with somebody off the Internet without checking them out. There are too many scams out there," Savitt said.

The lure of a good lead is enticing salespeople in many fields, especially to those working on commissions, such as mortgage brokers and real estate agents. The aura surrounding leads in real estate sales was dramatized by David Mamet in his play "Glengarry Glen Ross." Actor Alec Baldwin, while berating desperate salesmen in the 1992 film version of the story, taunts them with a list of new prospects, "To you, these are gold."

But bad leads are just the opposite to salespeople: time-wasting spirit breakers that fill their days with frustration and put nothing in their pockets. Bitter about being given such tips in "Glengarry Glen Ross," Al Pacino retorts: "Where did you get this one from -- the morgue?"

Telextra.net's score so far: 22 customers complained to the BBB. Their leads turned out bogus, according to the complaints on file with the bureau in Roanoke, Wheeler said.

Six complained to the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services in Richmond.

Two complained to the Virginia attorney general's office.

Only one of the complaints is listed as being resolved. Twenty drew no response from Telextra, said Wheeler of the BBB, which lists the company president as Joshua Holcomb.

Efforts by The Roanoke Times to obtain a comment from Holcomb were unsuccessful.

Telextra also did not respond to the state consumer agency's queries, spokeswoman Marian Horsley said.

The Virginia attorney general's office declined to say what's being done with its two complaints, but one came from a broker who said he paid $2,000 to Telextra and expected to receive 120 exclusive telemarketing leads to prospective customers.

That broker received just 30 leads, and those he described as "junk," said David Clementson in the attorney general's office.

"With me, Telextra promised to provide 150 hours of services to generate mortgage customer leads," said Bob Baird, owner of Cambrian Mortgage Co. in Orlando, Fla.

What Baird said he received, two days later, were the names of five individuals. "When I phoned the people that Telextra gave me as leads, they had already obtained financing," he said.

Baird said he then phoned Telextra to point out that the leads weren't valid, and to ask for more. "They always had some excuse or another." Baird said that a Telextra employee who at first reassured him that more leads were coming soon stopped taking his calls. "They cashed my check and that was that."

It was cashed at a Bank of America branch in Roanoke, Baird said.

VDAC says it referred its six complainants to the Roanoke Police Department, which said it forwarded Telextra complaints to Roanoke County police and the Secret Service. A Roanoke County police spokeswoman said she wasn't aware of the complaints.

Several of the complainants said their transactions with Telextra were handled by telephone. Telextra.net gives its address as 3735 Franklin Road #228, Roanoke, VA 24014. That location is a business called Mailboxes Etc., which is a private mailbox service and not an office building.

Attempts by The Roanoke Times to connect Telextra.net with a physical location were not conclusive, although several information sources listed an address in Charlotte, N.C.

Contact with a resident there led him to deny having any connection with Telextra.

Telextra.net is not registered as a Virginia company, said Ken Schrad with the State Corporation Commission.

"It just seems to be a telemarketing company," Schrad said after evaluating Telextra's Web page, and neither the SCC nor Virginia banking law has authority with telemarketers.

The lack of regulation in the arena of mortgage lead providers bothers Steve Baugher, executive director of the Virginia Association of Mortgage Brokers in Richmond. "I have always been suspicious about the quality of these leads," he said. One source of his mistrust: "I get a lot of phone calls at home from people who ask me if I need refinancing. I wonder if they got my name from a lead company."

Not that Baugher doubts the legitimacy of all mortgage lead providers; in fact, he hasn't ever utilized one. "I'm a big believer in building business the old-fashioned way: finding clients yourself." That has traditionally been done by searches of county property records. "You look for the names of homeowners who bought when interest rates were higher than they are now. That person might be a candidate," he said.

How valuable are good leads to mortgage brokers? The typical broker's fee for arranging a $100,000 mortgage would be $1,500, said Baugher. That, plus the increased competition -- the number of mortgage brokers in Virginia roughly tripled during the last five years, making the promise of good leads all the more tantalizing. Nick Kyrus in the Virginia Bureau of Financial Services said the state has 1,444 registered mortgage brokers.

The run-up in brokers may have been driven by a strong housing market the past five years, but that growth is slowing as interest rates increase and mortgages become more costly.

"It would be unlawful if they were holding themselves out as a company or corporation in Virginia. That doesn't seem to be the case," Schrad said of Telextra.

If customers don't like what they're getting from Telextra, "they have the right to take civil action against the company," Schrad said.

For a complainant from another state, filing a lawsuit to recover a $1,000 claim is a no-win situation, Wheeler said.

"After six or seven hours with an attorney, he'd be out more money than he lost," Wheeler said regarding Baird's complaint from Florida.

She also said prospects were dim for help from federal and state law enforcement agencies. "Until the dollar value gets to be a lot, they don't have the resources to investigate. Somebody losing $1,000 is not going to get their attention," Wheeler said.

Telextra applied to the city of Roanoke for a business license in 2002, but it never paid for a license, said Sherman Holland, the commissioner of the revenue. Although Telextra is not licensed in Roanoke, it continued to appear on the city's license billing list as of November.

"I know my money is gone," said Baird, the Orlando mortgage broker. "It just irks me that this company is still up there doing business."

ray.reed@roanoke.com 981-3351

belinda.harris@roanoke.com 981-3280

rob.johnson@roanoke.com 981-3234