Was ruined because of it. They failed to pay my bills for 3 months, even though I paid them the contracted amount which was over 800.00 a month. I finally had to refinance my home in order to pay all of my debt off. I then started receiving information about the class action lawsuit. The last correspondense I received was a postcard. The date on it is March 11, 2010. I know it has been settled on behalf of the plaintiffs and I want to know when I will get my percent of the award? My credit has been terrible ever since I dealt with them. I will NEVER go through ANY debt counseling service EVER again. And to make it worse the mount they charge you to get started that is so hard too. I would love to see where all the money that I have given to Federated Financial even went where it was supposed to go. still trying to fix my credit history. But once I turned over all of my banking and credit information, i never heard anything from the company. They began withdrawing nearly $900 a month from my checking account, but i had no idea where the money was going. It certainly wasn’t going to my creditors. They began calling me at work, demanding payments. Some even threatened to sue me. i began looking for information on the companies involved in this scheme, and was told that Federated Financial Consulting are "known fee scammers." An industry expert advised Angie that these advance fees are not legitimate, and only a small application fee is usually requested from a legitimate lender. Also, companies that say they are "intermediaries" who arrange things between the actual lender and the consumer, are often scams. i did a background check on Federated Financial Consulting and they have lot of complaints against them, some were ripoffreport.com and the BBB. I wish I would did a background check before I did business with this company. My contract with Federated Financial was $800 a month. And they we're taking $900 a month from my bank account. I called them and asked them why they we're taking an extra 100 dollars, and they told me that that was their fee monthly.