Erin K. Baldwin by day runs the Baldwin Companies, a so-called business consulting firm in Lake Forest California, and writes fiction in the form of her Bad Business Finder blog by night. Let’s start with Ms. Baldwin’s day job. According to her website the foundation of her consulting business starts with her education. Her site states “Ms. Baldwin studied business and marketing at Merrimack College (a private college in Andover, Massachusetts) and economics and political science at Harvard University.” A good start except for a teeny problem that she didn’t graduate from either school and documentation that she ever went either school has not yet surfaced.


A look at the Baldwin Companies’ blog doesn’t say much about business consulting at all. There’s a complaint about her Hewlett Packard printer, something about three judges written in conspiratorial tones, and a detailed accounting of how she didn’t get a gig with Subway Sandwiches. The Subway blog is particularly interesting in that she publishes all the emails that go back and forth between herself and the management at Subway in her failed attempt to get some consulting work. The big takeaway here is that if she thinks that you need her services but you disagree with that opinion, she’s going public with how stupid you are to not recognize her brilliance. Further searches discovered half done work for which she charged full price, not refunding money that was due back to clients, and other actions that would typically be written about in her Bad Business Finder blog about other companies.


That kind of hypocrisy doesn’t stop her from writing the heavily fictionalized Bad Business Finder by night, however. Baseless accusations are commonplace and backing documentation is nowhere to be found. The blog will post only the commentary that agrees with her position which opens the probability that those comments are written by her as well to give the appearance that the blog is read by more than a handful of people. Disagreement and calls for anything that could back up her wild allegations are simply kept off the site.


Ms. Baldwin seems to have a big ax to grind against loan modification companies, in particular. Speculation is that prior to her Costa Mesa home being foreclosed she tried and failed to save it with an attempt to modify her loan. Loan modifications are turned down all the time for reasons like lack of income but she seems to have taken this one personally and will write anything she pleases in her attempt at revenge on these companies. For her recklessness she’s been slapped with one defamation suit with the likelihood of more to follow.


Until filing of the lawsuit, Erin Baldwin spewed falsehoods and lies with regularity under the cover of anonymity. Out in the light of day the self professed consumer advocate is nothing more than a sad, petty, and revenge consumed person that positions herself as a truth teller when nothing could be further from the truth. Whether ironic or hypocritical, she hasn’t been able to follow her own advice quoted from her own blog; “…But there is a lesson to gain from their idiocy: Don’t lie to people; they are smarter than you think.”