I was born and then adopted from Seoul, Korea with my twin brother at 3 months old into a high moral and valued family in the United States. My mother and father both divorced when I was around 3 years old. Then my father shortly got remarried to my stepmother. I moved around a lot with mom and my twin to many different elementary and middle schools between Arizona, California, and Texas. I also have an older brother who was adopted from a different origin who’s 10 years older than me.
My mom supported us with school and extracurricular activities when she could. Shortly after her divorce, she was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, and later with Parkinson’s, and lastly Scoliosis. She also smoked quite frequently and took lots of medications for her illnesses. For those reasons, her support became less and less frequent as we grew older into our pre-teens because she would be in bed or at the doctor’s. I dealt with many issues alone such as bullying, suicidal tendencies, developed unhealthy codependences with my twin, racism, etc. To keep us preoccupied, we were mainly isolated in our room playing video games, instead of being out in the real world. However, she tried to help me by putting me into special education in elementary school. Due to my parents’ custody battle, I started to resent my mother for not being there for me. I wasn’t close to my older brother either due to the age difference as well.
My mom identified me with a counselor as having a mild form of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) or Aspergers and gifted learning-disabled in school. Meaning I was brilliant in math and science, but weak in language arts, reading comprehension, and socializing. Many cases, I couldn’t speak a full sentence up to the age of 14. This also thwarted my ability to have meaningful friendships, dating relationships, and support. There were many instances where I would try to explain things, but others took it the wrong way, refused to help me, and was even bullied and patronized. However, moving to Colorado with my stepmom and father at the tail end of middle school and high school starting January 1997, I started to overcome most of the gruesome struggles of language arts, socializing, and reading comprehension. However, I still had issues such as the length it took for me to comprehend things, abstract concepts, gullibility/overtrusting issues, peer pressure, lack of self-reliance, anxiety and depression, and difficulty understanding vocal guidance. As far as extracurricular activities in middle/high school, I was into singing and acting. Later, I shifted my interests to sports, particularly gymnastics.
Despite some opposition and doubt from teachers about college, my parents were very successful in helping me with my acceptance to the University of Colorado at Boulder (CU Boulder). As a freshman, I still struggled with reading comprehension. I enrolled into CU Boulder’s Disability Services program, which helped college professors give me 2-3x longer for timed exams. Due to feeling forced into a major I disliked and not having the courage to speak up, I also unknowingly started to cheat, take shortcuts, unhealthily competed with my twin, and lie on exams to get a better grade. For extracurricular activities, my junior and senior years in college, I was accepted on the CU Cheerleading Team, and during my 5th and last year in college, I became an athlete for the CU Freestyle Ski Team, which later became my desired career after college. Academically, I majored in Computer Science, with a minor in Electrical Engineering and Psychology on May 11, 2007, at 23 years old.
My father naturally led me to psychiatry in 2006. I took Effexor XR to deal with anxiety and depression with my former psychiatrist. So, I was once open to it. After college, I also started making bad decisions financially such as investing into a Real Estate Investment program I found called the Rich Dad Education Program in February 2008. Due to not listening to my dad’s warnings, my twin and I got hurt in the process and damaged our impeccable credit. My twin then started to research ADHD and Bipolar symptoms for me and without my knowledge. He referred this to my father, and shortly, both approached me wanting me to see a psychiatrist pronto. Due to feeling labeled, accused, scapegoated, and guilty for being a “bad person” for manipulating my twin, I started getting defensive with them and saw dreaded signs I was losing their support. It got so bad that I stopped expressing anything to them and started lying compulsively to save face, because I started making mental associations that this was associated with my Bipolar illness and family ruin. In addition, my father had a lot of objections about how I approached my ski career. Due to this dread, my symptoms got even worse, continuing to unintentionally use my twin financially. This eventually destroyed our lifelong relationship, then I got into a bad marriage, impulsively leaving to LA and back, a knee injury from skiing, bankruptcy, invested into scams, prostitution, drinking, weight gain, lying to save face and medication overdose, and constantly getting hired and fired with jobs I hated. I knew my dad, stepmom, and my twin were trying their best to help, but I didn’t know I became a victim of their manipulative dynamic until late-2024. Also, I wasn’t very close with my older brother, his newlywed at the time, nor my mom yet. Anyway, I kept being accused of being a manipulator, a liar, a cheater, a narcissist, and feeling misunderstood.
A close ski friend, 2nd father, and coach, encouraged me to move to Utah to start life fresh. So, on October 25, 2014, I moved to Orem, Utah. Although I had a job lined up and knew what ski team I wanted to join, my old life unfortunately followed. I was already $100k in debt and wasn’t responsible enough to pay this back first. Shortly after, I was laid off from my job. This created more stress of pushing through things out of survival. Out of financial desperation, I started to deceive in creating non-working digital products so I could make a profit on eBay. In addition, I had another knee injury through skiing. As it got worse, I faced an eviction, when I got a notification on my door around April 2015. I called my dad out of defeat again for help and unfortunately, due to frustration and painful arguing, I was forced to figure out my problems on my own.
Frantically looking for help, through a series of connections, I discovered Gary Acevedo, the owner of Rise Leadership Group in Sandy, Utah who was also a 3-year student at CEDU Foundation which closed in 2005 for abuse and violation of rights, sponsoring one of his free courses at The Salt Lake Center for Spiritual Living Church. In that workshop, he inspired me, and sales pitched me into their weeklong retreat in June called The Awakening for $7,500. Out of financial and emotional desperation, I tried to find a way to pay for that workshop. In 2 weeks, I was able to miraculously put a down payment. After the Awakening was done, I felt happy, euphoria, and a sense of invincibility from this pseudo positive experience. I felt this would be my new path to healing, not therapy nor psychiatry. I also started rationalizing that Rise “saved my life” due to helping me with a suicidal ideation I had at the Awakening, now worshipping them, and started denying my mental health issues. I officially became delusional.
At a follow up meeting after the Awakening, Gary sales pitched me into their 9-month accountability program called, Movement into Mastery. I also hired Lore Acevedo, Gary’s sister November 2015, for emotional support and many times telling me to “surrender to God” without a plan. I shared with Lore, Gary, and Rise about my negative history with medication, psychiatrists, therapists, my dad, stepmom, and my twin brother, and they encouraged me to get off all my medication, avoid psychiatrists/therapists, and cut off my immediate family. In addition, they told me to quit my 2-year job at Zions Bank for my part-time LinkedIn business not making any income yet which made me extremely vulnerable. In addition, I claimed to learn many ways of releasing emotions such as attack therapy in my car, manipulative slick talk strategies, and other personal development techniques that were detrimental long-term derived from CEDU. Lastly, they taught another course called Manifesting Money which taught others how to manifest money by asking others and getting into debt through funding. Unfortunately, this planted an evil seed within me. With Rise as my new family, I felt validated emotionally, but was unknowingly manipulated, coerced, and buttered up. And without family or professional feedback, I was trapped in a delusional-rationalizing loop. Ultimately, I kept consuming into their programs losing about $30k+ that I didn’t have, and ultimately declaring bankruptcy for the second time.
As 2019 began with no job, I was off to a rough start financially. To get unemployment, I lied to the Utah state administrative law judge with Lore’s support, saying I left my job due to “medical issues”. I was turned down and became more financially desperate. During this time, I learned how to “forgive” the “Rise way” and got close with my mom, then my older brother and his wife. However, I was still too secretive and didn’t talk about my “negative” issues, keeping things “positive” with them. Due to my skewed belief in the law of attraction from Rise, I couldn’t think of any negative thoughts, which was another way of denying my issues. Lastly, my products for LinkedIn were only half baked and started deceiving others and cherry picked my successful case studies so I could make sales for income.
In June 2019 to find financial relief, I proposed to Lore about funding, from that evil idea from Manifesting Money, and she got excited and referred me to a former Rise member, John Bradshaw. He convinced me to do his program called VIP Funding. Also, Lore’s other brother, Rob Acevedo, was in that program too. As I mindlessly gave John all my confidential information, my case was passed onto some folks that would be able to take certain items off my report, which included his friend Harvey Dockstader, who was Rob and John’s friend and a former Rise member. However, it didn’t go very far, and by August 2019 the VIP company collapsed without me knowing the reason along with John, his credit repair buddy Billy Matthews, Harvey, and Rob.
September 8, 2019, Lore looked for other options and connected me with Rob directly. Rob only told me good things about Jeff Funding and connected me with “Jill” AKA Heather Campos along with Harvey. Due to my unwavering trust with Rise and with no professional feedback, I absentmindedly signed the Power of Attorney (POA) documents. From there, it was game over, because I gave them all my information so they could use me however they wanted. I was aware that the POA stated that no matter what they did, they were going to do all of what they needed to do under MY name, as me. However, due to my ASD and Bipolar symptoms along with financial desperation, and Lore’s “support”, I went along with it. To make matters worse, Lore needed to be paid back the full $23k. Jeff Funding then promised to clear up my inquiries, late payments, and bankruptcies for a mortgage tradeline. Again, I heard loud and clear it was a real home they were getting me, but I was too delusional to realize. I rationalized to myself believing that it was just a computerized input as a mortgage tradeline. Also, Jeff Funding requested to use my unused business entities, so that somehow “Jill” would submit them for business funding through SBA, stating that each entity could receive $100k-$200k funding. Not related to Jeff Funding and out of financial desperation, I also applied to get EIDL and exaggerated my business income on my application so I could get a $3,000 EIDL assistance grant, then a $34k loan for my business under SBA. I received both to help with some of my financial stress, but desperation also led to another knee injury through skiing, still paying for expensive business programs, and lying to Utah Department of Workforce Services for benefit assistance.
By this time, I became caught in the Fraud Triangle: opportunity, rationalization, and pressure. Opportunity, meaning the temptation of funding. Rationalization, meaning that I rationalized my actions such as “since Lore wants this money so bad and I’m in a desperate position financially, I will do ANYTHING to make this work, no matter if I hurt someone or not”. And Pressure, meaning I was in financial desperation with no income, and pressures from Lore to pay her back.
October 2020, as I became more Bipolar manic and feeling validated by Lore, out of the blue, I decided to be a dual citizen for Korea for my ski career. When I got to Korea in quarantine, with no money, and no ability to be funded due to following Jeff Funding’s orders in that I needed to be in the States for them to continue my case, I lied to Chase Bank to reverse a $13k transaction as fraud for one of the big personal development programs I invested in so I could receive the temporary credit to survive the Korean trip. Once I got it, I moved the credit to my Bank of Utah checking account so the funds wouldn’t reverse. Inevitably, those funds reversed in my Chase Bank account, and I obliviously hurt that company by putting myself in a $13k negative balance. After that was done, I had funds to survive the 2-month trip. While concurrently getting my F4 Visa, I finally found and met my Korean birth family on November 12, 2020. They were very welcoming and were a form of healing for me because all my life I thought I was abandoned. I found out my twin and I were sold for money as babies as they couldn’t afford to take care of us. That’s how we ended up in adoption agencies and were eventually adopted by my US father and mother when they were still married. In addition, I discovered that my twin and I were hooked up to incubators for oxygen before we were adopted, and were 1-month premature births, which could have been a contributor to my mental health issues later in life.
As I arrived back in Park City, Utah on December 18, 2020, I told Lore my dream was to get a Tesla because I had no car for about a year. She was extremely excited and encouraged me to do that. Because of this, I contacted Jeff Funding that not only was I back in the States to resume my case, but I needed a car. “Laura Hall” AKA Shyanne Edrington who was working with “Robin” AKA Leslie Edrington told me that I could get any car I’d like but I needed to let them know as soon as I got one. After all, my credit score was already at 760 from 515 when I started. I was instructed by “Laura” to lie to the dealership that I had a job, and they would take care of the details. As soon as I ordered my Tesla, I let “Laura” know that I got it. From there she did some things like freezing my report, sending fraudulent proof of “my job” to the dealership, and taking the inquiry off so that car wouldn’t affect my credit rebuilding. At this point, I was deeply entrenched in the Fraud Triangle and my delusion. However, I did finally leave Rise and Lore due to finally noticing red flags about them December 28, 2020.
That entire journey with Jeff Funding, I was incredibly frustrated with them. It was empty promise after empty promise for funding with no communication. Out of financial desperation and still delusional, March 2021, I found another scam company from another email that was sent to me from junk called, Liberty Aid Academy led by Jack McCaig, where they taught me in developing entity trusts and claiming to make citizens “immune” to government accusations and obtain benefits illegally. I also ran into a scam company called The Credit Game via YouTube run by Michael Rando which was a DIY program for those that wanted to clear things like bankruptcies and other credit report issues by lying to the FTC and CFPB claiming they were fraudulent, when they weren’t. I did The Credit Game program desperately because Jeff Funding didn’t completely clean my file as they promised.
On April 23, 2021, I felt infuriated with Jeff Funding about being constantly led on. I also became enraged at Rise that I wasted 5 years of my life in hard work, time, money, and trust, only to finally realize they took advantage of my mental illness vulnerabilities and brainwashed me into delusion. To make matters worse, I learned February 7, 2022 with the FBI, that I was left in the dark with Jeff Funding’s internal operations, legal issues, and that “Jill” and “Jeff” (AKA Steven Tetsuya Morizono) weren’t their real names. This was when this court case started, and I had to put my ski career on hold.
Remorse and Realizations
Instead of speaking up to law enforcement and leaving Jeff Funding early, I delusionally wanted to continue being overly nice to them because I was desperate for money. I used the principle my father taught me, “you catch more flies with a spoon full of honey than vinegar” with them. Despite Jeff Funding being rude that entire journey, I wanted to be on their “good client” list so I would have priority in getting funding faster. I never saw them as comrades or friends. Most importantly, I unknowingly hurt Home point Financial who provided me with the mortgage by giving Jeff Funding permission to do so, Black Bridge Capital (BBC) who gave me the $1,200 loan for paying my credit cards down to 30% ratios March 2020 referred by Jeff Funding, lying to WellsFargo Dealer Services and taking a loan out for my Tesla that I couldn’t pay back and had to surrender November 2023, lying to Chase Bank for the $13k to survive my Korean trip, exaggerating my income to EIDL & SBA, illegally took benefits from Utah Department of Workforce Services for unemployment and food stamp benefits, neglected my school loan for Navient, expressing remorse for Bank of Utah, Applied Bank, First Progress Bank, First Premier Bank, KeyBank, WellsFargo Bank, CareCredit, Capital One Bank, Credit One Bank, Blaze Credit Card, Aspire/Bank of Missouri, and Alliant Bank who gave me their services through credit card/bank account out of faith for returned service, but I neglected, and all of the other victims not mentioned here who were involved with Jeff Funding’s perpetrating. I also hurt my family, friends, my reputation, and my life. I allowed my Bipolar and ASD symptoms to consume me by denial, rather than taking control of them. I am also remorseful for my lack of self-awareness, blaming others, my desperation for money, gullibility, naiveness, tunnel vision, and stubbornness. Whether I like hearing this or not, I was unknowingly conspiring with Jeff Funding, committing fraud.
