Leonard V.
Agent James DeMatteo is a fraud
Hello, I'm writing this as a PSA to all NJ families looking for a financial advisor to help grow their hard earned money and set their kids up for the future. Do not by any means entrust your money to Agent James DeMatteo. This man bills himself as a certified financial planner and is a rep for the Guardian insurance company. I have extensive details for anyone who wants to contact me. The TLDR on him is that he is heavily incentivized to violate his fiduciary duties towards his clients and take away thousands of their dollars by manipulating them to sign up for "Whole Life" policies offered by Guardian. He attempts to obfuscate the cost of this policy (amounts that could range from 15-19k a year) by omitting the term yearly premium and using the more ambiguous "Cash Value Life Insurance" in the illustration of the policy. There are no formal sit downs to discuss the exact nature of the policy before signing, he sends you a flurry of documents to sign via email. Essentially, for a week or so, you are bombarded with many documents to sign, with most of these documents having to do with investments and not life insurance. His hope is that you are overwhelmed by the influx of information and just sign all the documents. Having obtained your signatures, he now has an email chain that covers his rear end and Guardian's; There is technically now proof that you understand completely what you are getting into, when in fact you have barely any idea. He works in gusto to attach you to these "Whole Life" insurance policies and makes himself rather absent in the crucial period of 10 days when you could still cancel the policy, failing to respond to emails, etc. The email chain that I mentioned is imperative because if you do end up contesting this with the Guardian company, they will refer to this email chain as proof that the agent acted appropriately and that you, the policy owner absolutely knew you were signing up for such a hefty commitment. James receives more than half of the premium you pay as commission, with Guardian getting the rest. Besides the insanely high premium these policies cost, they perform far far worse for families than term + percentages of your income devoted to investments. James never sat down and told me the difference of these coverages and strategies, he simply pressed a policy onto me that put a lot of money in his pocket while immediately straining my family's budget. He basically stole money that would have helped secure a future for my two sons and provide them with funds with whatever they needed should I pass away. I have an important and easy to understand PDF file showing you why the whole life policy is an inferior option for the policy owner vis a vis the term + investment strategy, I'll send it over to anyone who asks. Please do not make the same mistake I did; do not do any business with this man. His work details: NorthEast Financial Network 101 Crawfords Corner Road, Suite 2405 If you ever see this man at Bell Works, don't listen to a single word he has to say about financial planning. Avoid him like the plague.



