Alliance Lending Group, a mortgage lender in Chesterfield is trying to undo some of the mess caused by scam artists. The crooks set up a slick website, called themselves Alliance Lending and started taking applications for small, short-term loans. People from Phoenix to St. Louis to New Jersey, who needed a small loan to help them get through a financial difficulty, filled out the paperwork. The company told them to wire the first couple of loan payments to an account in Canada to secure the loans and many did. When they never received their loans, they started looking for the company and discovered the real Alliance Lending in Chesterfield. The staff in Chesterfield consoled and counseled the callers, then contacted the Missouri Attorney General's office and demanded the scammers' web host shut down their website. The real company and the loan applicants are out thousands of dollars now and the scammers are probably looking for another company's name to steal and a new set of victims. If you want to avoid being a victim of a scam, remember this advice; if someone tells you a transaction requires you to wire money to a foreign country, don't do it.