Sued by BizFund? What Your Business Can Do

If your business took a merchant cash advance from BizFund and the payments stopped, you may now have a summons from New York State Supreme Court. BizFund LLC describes itself in court papers as a Delaware company with its main office in Brooklyn. It has also sued under the name Surfside Capital. Court records show it suing businesses in New York since at least 2019, from a Tennessee steel company to California medical practices.

The deals follow a pattern. BizFund pays a lump sum and buys a larger amount of your future sales, then collects through daily or weekly debits from your bank account. Under one 2024 agreement it paid $225,000 for $315,000 of future receivables. Under a 2025 agreement it paid $150,000 for $217,500, collected at $11,447 a week. When the debits stop, BizFund sues the business, sometimes several related companies, and the owner who signed the guaranty.

The deadline comes first. You generally have 20 days to respond if the papers were handed to you personally in New York, and 30 days if they were served another way, counted from service. Don’t assume papers that came by certified mail don’t count. BizFund’s agreements have allowed service by certified mail, and in a 2021 Brooklyn case the court upheld that service because the business had agreed to it. If nobody answers in time, BizFund can ask for a default judgment for the full balance it claims.

Most of the BizFund cases we found were filed in Brooklyn, in Kings County Supreme Court. Recent ones have also been filed in Rochester, in Monroe County Supreme Court. Its agreements say New York law applies and that disputes go to New York courts, so the case can be heard here even if your business has never operated in New York.

Owners outside New York often want to fight the case at home. In BizFund cases, judges have mostly said no:

• In 2021 a Brooklyn judge refused to dismiss a suit against a Tennessee steel company and its owner, holding both to the agreement’s New York forum clause. The owner was bound too, because his guaranty adopted the agreement’s terms.
• In 2025 a Rochester judge refused to move a BizFund case to Brooklyn, because the agreement let BizFund sue in any New York state or federal court.
• One argument has kept the question open. A New York law limits when one out-of-state company can sue another out-of-state company in New York’s courts, with an exception for contracts made or to be performed here. In 2023 and 2024, Brooklyn judges declined to throw BizFund cases out on that ground but left it open until discovery showed where the deal was completed.

None of these arguments helps if the deadline passes. They have to be raised in a timely answer or motion.

The decisions below come from published New York trial court rulings in BizFund cases from 2021 to 2026. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.

• The default fee. BizFund’s agreements have added a default fee of 20% of the balance or $5,000, whichever is greater, if the business blocks or changes its bank account or breaches the agreement. In September 2025 and again in June 2026, a Monroe County judge refused to enforce it, calling it a penalty that bore no relation to BizFund’s actual loss. The fees in those two cases were $17,182.40 and $41,070.60. Both rulings came from the same judge, and others may see it differently, but the fee is worth challenging.
• Usury. The argument that the advance was really a loan at an illegal rate hasn’t won in the BizFund decisions we found. In the June 2026 case, the judge held the agreement was not a loan: it let the business ask to have payments adjusted to its actual sales, had no fixed end date, and didn’t treat bankruptcy as a default. The owner said the same amount came out every week no matter what sales did, but he never said he had asked for an adjustment, and that mattered.
• Proof of the breach. BizFund still has to prove its case. In 2024 a Brooklyn judge kept in place an order denying BizFund summary judgment, because its affidavit was vague about how the business breached and didn’t identify which of the agreement’s listed defaults had happened.
• A second advance can be the breach. In the June 2026 case, the business sold $149,900 of its future receivables to another funder eight days after signing with BizFund, which the agreement didn’t allow without BizFund’s consent. The judge granted BizFund summary judgment against the business on that breach and refused to dismiss the claim against the owner, whose guaranty covered that promise.
• Related companies. In the same case, BizFund was denied summary judgment against four related companies, because the owner swore he had no authority to sign for them and BizFund offered nothing to the contrary.

1. Find your deadline. Write down when and how the papers reached you. If they came by certified mail, count from that date, not from when you opened them.
2. Gather the paperwork. Your signed agreement, every addendum, the guaranty, and bank statements showing every BizFund debit.
3. Check the numbers. Compare what you paid with what the complaint says you paid, and look for the default fee and any monthly account fee (one agreement charged $299 a month) in the balance.
4. Find any request to lower your payments. Emails or texts asking BizFund to adjust the debits when sales dropped can matter a great deal. If you never asked, write down when sales fell and what happened to the debits.
5. List every company named. Note which ones you actually signed for.
6. Don’t take another advance to pay this one before someone reads your BizFund agreement. Selling the same receivables to a second funder can be a breach on its own.
7. Let a lawyer make the first contact. A settlement can let BizFund enter a judgment for the full balance if a payment is missed.

For how New York courts decide whether these advances are really loans, and what to do if a judgment was already entered, see our guide to merchant cash advance lawsuits in New York.

Michael Samuel is a New York litigator, in practice since 1993, who defends businesses in contract and commercial lawsuits in the New York state and federal courts, including suits by merchant cash advance funders.

In a BizFund case, we start with the agreement and your bank statements: whether the case can be heard in New York at all, whether the balance and fees are right, whether service was proper and whether the deal can be challenged as a loan. Then we tell you what a defense looks like and what a realistic resolution looks like, before you decide anything.

The firm handles the defense for a fixed fee, quoted up front, and the first strategy session is free. Call (212) 563-9884 before your answer deadline. More on how we defend these cases is on our contract and commercial litigation defense page.