By day's end, the analyst had persuaded her that she was bleeding cash and needed consulting help, she said. Martinez claims she signed a consulting agreement only after the man assured her that the $245 hourly fee would likely be waived or discounted because of her status as a minority woman-owned business. When Martinez realized that the contract made no mention of the discount, she said she spent the next several days trying to cancel the contract.

Martinez said her calls went unanswered and the following Monday two IPA consultants arrived. Although she was no longer interested in IPA's services, they told her she was on the hook for $4,509 -- their travel and lodging expenses and a day's wages for both. Martinez and IPA eventually settled for less.

IPA says it cannot be held responsible for customers who sign contracts without reading them. It also allows those with buyers' remorse to cancel at the end of any business day -- but not before the end of the first day.

Shuffling through the IPA brochures she keeps stashed under her desk, Martinez said the only reason she hadn't tossed them out was to ``remind myself not to fall into a trap like that again. How dumb could I have been?''

Her claims mirror lawsuit allegations that IPA trains staff members to ''psychologically manipulate [potential clients] into a sense of financial crisis'' and ``produce materially false and misleading reports.''

Phillip Hendrix of Denver, Colo., said he learned those strategies firsthand. Hendrix, who attended a weeklong training course for IPA's business analysis service sales force in April, said trainers encouraged recruits to ''highlight a business owner's pain'' and 'twist some numbers around and over-emphasize things to lead them to believe, `Gosh, you are going out of business next month if you're not careful.' ''

Hendrix, who has a master's degree in business administration and has worked as a consultant in the past, said he quit within two months. Two others in Hendrix's class backed up his claims.

IPA contested the charges. ''No company could stay in business very long if it trained people in an aberrational way as you say these people have suggested,'' IPA wrote. ``Their statements are absolutely untrue and incorrect.''

The lawsuit isn't limited to sales strategies. The plaintiffs also allege that IPA sometimes used unqualified personnel with fake or deceiving credentials suggesting that they were licensed lawyers or certified public accountants.

Kevin Kaufman, president of Gen-Exbuilders in Miami, said he paid IPA about $20,000 for a week's worth of work in 2004. When the consultants left, Kaufman said, he had to pay his accountant overtime to correct their mistakes in his payroll taxes.

''They saw that we had a slight weakness in knowledge when it came to certain items. . . . But they didn't know what they were doing either,'' said Kaufman, who is not part of the suit. ``We have learned more fixing their mistakes than they ever taught us.''

The consultants also left Gen-Exbuilders with an employee handbook and six Excel spreadsheets to calculate such things as cash flow and income statements. Kaufman said his stepmother found almost identical spreadsheets for free on the Internet.

''They grossly overcharged for a service that's grossly underdeveloped,'' Kaufman said.

IPA said that the characterizations are unfair and that Kaufman and Muñiz -- as well as other business owners who complained to The Miami Herald -- had previously written letters praising IPA's work.

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