Here is an exerpt from a story from a N.Y. newspaper. It talks about 12 individuals who worked for a debt collection firm shut down by the N.Y. Atty Gen. Office. They were all charged with crimes and of course theoretically could be sued by the consumers they abused as well. Historically speaking, that has been almost impossible to do because their companies would always protect them or so it was widely believed but it appears that this just might open the door to personal lawsuits against the individual employees at the federal level. Their employers could be forced to reveal the identities of the employees who actually did the dirty work and they could be sued as well. An exerpt from the story follows: Eleven individual debt collectors who worked for a Buffalo firm that was shut down by the state in June were arrested and charged with grand larceny Tuesday, while a 12th person is being sought by police. The individuals, who are accused of extortion, allegedly participated in improper and illegal debt-collection practices, posing as law enforcement officials and threatening to have consumers thrown in jail unless they immediately paid off debts they supposedly owed, state Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo announced. The arrests are part of Cuomo's ongoing investigation into unlawful tactics by debt collectors in violation of state and federal laws to protect consumers. And they are the first -- but not necessarily the last -- instance of employees being arrested and charged with crimes for overly aggressive collection tactics, Cuomo said during a news conference at Hilbert College. The site was selected because the school teaches a program in economic crimes. "These tactics are illegal. If you do this, we will find out, and we will find you," Cuomo said. "If you are participating in the conduct, it is not enough to say you were just doing the job."
I had a debt collector come after me for a credit card that I wasn't able to continue payments on. They called my parents house, and left a message, in turn my parents called and told me that this person called. I haven't lived with my parents in over 4 years. I called them blocked, and told them to stop calling my parents and I was disputing the debt, asked for their fax number and my account number with them. I faxed them a C&D and a VOD. After faxing, they called my job and attempted to collect the debt. I again told him I was disputing the debt, already faxed the C&D and VOD and never to call my job again, as I could not have these calls. He didn't like that answer, so he called 2-3 more times. Thankfully, I was able to print off the call log for my line that day and prove all the calls that came in/out. He even called a co-worker and asked what kind of person I was. I attempted to call back and speak with a supervisor, who laughed at me about threatning to sue them, and refused to work out a settlement for them to pay me in violations. I gave them a couple days, made a couple more attempts, then filed suit in District Court against the company AND the collector. I couldn't include the other :supervisor: as he never violated anything, was just rude. After them contacting me to work out a settlement for 1/2 of what I filed suit for ($2,000 for calling my job after being told to cease, and for communicating with a 3rd party). I told them that was unacceptable and told them of the court date listed on their summons. Another week went by, finally they called back and asked me to take 1500.00, I told them no, that I will get the 2000 or we will goto court. He started in on me about how much time I will have to take off work, and how far away the courthouse was from me, possibly another county and hotel/gas costs. I told him the courthouse was 15 minutes from my house so he needed to worry about how he was going to fly down here or hire an attorney here to deal with it. 2 days later I had a FedEx cashiers check for the suit amount. If the have the proof that they violated, sue them. Don't just threaten and not follow through, too many people do that already. Side note, I found out the debt was "assigned" to them from another agency who purchase the account. I put a C&D and VOD on the "parent" agency as well. So far I haven't heard anything from them. But promise that if they do, they'll end up in court.
I already did that at the time I posted the message. Don't tell me you don't click on my sig line links regularly! They get new stuff and new information in them constantly but I devoted a whole separate page for that story so it stays around for a long, long time. For some reason people from California and New York seem more prone to keep clicking on the links in my sig line. Ohio does pretty well too. So far, people from 36 different states have clicked on those links.
Sounds like a great win but now that they paid you what is to stop them from filing a lawsuit on you to collect what you owe them?
