In November, my sister sent a DV request to a CA regarding an alleged C1 account; requesting application, and complete historical documentation including statements, etc. In March, she received a letter from C1, saying we've looked, can't find an application, so it had to be a phone or internet application. No statements, etc. Supposedly in the middle of June a local lawyer supposedly filed a suit for C1. Her only notice of this was a letter (dated less than 3 days after the suit was supposedly filed; but only received on July 3) from J C Harris "FINANCIAL RECOVERY SYSTEMS", not only did this not contain any of the FDCPA required statements; envelope letter head explicitly stating their logo "FINANCIAL RECOVERY SYSTEMS", and it essentially said, only call us at this toll free # if the suit is valid, we want to help you to avoid a lawsuit, judgement, levies, garnishments, etc. It appears that in according the Telewire Electronic Message (levine), and IIS (bergstrom) opinions this is indirect collection activity, making them a CA. She sent out a DV to them before snooping to find out who the alleged plaintiff was. I have a letter writen for her to go out to the lawyer, but not sure if she should wait to be notified from their lawyer or not, and not sure how forceful the letter should be, etc. Thanks in advance.
Financial Recovery Systems is a Debt Collector as defined by FDCPA, so she was right to send them a Validation Letter. Obviously they will not be able to validate any more than the first CA was. I would hold off sending anything to an attorney for now. If the CA can't Validate they probably can't prove their case in Court, and the attorney may tell them their evidence is insufficient to show even a pro forma case. With that little, in some jurisdictions, the attorney can be fined for bringing a frivolous suit. Nevertheless, if she should be served with a summons she should immediately file a "General Denial" denying all allegations brought by the Plaintiff in the summons and interpose a counterclaim for Abuse of Process and whatever damages you can concoct. Also, be sure to submit a Demand For a Bill of Particulars demanding documentary proof of every alegation in teh P;laintiff's complaint. That should elevate their costs of litigation a bit and hopefully make them go away.
btw: i noticed that i mistyped the name, j k harris (the we settle your irs problems for pennies on the dollar people.) the problem is that its not the CA who is allegedly the plaintiff, its the OC, so it looks like the OC filed the suit, then either the lawyer, or the OC leaked the info to j k harris "FINANCIAL RECOVERY SYSTEMS" to try to collect on the pending law suit.
requested a complaint form from the state ag's office consumer protection department. they can figure out who has how many violations, i know the letter from j k harris has a treasure trove of them, with the envelope labeling them as FINANCIAL RECOVERY SYSTEMS; and the lack of any FDCPA notices, and probably a whole lot more.
