by Deepak Gupta In today's Los Angeles Times, consumer columnist David Lazarus takes a look at the practice of for-profit debt collectors renting out the seal and letterhead of local California prosecutors — the target of a new class-action lawsuit that our firm filed yesterday in federal court in San Francisco. The practice was condemned in […]
Category Archives: Debt Collection
by Deepak Gupta Since its inception, this blog has covered the pernicious practice of prosecutors who rent out their name and authority to private for-profit debt collectors. As readers may recall, these debt collectors use official-looking letterhead to threaten consumers who have accidentally bounced checks for household purchases — consumers are told they'll face criminal […]
by Deepak Gupta When Roz Terrill wrote a $41 check at the local Goodwill store to buy clothes for her two special-needs children, she had no idea it would lead to threats of criminal prosecution against her. Because of a banking mix-up, Roz’s check did not clear. Months later, she received a letter that looked […]
by Jeff Sovern Here. The New Media Advocacy Project (N-Map) and Fordham Law School’s Feerick Center for Social Justice in conjunction with MFY Legal Services, Inc., and Pro Bono Net, along with other organizations, have created a series of short, animated videos to help consumers being sued in debt collection cases. I watched a couple […]
by Jeff Sovern Here. Eleven proposed bills this time. It creates an interesting contrast with the just issued CFPB's Supervisory Highlights report, which reports, for example, that the CFPB found that one collection firm violated debt collection laws approximately 17,000 times and a creditor has been selling debts on which consumers were no longer liable. […]
Stephen J. Ware of Kansas has written A 20th Century Debate About Imprisonment for Debt. Here's the abstract: In the early twentieth century, Parliament debated whether to abolish imprisonment for debt. Parliament’s Select Committee on Debtors (Imprisonment) of 1909 heard testimony from witnesses and issued a report recommending the continuation of imprisonment for debt. This […]
Peter A. Holland of Maryland has written Junk Justice: A Statistical Analysis of 4,400 Lawsuits Filed by Debt Buyers, 26 Loyola Consumer Law Reporter 179 (2014). Here's the abstract: Debt buyers have flooded courts nationwide with collection lawsuits against consumers. This article reports the findings from the broadest in-depth study of debt buyer litigation outcomes […]
Here, in the Boston Fed's quarterly newsletter. Excerpt: The problems inherent to the business model are most starkly exposed in the context of lawsuits filed by debt buyers. On the one hand, the debt buyer acknowledges in the forward-flow agreement that the data it received from the bank is limited and potentially inaccurate, with frequent […]