The Washington Post yesterday published an eye-opening expose concerning the practice of buying monetary settlements for lead poisoning from the victims for a fraction of what they are worth — as little as 9 cents on the dollar. As the Post documents, the victims are often cash-strapped, have little education and sometimes mental disabilities, and don't understand what has happened before it's too late. For instance:
Rose sold everything to Access Funding — 420 monthly lead checks between 2017 and 2052. They amounted to a total of nearly $574,000 and had a present value of roughly $338,000. In return, Access Funding paid her less than $63,000. Rose, who spoke to The Washington Post on the condition that her full name not be used, had just tumbled into the little-noticed, effectively unregulated netherworld of structured settlements.
Read the whole story here.