Scammers call and demand immediate payment via wire transfer or prepaid debt card. According to a recent statement from the Maine Attorney General The red flag, however, is that they want you to make an instant payment with a pre-paid debit card or wire transfer. This is how you know you are getting scammed. Hang… Read more
This must-see fantastic video about forced arbitration, also available on YouTube, tells you pretty much everything you need to know about forced arbitration and why and how it is undermining access to justice in the United States. As of the date of writing this blog entry (12/1/2014), the video has less than 7,000 views on… Read more
When it comes to consumer or employment contracts, forced arbitration is a problem in Maryland, and throughout the country. In their April, 2014 article titled “The Strip Mining of Legal Rights” Ralph Nader and Theresa Amato call for limits on the use of fine-print terms to undermine legal rights. They call the use of fine… Read more
Fine print boilerplate is everywhere, but what can be done to stop it? Theresa Amato writes in The Nation that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau should take four steps to promote fairness in consumer contracts: Read more
In the Summer, 2014 issue of Washington Monthly, Lina Kahn wrote about how arbitration clauses are used by America’s corporations big and small to shield themselves from lawsuits. For example, suing Target over its loss of customer data to hackers: may seem like an archetypical story of our times, combining corporate misconduct, cyber-crime, and high-stakes… Read more
On November 12, 2014, the American Bar Association issued Formal Opinion 469, regarding the practice of some States’ Attorneys allowing debt collectors to use their letterhead for a fee. Here is what they concluded: Read more
Abusive debt collectors falsely threatened Maryland and other consumers with arrest and jail. Now the owner of the firm, together with six of his employees, are under arrest for making false threats of arrest to consumers and pretending to work for the federal government. A press release by the FBI and U.S. Attorney for the… Read more
Robo-signing of affidavits and other legal documents used in Maryland foreclosures has led to the predictable scenario where long after the foreclosure was approved, junk debt buyers are now seeking foreclosure deficiency judgments on what was the difference between the amount of the mortgage and the price fetched at the foreclosure sale. Most participants in… Read more
Usually, zombie debt is associated with unscrupulous debt collectors, trying to collect debts beyond the statute of limitations or which were discharged in Bankruptcy. However, according to Jessica Silver-Greenberg at the New York Times’ Dealbook, four major banks are under investigation: JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup and Synchrony Financial (formerly GE Capital). Read more
Two debt brokers (businesses which buy junk debt, then sell it to other junk debt buyers) were sued by the FTC earlier this year for posting on the internet private personal financial information about individual consumers for public view, as part of their attempts to market portfolios of junk debt to JDBs. Read more