A few years ago, Encore Capital, the parent of debt buyer Midland Funding, LLC started spreading money around overseas, mostly notably with the acquisition of Cabot, a debt-buyer in the United Kingdom. It’s most recent quarterly call with investors (transcript available here, signup required) paints an interesting picture of its ever-expanding global reach. The call… Read More »Encore Capital: Growing Foreign Profits
Like Encore, debt-buyer Portfolio Recovery Associates recently held its quarterly call with investors (transcript available here, signup required). Like Encore, Portfolio emphasized its growth outside the United States, in Europe and South America. Portfolio appears to be some way behind Encore in this expansion, although it does have some very far flung outposts – as… Read More »Portfolio Recovery Associates (“PRA”) Is Now a Global Debt Collector
Texas-based debt collector Commercial Recovery Systems, Inc, (CRS) and two of its managers have been sued by the Federal Trade Commission for violating debt collection law. CRS and its President and Vice President are accused of lying to consumers in an attempt to collect debts. Collectors working at CRS are alleged to have: The FTC… Read More »Debt Collector Commercial Recovery Systems (CRS”) Sued By FTC For Lying To Consumers
In Junk Justice, I wrote about statistical outcomes of lawsuits filed by large debt buyers in Maryland. Based on my study, the years 2009-2011 had a combined total of over 121,000 cases filed by the sample group of large debt buyers in the District Court of Maryland. But now, the picture is different. We see a consolidation in the industry, and a drop in the number of filings.
Read More »Junk Justice Update: Maryland Debt Buyer Filings in 2012-2013Barry Stimpson, like so many other Americans, was sued by Midland Funding, LLC. Midland claimed that it had bought a debt Stimpson owed to Capital One. Midland tried to prove that Stimpson owned it money with three affidavits. The District Court of Canyon County, Idaho, found that these affidavits were insufficient. The court’s decision merits reading for its clear and full analysis of the law of evidence as applied to debt buyer affidavits.
In June 2015, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency issued several consent orders dealing with misconduct by large banks. Two were new, against Bank of American and Wells Fargo for newly discovered misconduct. The remainder dealt with the failure by large banks, including Wells Fargo to abide by the terms of existing Consent… Read More »OCC Consent Orders With Bank of America, Wells Fargo, HSBC and Other Banks on Debt Collection, Foreclosure & Robosigning
Ashlee Kieler at Consumerist writes about the dilemma of being forced to pay a debt that is not owed:
Read More »Dispute Debt Collection? Consumers Trapped Into Paying Debts They Don’t OweImagine receiving a phone call that 25% of your wages are going to be garnished because of a credit card account opened 14 years earlier that was never paid off. Making things worse, you know you didn’t have a credit card from the bank in question at that time, so it can’t possibly be your debt. This should be an easily remedied error, but not if a court has already granted a default judgment against you, making you responsible for paying back money that you didn’t owe and didn’t find out about until it was too late.
A new National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) report argues that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) should use its power to ban the collection of statute-barred debts:
Read More »A Proposal to Ban Collecting on Time-Barred DebtIn light of the inherent unfairness, deceptiveness and abusiveness that occur when collectors pursue time-barred debt and the inability of disclosures to adequately protect consumers, the CFPB should ban all efforts to collect out-of-statute debt—whether by litigation or other means.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s page “ask CFPB” on debt collection, is a useful resource for consumers. It also provides some insights into the kind of debt collection problems consumers face. Among the top ten most-viewed questions on the CFPB’s site are:
Read More »CFPB Offers Answers Your Questions About Debt CollectionIt is well known that some debt collection attorneys mass produce lawsuits and do so without properly reviewing their own documents. As one former collection attorney, quoted in Jake Halpern’s Bad Paper, put it “[t]here’s no way that you could effectively double-check all that stuff.” Despite slipshod review of the case files, the collection attorney’s firm netted “astronomical” profits.
However, the New York courts are not happy with this sort of behavior and Midland Funding LLC v. Austinnam is an excellent expression of their displeasure. In Austinnam, the court imposed a fine as a sanction on both the plaintiff, Midland Funding LLC, and its attorneys.
Read More »Midland Funding And its Attorneys Sanctioned By Court For Frivolous Debt Collection Lawsuit
