A deceptive-practices lawsuit against Pressler & Pressler, New Jersey’s largest collections firm, is moving forward as a class action. U.S. District Judge Katharine Hayden in Newark certified a class of individuals who allege misrepresentations in a form letter they received from the debt-collecting firm. The form letter in question offered to settle and said once…
JPMorgan Chase has agreed to pay out nearly a billion dollars to close investigations related to the 2012 “London Whale” trading fiasco, and now is told it must pay out $309 million in refunds and $80 million in penalties over illegal credit card charges for ID and fraud-protection services customers never ordered. In order to…
A Glendale, California-based debt collector will pay $1 million dollars to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that the defendants violated federal law. This is the first FTC action against a debt collector who used text messaging to attempt to collect debts in an unlawful manner. The FTC, the nation’s consumer protection agency, alleged that Archie…
New report blames “Sewer Service,” “Robosigning,” and lack of legal representation Last month the New Economy Project (NEP), a New York-based non-profit advocacy group, released its report detailing abuses in New York courts that are to blame for overburdening the system and siphoning billions of dollars from the state’s low-income neighborhoods and communities. Chief among…
Study Shows Many Choosing to Pay Off Debts While Sacrificing Needed Health Care to Save Money A recent study conducted by sociologists at the University of Michigan found that people who are ill and do not seek treatment because of the cost are more likely to have credit card debt than any other form of…
A resident of West Philadelphia is alleging that a debt collector has engaged in unlawful practices. Kimmel & Silverman, P.C. has filed a complaint against national debt collection company Virtuoso Sourcing, Inc., on behalf of Crystal Monroe. The lawsuit was filed on May 21 in United States District Court, Eastern District of Pennsylvania. The complaint…
Federal regulators are widening an investigation into whether the nation’s biggest banks used flawed documents and incomplete records to collect on delinquent credit card debts, according to four people familiar with the probe. The scope of the inquiry is unclear, but those familiar with it say the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is…
The Massachusetts Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation and the Division of Banks announced a series of cease orders targeting unlicensed lenders and a licensed debt collector that were not adhering to the state’s loan consumer protections. These loans are illegal under the Massachusetts small-loan statute because they include excessively high interest rates and…
Judgments against unsuspecting consumers for defaulted loans are being churned out by debt collectors like Midland Funding, using robo-signed affidavits of debt as substitutes for properly investigated, properly documented debt. Robo-signing is the mass-production of “sworn” affidavits used to prove outstanding debt in lawsuits against consumers. Most common among large debt collectors and debt buyers,…
Before announcing its acquisition today of Asset Acceptance, Encore Capital Group (aka “Midland Funding”, “Midland Credit Management” and “MCM”) boasted that it has one out of every nine collection “accounts”. In the $200 million purchase of Asset Acceptance, Encore is adding millions more in receivables to its portfolio, claimed from financially distressed consumers. Encore Capital,…
