I wanted to provide an update on the payday loan scam that appears to be getting worse, unfortunately. There have been numerous media reports and warnings about this issue from state Attorney Generals. However, it seems that the publicity has done nothing to stop these scammers from trying to rip off innocent payday loan customers. In fact, they have even gotten more sophisticated and aggressive from what I’m seeing.

Here are some of the recent developments with this scam:

• They have begun to use a variety of vague lender names, designed to mislead customers. They usually use some combination of “Cash” “Net” “USA” and/or “Advance.” Some outlets are reporting that they must have stolen data from CashNet USA since they use these names. I believe this to be completely false and giant leap being made due to the fact that they use Cash and Net in their scam. It would make sense to do this because CashNet USA is the largest online payday loan company in the U.S.

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The Payday Loan Collection Scam continues and they are now sending e-mails amazingly. These e-mails come from legal@lawofficeusa.us.

Below is an actual e-mail that they sent a consumer.

Please note that the misspellings and formatting issues are directly from the e-mail.

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American Credit Services, a payday loan collection scam, has come to my attention and I’d like to alert readers to the outline of how these fraudsters work.

Basically, the “company” is calling people and telling them they owe money on one or more payday loans. Some of the common characteristics of these fake collection calls are:

• Invariably the so-called collectors have moderate to heavy Indian accents. Presumably they are operating out of one of the thousands of offshore call centers in India.
• They start the call in most cases by telling the victim that they need to call their lawyer and appear in court the next day.
• These “collection agents” usually claim to be from some government agency, even claiming to be prosecutors in many cases. For some reason, they usually claim to be associated with the state of California.
• These fraudsters have a good bit of personal information on the people they are calling. They usually have some combination of Social Security Number, bank account and date of birth for the victim.
• They usually ask for a relatively large sum of money, about $1500 in most cases I’ve heard of.
• In some cases, through coincidence or otherwise, they actually claim to be representing a payday loan company that the victim actually owes money to.

The disturbing thing about this collection scam is Read the rest of this entry »

The world’s largest collection agency, NCO Group, reported results for the full year and fourth quarter 2008 Wednesday. The results?

Horsham, Pennsylvania’s NCO Group, Inc. reported a net loss for the full year 2008 of $337.1 million. In the fourth quarter of 2008 alone, the company reported a net loss of $286.6 million.

Mike Barrist, NCO Group Chairman and CEO, said that the company had achieved its objectives for the 2008 calendar year. The company’s EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes and depreciation) for 2008 was $95.5 million. “As we continue to navigate through 2009, we believe NCO is well positioned among its peers within each of its core markets to capitalize on all available opportunities,” said NCO CEO Mike Barrist.

NCO Group acquired OSI in early 2008 and that acquisition contributed to the record revenue of $1.51 billion in 2008. $1.22 billion of that revenue was generated by NCO’s Collection Agency business. The company noted in an SEC filing that 60 percent of the ARM unit’s revenues were generated “from the recovery of delinquent accounts receivable on a contingency fee basis.” NCO also stated in an SEC filing that they spent $126.5 million purchasing debt portfolios in 2008.

In addition to being the world’s largest debt collector, NCO is infamous for a 2004 FTC Lawsuit which it paid the largest civil fine ever for an FCRA case, $1.5 million.

Washington State Governor Gregoire signed a new law today that restricts check cashers’ and payday lenders’ ability to collect on consumer debts. Payday Loans have gotten a lot of attention in the Washington Legislature this month, but this bill is very interesting in its definition of “harassment.”

This bill has some relatively benign elements, such as making it illegal for payday loan companies to impersonate a police officer and make false threats to consumers. I’m pretty sure these are already illegal activities in all 50 states, right?

Yet, this bill also bans the so-called “field calls” frequently used by payday loan collectors. Employees of payday loan companies often take off into “the field,” showing up at consumers homes or places of work, usually delivering a letter that notifies them of their payday loan debt. This is the definition of harassment, since the same payday companies have already called 2-3 times per day to remind the customer that they have fallen behind on their payday loan. It is good to see this horrible collection tactic put out of commission in Washington, at least for payday loan collectors.

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While the IRS has stopped working with private collectors, many local District Attorney’s offices have not. A company called American Corrective Counseling Services provides for-profit services to local District Attorney’s offices, including Los Angeles County. The company sends out letters on District Attorney’s letterhead threatening prosecution and jail time for writing bad checks, even though there is little chance that the District Attorney’s will ever follow through with any action. They also charge hundreds of dollars in fees and share a portion of them with the DA’s offices they contract with.

Now if a private debt collector makes threats that they do not intend to or have the means to follow through on, they are in violation of the Fair Debt Collections Practices Act or FDCPA and can pay hefty fines. However, apparently those rules don’t apply to District Attorney’s and ACCS, since they joined together to convince House Rep. Barney Frank to support exempting them from FDCPA in 2006.

This certainly seems like a double standard and could really be an issue with loans secured by a check, namely payday loans. DA’s and ACCS could be inadvertently helping payday loan collectors falsely threaten prosecution against consumers who simply defaulted on a high interest, unsecured loan.