The following email is being sent from Stephan Berman at expayday@live.com. The subject line reads “LAWSUIT ## DEBT.”

I am reasonably certain that this is just another fraud payday loan collection tactic by our Indian scam artist friends.

You can read more about this scam HERE or get a list of phone numbers they use HERE.

Here is the full text of the email:

DON’T IGNORE THIS MESSAGE

KINDLY FORGIVE US IF YOU RECEIVE THIS EMAIL IN JUNK/SPAM FOLDER

PLEASE DO NOT FORCE US TO DRAG YOU TO COURT HOUSE AND RESPOND US IMMEDIATELY

My name is Stephen and I am a legal adviser with “EZ PAYDAY law firm.” This is about the law suit against your name.

I want you to note down the case number first. Your case no is A0078R89

Affidavit:

EZ PAYDAY is pressing charges against your name regarding three serious criminal allegations:
count (1) Violation of federal banking regulations.
count (2) Collateral cheque fraud.
count (3) Theft by deception.

Now, this means three thing for you.If you are under any state probation or payroll I need you to inform your superior or manager what you have done in the past and what would be the consequences once the case has been downloaded and executed in your name.

This is to inform you that the creditors do have all the rights and authorities to inform your employer what you have done in the past and what will be the consequences once the case will be downloaded and executed against your name.

AS PER CHAPTER 7 AND 11 WE HAVE ALL THE RIGHTS RESERVED TO INFORM TO FBI, FTCP, YOUR EMPLOYER AND BANK ABOUT FRAUD.

The entire cost for this law suit is $5468.89 which is excluding loan amount, attorney’s fees, and the interest charges. you have the right to hire an attorney. If you don’t have one or if you can’t afford then one will be appointed for you, but please make sure you have someone to take you out of jail when the judge hears the case.

I have a last question for you. Did you default this loan intentionally or is it because of the circumstances you were unable to pay the loan?

Regards,

Manager Stephen || EZ PAYDAY.

Copyright © 2011 EZ PaydayLoans | Privacy | Terms of use

Payday loan company Quik Cash has agreed to pay $170,000 to settle a collections fraud lawsuit filed by the Attorney General of Arizona. The lawsuit was originally filed in 2009 by former Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard. Goddard lost a bid for the Governor’s office last year and is well known for his battles with payday lenders in Arizona. Payday Loans are now illegal in Arizona, largely due to Goddard’s efforts to eradicate the industry.

The lawsuit alleged that Quik Cash’s collections practices “raised an onerous burden” for the customers that they sued. Quik Cash claims it did not do anything illegal, but the Attorney General disagreed. Basically, Quik Cash sued Arizona customers over payday loan debts of $500 or less. However, they sued all of their Arizona customers and even some Nevada residents in Pima and Maricopa counties.

The catch? Many of these clients received loans at locations hundreds of miles away. This made it extremely difficult for the cash-strapped payday loan or cash advance customers to attend the hearings. Therefore, default judgments and subsequent garnishments were easy for the company to obtain.

According to a press release from the Arizona AG:

Read the rest of this entry »

I received a comment to one of my posts about the Indian Payday Loan Scam this week. Although we get a lot of comments, this one stood out for all the information it provided. So, I thought I’d post it here to make sure everyone was able to see it and get this information out there to protect yourselves.

I’m not sure how fake the information might be, given that these are scammers, but there is a name of the owner and a U.S. address through which they are processing credit card transactions.

I hope this information and helpful and we can stop this collection fraud soon!

My girlfriend and I have been victims also, they used the same tactics. The names and phone numbers they have used are:

• Officer Jack Taylor – 904-410-1879
• Officer Allan Smith- 863-216-8038
• Sam Wilson (American legal Services) 562-314-4850

American Legal Services website addresses this scam.

We paid $50.00 before i realized what was going on. The company that is debiting the money for them is Keshav Services located at 5711 Kenwood Missouri City Tx 77459, phone number 713-300-2065 owner Digvijaysinh J Chudasama. He claims that he has multiple collection agencies as clients and he cannot give me any information on them. I told him my name; he told me “I will have the company call you in 10min about this issue”. He then hung up.

I didn’t tell him which client of his called me, nor was the account in my name (girlfriends name). 20 minutes later Jack Taylor calls me asks if there was an issue. Right then I knew it was a scam.

Thanks so much to Bill for all of this information. Remember, that if you’re going to get payday loans online, you should always look for a reputable payday lender.

Just wanted to update everyone today on the Payday Loan Collection Fraud that is still going strong, unfortunately. This fraud company continues to prey on former customers who got online payday loans.

The newest development is that they are usually calling themselves “Law Office” instead of “American Credit Services” and claim to be in New York, Texas or California. We have found that the best way to identify them and fluster them is to ask them what state they are in and then subsequently ask them who the governor of that state is or what their state bar number is.

Also, they are consistently using very “American” sounding names such as Mark Green, Ethan Cross and John Smith. We have also noticed that they are starting to use female fraudulent collectors, which we had not seen/heard previously.

Here are some recent comments from our readers describing their very typical experience with this payday loan fraud:

Read the rest of this entry »

The FTC has settled a case against a payday lender that illegally garnished consumers wage, among other illegal debt collection tactics. According to the FTC’s complaint, Ecash and GeteCash, offered loans to be paid back using borrowers’ future paychecks. Online loan applicants were required to check a check box indicating their agreement with the terms of the loan, including a hard to find “wage assignment” clause that said that their wages would be garnished to cover delinquent loan payments. Then, using the name LoanPointe, the defendants attempted to collect on delinquent payday loans by sending garnishment notices directly to consumers’ payroll departments.

Federal law allows federal agencies to require employers to garnish employees’ wages without a court order when the employees owe the government money, for tax debts for example. In letters to employers that sought garnishment of their employees’ wages, GeteCash and LoanPointe tried to pass themselves off as having the same collection rights as the government. The FTC’s complaint also alleges that GeteCash and LoanPointe falsely stated that consumers knew their pay would be garnished and had an opportunity to dispute the debt. In addition, GeteCash and LoanPointe allegedly violated the law when they told employers and co-workers about consumers’ debts without their consent. (See the complaint HERE)

Read the rest of this entry »

As promised in my update on this scam last week, I am posting today a list of all known fraud phone numbers this company is using. Obviously, this list may not be exhaustive, but it is very likely you are dealing with this scam if you get a call from any of the following phone numbers.

The list is rather long (there are over 70 phone numbers), so a useful trick is to select the entire list with your mouse and press Control-F. Using the “Find” function, you can see if the number you are getting called from is on the list.

Also, keep in mind that this scam company uses MANY phone numbers to harass people, so it could easily be that you are getting calls from them if the number is not on the list.

I also ask that you use the comments section to add any phone numbers that these guys may have called you from.

Here is the list:

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

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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