Who should you trust? Never trust a debt collector!

FAKE DEBT COLLECTOR TO SERVE TIME FOR FRAUD

A Sunrise man has been sentenced to seven years in federal prison for running a scam in which the government said he fraudulently promised to collect delinquent accounts receivable for businesses across the country. The U.S. Attorney's office in California said U.S. District Judge Gary A. Feess sentenced Ronald S. Stern, Tuesday afternoon, in Los Angeles.

In addition to the prison term, Feess ordered Stern to pay nearly $1.9 million, which is full restitution to the 11 businesses and 18 individuals the government said lost money because of his scheme.

The prosecution argued Stern operated a Fort Lauderdale-based collection agency under the names Whitman Credit Consultants, Whitman Credit Services and Commercial Consultants International.

Google searches for each of the business names did not point to the proper corporations. A similar search for Stern's name plus the city of Sunrise did not lead to the right person.

Read the full story here

Just another case that proves you can never trust anybody claiming to be a debt collector. This case is not a lone case by any stretch of the imagination. This kind of thing is rampant and is the reason that some states demand that debt collectors be licensed and post bonds as well as regularly reveal how much money they have in their escrow accounts that has not been paid to the creditors who trusted them to collect their accounts.

If the states know that they can't be trusted to do business in an ethical and proper manner then how can the debtor know that if they pay the debt collector the collector will actually pay the creditor? They can't and I receive emails all the time from consumers who have paid debt collectors long ago yet the creditor is now coming after them yet once again for debts that were never paid to the creditor by the debt collector.

Debt collectors are scumbags and can never be trusted for anything. The bad ones ruin it for the good ones and in the event that you do pay them you should immediately protect yourself by first calling up the creditor and informing them that you have paid and then follow that up with a letter demanding receipt or acknowledgement of the creditor.

They may be unwilling to give you a receipt because you didn't pay them but you should at least attempt to keep on demanding an acknowledgement from the creditor that they received money from the debt collector. Keep on telling them that you know that debt collectors often do not report properly to creditors and often do not pay creditors and you don't want them coming after you down the road for a debt you have already paid.

If enough people would protect themselves that way it would help put the scumbags out of business because the creditors would no longer trust them.

Who shoud you trust? Never trust a debt collector. That is who you should never trust.

Oxymoron: Debt Collectors and common sense

A common problem when dealing with debt collectors is their lack of common sense. They simply don't seem to have any. When they call you they are working from a script that somebody minutely smarter than they wrote up. It is designed to give them control of the conversation with the debtor but if the recipient of the call realize that he is being brainwashed with these invented scripts he will use a script of his own and throw the dumb debt collector into a tizzy because once his canned script has been penetrated he don't know what to do next. So he blows the call and wastes his time.

Just to illustrate the level of intelligence of debt collectors, we can use the following post from one of their message boards where they go to pass the time of day.

BILLS
Experienced Member



Joined: November 12 2004
Location: United States
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 17

Posted: January 21 2005 at 11:42am | IP Logged

HAHAHAHA.....there's 2 things you don't see everyday....Stiffler and common sense.....

Now there is a debt collector who is finally telling the truth of the matter. No brains, no common sense. Just a bunch of canned scripts. All they seem capable of doing is engaging in conversations about their favorite sport, movie or TV show or insulting each other or someone else. Never anything of any substance whatever.

So it is easy to see why such scripts as this one blows their feeble little minds.