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Maxed Out shows how the modern financial industry really works, explains the true definition of "preferred customer" and tells us why the poor are getting poorer and the rich getting richer. By turns hilarious and profoundly disturbing, Maxed Out paints a picture of a national nightmare which is all too real for most of us!!

News

Debt Collectors Pushing to Get Their Day In Court
Banks vs. Consumers
The business of resolving credit-card disputes is booming. But critics say dominant firm favors creditors that are trying to collect from unsophisticated debtors.
IRS Faulted for Lax Identity Theft Protection Efforts
AFNI, Inc. - Debt Collector Goes After Expired Verizon Bills
Avoid Debt-Collection Abuse
Debt Collection Abuse - the FDCPA Stops the Playground Bully
Abuse by Debt Collectors Growing in Pittsburgh
Zombie Debt - Can Haunt you forever
Curbing Sleazy Debt Collectors
Americans' Bad Credit is on the Rise
Judge Orders NAFS (National Action Financial Services) to pay $85,000
Collection Agency's Threats Deemed Illegal
Violations of the FDCPA for debt collector's abusive tactics cause a big settlement.
Jacksonville Collection Agency Settles AG Suit
JEFF SUHER TO HOLD DEBT ABUSE SEMINAR
US House Dems May Pare Back Student Loan Rate Cut
Complaints mount about debt collectors
Hold on to Your Seat: America and The Debt Based Economy
Florida Sues Collection Agency
US Central Bank Chief Faces Senate Questions on Housing Foreclosures
Poll: Americans dislike corporate misdeeds over frivolous lawsuits
Big Money in Bad Debt: How Collection Agencies Make Billions
Johns Hopkins Aid Official Resigns
Lawrence Walsh: Old electric bill still carries charge
Okla. Probing Credit Card Complaints
Recording raises questions about tax collection calls
Games Credit Card Companies Play
Maxed Out!

Debt Collectors Pushing to Get Their Day In Court

More than 119,000 civil lawsuits against alleged debtors are clogging courtrooms, and at least half will result in judgments that debt collectors will use to seize bank accounts compounding the woes of troubled borrowers.

But because debt collectors operate on volume—pushing through lawsuits based on little more than lists of names, addresses and alleged amounts due—there are also plenty of instances of mistaken identities, cases where debts are alleged when the bills have been paid and even situations where people have fallen behind and tried to work out repayments only to be hauled in to court.

Banks vs. Consumers

What if a judge solicited cases from big corporations by offering them a business-friendly venue in which to pursue consumers who are behind on their bills? What if the judge tried to make this pitch more appealing by teaming up with the corporations' outside lawyers? And what if the same corporations helped pay the judge's salary?

IRS Faulted for Lax Identity Theft Protection Efforts

With just a few days left to go in the tax season and filers frantically filling out forms and returns, the likelihood that their personal information could be stolen or misused increases dramatically -- and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has admitted that its efforts to protect personal data from identity theft and fraud could use some improvement.

AFNI, Inc. - Debt Collector Goes After Expired Verizon Bills

Consumers around the country are complaining that Afni, Inc., a debt collection agency, has been calling, harassing and mailing - demanding that consumers pay old Verizon telephone debts. Consumer advocates say that many of the debts are so old that, under the statute of limitations, consumers are NOT required to pay.

Consumers are told that refusing to pay will hurt their credit score, NOT TRUE.

Avoid Debt-Collection Abuse

Have you ever been hounded by a caller claiming you owe money on a credit card debt, but it is not true? Have you received a summons to appear in Court?

Overton received a summons to appear in Jackson County court. Living on $1,000 a month, Overton said she had no money for an attorney.

"Very seldom anything for food. I have nothing in there now. I have nothing in there," Overton told Antonia.

Debt Collection Abuse - the FDCPA Stops the Playground Bully

United States of America - January 18, 2008 -- Ring, Ring, Ring,! Sound familiar? While going through some of the toughest times in our lives financially, we are further stuck with uneducated thugs calling to take our last drop of blood. Or a caller from India who you can't understand, yet his name is Todd. In most cases, the debt they are attempting to collect on is not correct, not owed, or they "think they have the correct person on the phone".

In any event, it should be made clear "YOU HAVE RIGHTS" they don't want you to know.

Abuse by Debt Collectors Growing in Pittsburgh

Bill collectors aren't exactly known for their genteel ways.

Take the case in which a collection agency telephoned a woman's 5-year-old daughter, ordering her to tell her deadbeat mommy that she'd better pay her credit card bills.

Another customer had 12 messages at the office in one weekend. Another had 36 calls in one week,"

Such tactics are considered harassment and violate state and federal regulations intended to protect consumers from overzealous debt collectors, he said.

Zombie Debt - Can Haunt you forever

After Kim Mullen filed for bankruptcy in 1993, she cut up her credit cards in her lawyer's office. Since then, the Levittown resident has managed to obtain a good credit rating. But in December 2007, a debt collector contacted her saying she had an unpaid credit card balance of $5,655, from 1992! With interest, the letter claimed, the debt had grown to $19,400.

To read more about this interesting news article about Zombie debt, please see below....

Curbing Sleazy Debt Collectors

The math in recessions is simple: More folks are unemployed; more folks fall behind; fewer folks are able to pay their debts once they get behind.

It's tough conditions like these that tempt collectors to get rough with consumers. Given that the debt collection industry has trouble restraining itself during good times, you can imagine how bad this could get. Consider:

To get more information about this article please see...

Americans' Bad Credit is on the Rise

Americans are falling behind on their credit card payments at an alarming rate, sending delinquencies and defaults surging by double-digit percentages in the last year and prompting warnings of worse to come.

An Associated Press analysis of financial data from the country's largest card issuers also found that the greatest rise was among accounts more than 90 days in arrears.

Experts say these signs of the deterioration of finances of many households are partly a byproduct of the subprime mortgage crisis and could spell more trouble ahead for an already sputtering economy.

Many economists expect delinquencies and defaults to rise further after the holiday shopping season.

For more information, follow the link below:

Judge Orders NAFS (National Action Financial Services) to pay $85,000

National Action Financial Services, a debt collector in Amherst, has agreed to pay $85,000 to settle charges of using outlaw pressure tactics, state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced Tuesday.

The company, called NAFS, was the subject of 90 complaints within the last three years, about one third of them from within the state.

For more information, follow the link below:

Collection Agency's Threats Deemed Illegal

November 11, 2007

The voice-mail message was angry and unrelenting. "The situation will not die, I guarantee you!" the woman said in a steely voice, adding that she would call "every day." It was not a stalker or a jilted lover. It was a debt collection company.

And it was illegal harassment, according to the Federal Trade Commission, because the caller went on to threaten that the person's wages would be seized.

Last week, the commission announced that LTD Financial Services, a major collection agency, agreed to pay $1.375 million to settle charges that it misled and threatened consumers several times in violation of federal laws.

For more information, follow the link below.

Jacksonville Collection Agency Settles AG Suit

The Florida Attorney General’s office has reached a settlement resolving a lawsuit brought against a Jacksonville collection agency and Robert Allen Hecht and Rougina Hecht, acting individually and on behalf of their collection company, Allen Lewis & Associates, engaged in various inappropriate tactics to collect payments from debtors. The settlement calls for $21,000 in victim restitution and requires the company to institute a compliance program to ensure that violations of fair debt collection standards do not continue to occur.

“Collection agencies should never employ cruel or forceful tactics to take advantage of those are trying to resolve a debt,” said Attorney General Bill McCollum. “Our state has standards in place that protect consumers from predatory or intimidating collection methods and we will continue to enforce those standards for the public good.”

For More Information, follow the link below:

JEFF SUHER TO HOLD DEBT ABUSE SEMINAR

Pittsburgh Debt Collections Abuse Attorney Jeff Suher will be presenting an informative seminar on the film Maxed Out.

For more information, follow the link below.

US House Dems May Pare Back Student Loan Rate Cut

WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- U.S. House Democrats may have to pare back plans to reduce the interest rates charged students for student loans.

They have not stated any intention to curtail subsidy reductions to lenders intended to offset the cost to the government of such a lending rate cut and an increase in Pell Grants.

The rate cut was part of the "Six for '06" campaign platform championed by now-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. But the proposal's cost, coupled with opposition to the idea from the White House and Senate Democrats, means Pelosi may have to settle for less.

For more information, follow the link below.

Complaints mount about debt collectors

The calls started at 8 a.m. and were repeated a dozen times a day. Sometimes the person on the other end called and hung up. Other times he blasted loud music onto her answering machine.

When Krista Weeks picked up the phone, she said, the debt collector called her "a liar" and "a deadbeat" and told her to pay up.

For more information, follow the link below.

Hold on to Your Seat: America and The Debt Based Economy

Today the Dow Jones dropped 300+ points, down over 400 at its low for the day. Tomorrow it will probably be just as volatile as it has been, but the shape of things to come is not good. We can only ride this irrational over-exuberance about the market for so long before we have to pay the piper. It’s quite simple; while the market was setting a new record July 20th by breaking 14,000, the actual financial underpinnings of the country were growing quite bleak.

For more information, follow the link below.

Florida Sues Collection Agency

The Florida Attorney General's office filed a lawsuit Monday against a Duval County collection agency, alleging the company employed abusive tactics to collect debts from its targets.

For more information, follow the link below.

US Central Bank Chief Faces Senate Questions on Housing Foreclosures

Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke spoke to a Senate committee Thursday about conditions in the U.S. housing market. VOA's Barry Wood reports the chairman of America's central bank faced tough questioning from the senators about the difficulties poorer Americans are having paying their home loans.

For more information, follow the link below.

Poll: Americans dislike corporate misdeeds over frivolous lawsuits

OKLAHOMA CITY – Americans are much more concerned about corporate misdeeds than tort reform, according to a national poll conducted for the American Association for Justice, formerly the Association of Trial Lawyers of America.

For more information, follow the link below.

Big Money in Bad Debt: How Collection Agencies Make Billions

Would you like to make millions of dollars? Maybe even hundreds of millions of dollars? How about a cool billion?

Would you like to start a business with extremely low overhead that will give you returns of over 100% on your initial investment?

For more information, follow the link below.

Johns Hopkins Aid Official Resigns

The financial aid directors at Johns Hopkins and Columbia universities have been forced out of their posts amid revelations that they received payments or gifts from loan companies they recommended to students, the schools said yesterday.

Their departures mark the latest fallout from the New York attorney general's investigation into conflicts of interest in the $85 billion-a-year student loan industry.

For more information, follow the link below.

Lawrence Walsh: Old electric bill still carries charge

Maxie Justice of Fayette County took one look at the letter from the First National Collection Bureau and figured it was a scam.

In the upper right hand corner, the company listed its address in Sparks, Nev., its toll-free phone number, its office hours and a 10-digit account number. It then said he owed $189.24 to NCO Financial Systems, an amount it said initially was owed to Allegheny Power.

for more information, follow the link below.

Okla. Probing Credit Card Complaints

The Oklahoma attorney general's office launched an investigation and issued a consumer alert after getting dozens of complaints about a possible credit card scam.

For more information, follow the link below.

Recording raises questions about tax collection calls

House lawmakers heard first-hand on Wednesday the frustration of a taxpayer whose debt was referred to a private collection agency, but an Internal Revenue Service official said expansion of the controversial outsourcing program would proceed on schedule.
House Ways and Means Committee member Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., played an audio recording of an unidentified taxpayer whose delinquent tax debt had been turned over to The CBE Group Inc. of Waterloo, Iowa, one of two companies working under an IRS pilot program to give relatively simple tax debts to private sector firms for collection.

For more information, follow the link below.

Games Credit Card Companies Play

Chase, Capital One and all the other predatory lenders routinely engage in practices that are specifically designed to not only raise the amount of money that you will owe, but are also designed to keep you in debt for as long as possible. As a firm believer in the principle that “forewarned is forearmed,” Attorney Jeff Suher would like to tell you about some of the more reprehensible practices that credit card companies use to keep their customers almost perpetually in debt.

Follow the link below for more information.

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