Is Your Newest Facebook Friend a Sleazeball Debt Collector?

By Liliana Segura, AlterNet. Posted June 10, 2009.

"The suit identifies JP Morgan Chase Bank as the lender on the vehicle. 'Failure to contact me will result in further action against your father,' the investigator, Chris Flanagan, warned Gina Ricobene."

Because friends and family members saw the MySpace message, James Ricobene says he was "humiliated, embarrassed and suffered substantial emotional distress."

Harassing You for Debt That Belongs to Someone Else

The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act is supposed to prohibit debt collectors from contacting third parties, like family members, when going after people. But this remains one of the oldest tactics in the book. What’s more, consumer rights advocates tell horror stories about the relentless harassment of people who find themselves in debt collectors' crosshairs because of identity theft -- or simply because they share a name with a person with debt.

Human logic would suggest it would be simple to clear up such an obvious mistake. Wrong. Getting off a debt collector's call list is apparently harder than getting off a no-fly list.

One New York lawyer (who, full disclosure, happens to be my sister) represents poor people in debt-collection lawsuits; she tells the story of a client who is blind and partially paralyzed and yet continues to be harassed by a debt collector insisting that he pay money he owes on a gym membership.

"He was like, 'I'm stuck in a wheelchair, and I can't see! Why would I go to the gym?' " says Anamaria Segura, a staff attorney at MFY Legal Services. Neither this -- nor the fact that the man shares a name with his son, whose debt he was possibly being harassed for -- seems to be convincing the debt collector to back off.

"The thing that was hard about helping this client is that he'd not only apparently had his identity stolen; his credit report mistakenly reported debt that belonged to his son, under his son's Social Security number (they have the same name, just Jr. and SR.)"

When the collectors would call, he would explain that there was a mistake -- and they would immediately ask for his Social Security number, to confirm the account. When he refused to provide them with it due to privacy concerns -- after all, this was probably the reason his identity had been stolen in the first place -- the caller would take his reluctance as proof of a challenge or refusal to pay.

"His son was incarcerated, and they barely kept in touch, so he couldn't ask his son about the accounts, so he had to constantly field these phone calls from aggressive debt collectors who demanded payment."

Aside from the gym membership, a debt collector also accused him of owing money on a car rental. This, too, was a mistake, since the client cannot drive.

Yet debt collectors resorted to callous tactics -- including bigotry -- to try to get the money: "One collector said to him once, 'you Hispanics, you're all the same, you don't want to take responsibility.' "

While such harassment is appalling and annoying, it shouldn't actually end up costing you anything, right?

Think again.

A different New York man described being called multiple times by a Buffalo, N.Y.-based collection agency called Capital Management Services regarding debt on a Chase Bank credit card. The man, Paul Alappat, "told the collector he had never possessed a Chase Bank card and asked them to stop calling him."

When he applied for a home-equity loan two years later, however, the collection showed up on his credit report. His lender told him that if the $394.74 debt were not resolved, the loan couldn't be made.

"Since I was in a hurry to get the loan approved," Alappat said, "I paid the full amount, including the interest."

The Rise of 'Debt-Settlement' Firms

OK, so debt collectors can be total bullies. But what about those seemingly kindler, gentler companies that promise to settle your debt for a fee? According to the International Association of Professional Debt Arbitrators, theirs is a "profession that truly makes a difference."

See more stories tagged with: myspace, facebook, debt collectors

Liliana Segura is an AlterNet staff writer.

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