Robo-Signing at Companies That Buy Consumer Debts

[Posteritatis]

Source: New York Times

When Michael Gazzarato took a job that required him to sign hundreds of affidavits in a single day, he had one demand for his employer: a much better pen.

"They tried to get me to do it with a Bic, and I wasn’t going — I wasn’t having it,” he said. “It was bad when I had to use the plastic Papermate-type pen. It was a nightmare.”

The complaint could have come from any of the autograph marathoners in the recent mortgage foreclosure mess. But Mr. Gazzarato was speaking at a deposition in a 2007 lawsuit against Asset Acceptance, a company that buys consumer debts and then tries to collect.

His job was to sign affidavits, swearing that he had personally reviewed and verified the records of debtors — a time-consuming task when done correctly.

Sound familiar?

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/01/business/01debt.html

---

Why yes, yes it does sound familiar.

And, as you might expect, it gets rather worse in the article.

[xchrom]

1. Recommend

[sam sarrha]

2. this is corrupt.. credit card company cant take your home, but they sell th debt to themselves

then sue you in court.. they can take everything you got..

[Ginto]

11. The only good thing is that it depends on the state. nt

[spinbaby]

3. K&R

Read the whole article--not just what's posted here. Frightening.

[gristy]

4. For the past month the NY Times has somehow morphed the mortgage fraud issue

into a foreclosure paperwork fraud issue. Here's the third paragraph of this article:

The complaint could have come from any of the autograph marathoners in the recent mortgage foreclosure mess. But Mr. Gazzarato was speaking at a deposition in a 2007 lawsuit against Asset Acceptance, a company that buys consumer debts and then tries to collect.

Here's how this paragraph could have and should have been written, but was not:

The complaint could have come from any of the autograph marathoners in the predatory-lender mortgage fraud. But Mr. Gazzarato was speaking at a deposition in a 2007 lawsuit against Asset Acceptance, a company that buys consumer debts and then tries to collect.

Genious, pure genious. Huffington post had this to say on 10/25:

If the banks were "overwhelmed" then they were overwhelmed selectively. They certainly had no trouble staffing mortgage subsidiaries and selling as many toxic loans as possible. No staff shortage then, no worries about old computers or untrained staff. Indeed, according to the just-released book, The Monster: How a Gang of Predatory Lenders and Wall Street Bankers Fleeced America--and Spawned a Global Crisis by Michael W. Hudson, a former reporter with the Wall Street Journal, in case after case lenders wanted to hire the least-experienced mortgage loan officers they could find, people who would be entirely unfamiliar with any notion of lending norms.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-g-miller/foreclosures-why-the-new_b_773246.html

[ejpoeta]

5. when we got a default judgement from a company we had never heard of

they seized my husband's bank account. he spent the next several months figuring out what happened and how to deal with it. While getting affadavits from the county clerks office he noticed this type of operation regarding companies that were supposedly serving people who were being sued. He ended up getting the judgement thrown out and had all his money returned to him. They had been doing this sort of thing..... filing affadavits that they had served papers up here in rochester and here AND were in long island on the same day. he informed people who could do something about this. It appears it was all over the credit industry, with the 3rd party debt collectors, these people who were supposed to be serving papers and the banks. it doesn't sound like an isolated incident when it seems to permeate the system.

[lonestarnot]

6. sonofabitch!

[melm00se]

7. it seems to me

that we have a series of issues here:

- debt sellers and buyers not doing their due diligence (I know that when I ran the collections department for super-regional bank when we sent out an account to a collection agency, we sent along a copy of the note and would send payment histories and checks when requested - like when it was going to lawsuit)
- process servers: they can't sit there and say they served someone when they didn't
- debtors: pay the frickin' bill and none of this becomes an issue (and before anyone starts saying that they can't afford to: get help! go to consumer credit counseling service; file for bankruptcy; do something other than sitting on your hands)


I have seen far too many people who can't/won't pay not because they have no $$$ (for those I had a lot of sympathy and would work with them until they got it together) but rather because they can't get it together and put themselves on a budget! Too many where they didn't pay their car payments but I could see that they are going out to dinner on a regular basis (debit card transactions records can't be a wonderful thing) or their income (direct deposited) coupled with their existing credit report made it quite apparent that they had the income to support paying (but didn't...the money had to go somewhere)

[david_vincent]

9. Something similar happened to a family member

The server testified in court that he had served her, but she was actually in Canada at the time he swore he served her. As it happened, she was stopped by the RCMP for speeding at the very time that she was supposedly at home being served, so she had a speeding ticket issued by Canadian federal police proving that she couldn't have been at home. The judge accepted the perjured testimony. I was there and I'm absolutely convinced that he (the judge) knew that the whole thing was crooked. Nudge nudge, wink wink.
The legal system, as you suggest, is a gargantuan fraud at every level. I have zero confidence in its integrity.

[ejpoeta]

13. they refused to produce the process server that supposedly had served us.

bob got a judge that didn't like that bs they were pulling. i was so glad he got that judge. the system seems to lean towards these guys instead of us regular folks. that's why i think regular folks have to use whatever they can to get some sort of leverage. otherwise we get trampled.

[Posteritatis]

17. That was a pretty impressive mess to say the least

A friend of mine in NY's one of the lawyers who connected enough dots to start getting that whole mess out into the open. We couldn't believe how widespread it was.

He's also started noticing some companies notarizing their own affadavits under assumed names, which I imagine will get *really* fun when it starts hitting courts...

[Yavin4]

8. This Happened to Me. I Had A Bad Debt Which I Never Had on My Credit Reports

I promptly sent them a letter demanding the documentation for the debt which they ignored. Then, they started the harrassing phone calls, and I sent a cease and desist letter. Again, I asked them for the documentation each time sending the request via registered mail. Then, they sent me a bogus complaint.

Finally, I got an attorney to draft a response, and they backed down like dogs. A year later, they finally sent me the documentation which were old credit card bills. What had happened was that someone had opened an account using my name. Probably, they dumpster dove at one of my old addresses and filled out an application. Then they used the card to buy jewelry and never paid the bill.

Moral of the story is, if a creditor claims that you owe them money make sure that they have ALL of the paper work and documentation to back up their claim. They cannot pursue any legal remedies against you without the paper work. Heck, even Wapner of People's Court would demand the receipts.

[ejpoeta]

14. you have a right to have any debt validated and sending a bill is NOT validation.

and they cannot continue attempting to collect once you request validation. we would request validation and then a few months later get a different company trying to collect the same supposed debt. friggin ridiculous. but their goal is to get as many suckers as they can to give them money by any means necessary. not all of these companies are like that, but there are enough of them out there. in buffalo they had a convicted felon running one who had his people threatening to have folks arrested. first of all, the idea of a convicted felon having access to sensitive information about people is very disturbing. but then to pretend to be police who are going to arrest folks.... but we didn't know we had rights when we got that default judgement from a company we had never even heard of. we do now.

[FedUp_Queer]

10. It happened to me.

I'm an attorney, so I knew how to fight back when I received notice of a lawsuit from the court (the court now sends notification given the prevalence of sewer service in NY). The process server filed an affidavit of service that he had served a person at my residence who not only doesn't live there, but doesn't exist. Not only that, the affidavit said he served a person 5'11", dark hair and I weigh 175. All I could think was: damn, if ONLY I weighed 175 (I weigh upwards of 100 pounds over that). Then when I did some research about this firm, I saw that they are under investigation from the AG of NY for "sewer serving"...wait for it...28,000 people in Long Island. The process server they used (about which they claimed no knowledge) just pleaded guilty. Here is the press release:

http://www.ag.ny.gov/media_center/2009/apr/apr14a_09.html

You will be happy to know that banks THAT GOT BAILOUT FUNDS COURTESY OF YOU AND ME, are hiring these subhumans to engage in this thievery.

I'm trying to put together seminars to educate people on how to fight back against these bastards. I'm not looking to make any money, this is not a ruse to get clients. I am just sick and GD tired of regular folks getting screwed.

[Yavin4]

12. Good for You

Many people are intimidated when they get "legal" looking documents in the mail like a summons or even a nasty letter head on some law firm stationery, so they capitulate and send money. They've been doing this for years, and what they want to do is to scare and the debtor in paying knowing full well that the claim is bogus.

[ejpoeta]

15. my husband has been helping people too. he is part of a group that has been meeting regularly via

skype regarding educating people about their rights. people would come on the call and ask questions and people like my husband and others who had gone through the whole thing of having to go to county courthouse and get lots of papers and filing papers with the court etc would help folks figure out how to deal with this stuff. As long as people don't know they have rights, they are going to get screwed. And it's nice to know that our tax dollars are helping to fund these jerks.

[flvegan]

16. I helped my roomie defend herself from this BS.

An old, old debt that she was pretty sure she'd paid a long time ago. This company comes along claiming that they now own the debt. When it came time to enter her plea, she demanded that the attorney for this unknown company provide proof that they owned the debt and the chain of ownership of her specific debt from the original lender to the Plaintiff. The judge actually allowed this. No Motion and Order to Compel Discovery. That simple request was enough for him.

Never heard from them again. Case dismissed.