More than one-third of individuals have been victimized by a predatory debt collection scam or predatory lending in the past 10 years, according to a report published by the Public Rights Project.
Overall, 54% of the 2,000 people who participated in the survey have experienced what the report terms “corporate abuse” in the past 10 years, which includes wage theft, predatory debt collection, unsafe rental housing conditions, or health problems due to pollution created by a business.
Among the different categories, the 38% of individuals who say they have been subjected to predatory debt collection and predatory lending was second only to the 39% of individuals who were victims of wage theft.
Predatory debt collection is defined in the report as being forced to pay a debt that was not owed, receiving threatening calls from a collector, or being charged fees that were never agreed to.
Only 32% of those who were victimized by one of the types of corporate abuse in the report said they reported the incident to a law enforcement agency. Many people said they did not seek help was because they did not have the power to litigate the incident on their own.
Looking at what the report called a “cycle” of abuse, it noted that 80% of individuals who were surveyed had suffered more than one type of corporate abuse listed in the report.
The report also detailed the types of harm — financial, emotional, and psychological — that the victims had suffered as a result of their incidents. Nearly half had suffered financial problems as a result of the abuse, and 36% had suffered health problems.
