A debt collection company based in Atlanta and its owners have been permanently banned from the industry and will pay $266,000 out of a $3 million penalty under the terms of a settlement announced by the Federal Trade Commission, which had sued the company and its owners for threatening to have consumers arrested and imprisoned when trying to collect debts that the consumers did not actually owe.
A copy of the settlement in the case against Critical Resolution Management and Brian Charles McKenzie and Tracy Dottrice Warren can be accessed by clicking here. The enforcement action was part of the FTC’s Operation Corrupt Collector.
The FTC filed its lawsuit last October, alleging that the collectors posed as law enforcement officials, attorneys, mediators, or process servers when making threats to individuals. Making the situation worse for the collectors was that the debts they were trying to collect in many cases were either never owed in the first place or no longer owed.
Along with the ban and the financial penalty, the defendants are prohibited from misrepresenting whether they are attorneys or affiliated with a law firm or whether an individual owes a debt of any kind, and from making any misleading claims when selling a product or service.
A judgment in the amount of $3,010,123.65 was entered against the defendants, all of which except $266,258.95 was suspended. That amount had already been recovered by a receiver.
The defendants had been using the illegal tactics as far back as 2012, according to the FTC’s complaint
