EDITOR’S NOTE: This article is part of a series that is sponsored by WebRecon. WebRecon identifies serial plaintiffs lurking in your database BEFORE you contact them and expose yourself to a likely lawsuit. Protect your company from as many as one in three new consumer lawsuits by scrubbing your consumers through WebRecon first. Want to learn more? Call (855) WEB-RECON or email admin@webrecon.net today! Thanks to WebRecon for sponsoring this series.
DISCLAIMER: This article is based on a complaint. The defendant has not responded to the complaint to present its side of the case. The claims mentioned are accusations and should be considered as such until and unless proven otherwise.
An individual has filed a lawsuit against a number of defendants, including a creditor, a collection operation, and a collection law firm, seeking $5.5 million in damages for allegedly violating the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, the Foreign Agent Registration Act, and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act for sending harassing letters, falsely reporting information to the credit reporting agencies, and failing to mark the account as in dispute.
The Background: The plaintiff received numerous letters from one of the defendants that claimed to be harassing, but the complaint does not provide any details about whether it was the content of the letters or the volume that were sent — or both — that made the conduct harassing.
- The plaintiff requested verification of the debt, and the complaint alleges that the debt was then sold to another defendant to avoid providing verification of the debt.
- The defendant then falsely reported information regarding the debt to one or more credit reporting agencies, and failed to note that the account was being disputed by the plaintiff.
- The collection law firm or the attorney working for it is also accused of violating the Foreign Agent Registration Act because he allegedly failed to register as a foreign agent with the Attorney General for National Security as mandated under the law. The attorney is misrepresenting himself as a debt collector when they are an unregistered foreign agent acting unlawfully, according to the complaint.
The Claims: The plaintiff makes numerous claims in the suit, including the violations of the FDCPA and GLBA. The suit also accuses the defendants of violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, along with mail fraud and wire fraud. The suit seeks statutory, actual, compensatory, and punitive damages in the amount of $5.5 million, the discharge of the debt in question and the return of all money paid, and the removal of the false information from the plaintiff’s credit reports.
