A phone message is left for a relative at your sole proprietorship business number from Collections R Us. You call Collections R Us and ask some questions, learning that relative listed your number and your business as an employer within the last six months, and you haven’t seen relative in a decade+. They are apparently defaulting on $5K of credit card debt. Past knowledge of person is they aren’t poor, just a parasite and scammer. They screwed me out of a goodly sum ~ 15 years ago, and I let it pass.
Questions: Is there an online resource (free) to check my business via EIN or my own SSN to determine if this individual has damaged my credit, and if so, what recourse have I against this person for false representation of me as their employer?
You’re not my lawyer, I’m not your client, yadda, yadda.
I don’t know about anything free, but I remember when I was working for a credit reporting agency years ago there was a service to pull a business credit report. You may want to contact your local credit reporting agency and ask if they have that available.
You should be aware that lying in order to obtain credit is a felony.
I don’t know if you care or not, but you’re accusing this person of a felony in a public forum.
Incidentally, fraudulently obtained credit card or other debts are NOT dischargable in most bankruptcies.
Read the OP real careful-like.
Does the OP indicate that in the last 6 months, someone of their acquaintance claimed on a credit application to currently have a job that said person did not in fact have at the time of completing the credit application?
If so, then that’s where.
If not, paint me a moron and call me Shirley!
In my experience, absolutely no good at all will come from responding to such messages.
They are usually scams, or attempts to guilt you into paying for some relative’s debts, or to get you to pay for some deadbeat with a similar name, or something similar.
Don’t waste your time or increase your blood pressure by responding to these messages in any way. Hang up the phone, or delete the message.
A collection agency generally isn’t even ALLOWED to mention to a third party that are attempting to collect a debt from a given debtor.
The governing law here is the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.
The only reason ‘an employer’ would get a communication from a debt collector is typically if the collector was attempting to garnish the wages of the debtor. I believe in those cases you’d be getting court papers, not a phone call.
Take the advice above. Ignore the crap out of 'em.
I’d tell Collections R Us I have no idea who they are calling about, and not to call back.
I’d keep a check on my own credit, personal and business, more often than annually.
The only sort of meaningful recourse would be monetary damages if you have been damaged. It sounds like there is probably not a lot of monetary there, and possibly no damages to you. Let it go. No contact beats bad contact for seedy relatives.
Accusing an unidentified “relative” is not quite the same as accusing Cecil B Adams of Straightdope Lane in Chicago, so I don’t really understand Mr Slant’s comment on the accusation of a felony in a public forum.
No. Business credit reporting is different from personal credit reporting. If you want a credit report for your business, it’ll cost, in most cases. But as others have pointed out, what you are talking about isn’t the sort of thing that would damage your business credit in the first place. At best, if true, they’ve got you for hiring a deadbeat. That’s got no bearing on whether your company is solvent or likely to pay its debts.
If you want to find out more about getting a business credit report, go here: http://www.dnb.com/us/
Call the cops. They probably won’t do anything, but that’s about as good as it gets. If the creditor contacts you, you can tell them the guy never worked for you. Otherwise, unless you can show that you’ve been damaged in some way, you’ve got nothing to sue for. If you were damaged, you’re going to want to talk to a lawyer. Business torts are complicated, and there is a lot of variation between states. Any advice you get here will be fairly useless.
I saw that, I just didn’t know it was a felony, and as others have said, this person, not the OP, was identified.
I don’t know how the phone call went, but is it possible the OP might be listed as a co-signer?
If they just put you down as an employer, a simple “No, he doesn’t work here…no, no one by that name ever worked here…etc” will probably end the call right there. I wouldn’t let on that you even know who this person is. I’m sure the collection agency gets people lieing about where they work all the time.
There is a fairly good chance that that relative did not list your number. Collection agencies lie a lot. This is one of their more common lies. See if they call up Joe Deadbeat on Lexis/Nexis or similar service, they get a list of potential neighbors and relatives, with phone numbers. A less-ethical Collection Agency will call all those dudes, claiming (if pressed) that Joe gave the Agency your number. They are hoping you will give them a current # for Joe, or a current Job or even call him and get on his case about paying them.
The way they are doing this is illegal. They can legally just call you to confirm an address or # for Joe.