Anyone know anything about LVNV Funding (junk debt collector?)

[SenorBeef]

My mom is being sued. She asked me, due to my superior interweb skills, to try to find out more about it.

It’s being done by a company called LVNV Funding LLC, who apparently buys up expired Sears credit debt and sues people for it.

According to this site the debt is usually (?) expired and past its statute of limitations, but if they get you to send any sort of payment in it re-opens the debt.

Anyway, a document was hand-delivered, which states, in part:

YOU HAVE BEEN SUED. THE COURT MAY DECIDE AGAINST YOU WITHOUT YOUR BEING HEARD UNLESS YOU RESPOND WITHIN 20 DAYS. READ THE INFORMATION BELOW.

1. If you intend to defend this lawsuit, within 20 days after this summons is served on you exclusive the day of service, file with this Court at [address] a written pleading in response to this Complaint.

2. Unless you respond, your default will be entered upon application of the Plaintiff and this Court may enter judgement against you for the relief demanded in the Complaint…

So what I gather from a search of “LVNV Funding”, the company tries to collect on debt past the statute of limitations by getting people to make payments on expired debt. Pages claim that they don’t even show up to their own court date.

What I’m guessing happens is this:

Company sells old debt to LVNV for a small fraction like 5-10%. Since the companies can’t/won’t collect, 5-10% beats nothing.

LVNV then sues the owners of the debt, knowing that it won’t hold up in court due to statutes of limitations, but also that if they can scare people into making a payment they reopen a debt.

If they can get more than 5-10% or so if the people to eventually pay back their debt, you can turn a profit.

Does anyone have experience with them or anyone like them?

My mom claims to have not made a payment on that account for 10 years. The state she was living in when she had the card has a consumer debt statute of limitations of 6 years. The state she currently lives in (and is being sued in) has a limitation of 4 years. Doesn’t matter, but which would apply?

So from what I can gather, there’s no case against her. The debt has been dormant for longer than the statute of limitations. If that’s correct, it seems silly to spend hundreds of dollars on a lawyer to show up in court and say that. So can she do it herself?

What does submitting a “written pleading in response” entail?

Should she have to go to court, what should she bring? Would a credit report have detailed data on when she stopped making payments on that debt?

Oh - and the summons is dated 1/31, but it was delivered on 2/14. Would the 20 days limit apply to the latter? It would be entirely unfair for something to have a 20 day notice and then have them take 15 days to deliver it - but when they hand-delivered the summons a signature wasn’t required - there’s no proof on which date it was delivered.

[SenorBeef]

I have a related question.

I was reading up on the statute of limitations on debts.

Sites like this one say:

You might be asking yourself, “It has been such a long time since my “open account” has had any activity. When does my Statute of Limitations started ticking.” Use your credit report as a reference. Your credit report will tell you the date of last activity for your account. You will have your credit report with the date of last activity and a certified letter stating that the statute of limitations expired.

The problem is that she got a credit report, but the “last activity” date was the date that the original creditor wrote it off as bad debt and sold it to the collector, not the date when she made her last payment. As such, the date of her last payment isn’t listed on the credit report.

How might she go about getting paperwork to support that her last payment was long enough ago that the statute of limitations applies?

[choie]

IANAL. And your mom should get one, if at all possible.

That said: as I understand it, the court may determine which SOL factors in, the state she’s living in now, or the one where she originally got the account. Each state may have its own definition of “last activity.”

Post your question on CreditBoards. These people are experts at handling predatory debt collectors. While you might find some good advice here, over at CB you’re almost guaranteed to find people who know exactly what they’re talking about on this issue.

Here is a lengthy thread on the creditor in question. LVNV are well-known for law violations and violations against the Fair Credit Reporting Act, so don’t let them get away with any crap if your mom’s debt isn’t valid. Make sure they can validate every claim they make.

Good luck! And again, needless to say, if at all possible, get a lawyer who specializes in this kinda stuff.