Debt collector knows you are wrong person, pursues you anyway?

Factual Questions
1

A few years ago my father(who has a VERY common first and last name) received a phone call out of the blue from a debt collector wanting to collect on a student loan debt for college tuition. He told them as he was in his 70s they likely had the wrong guy, in addition the loan was recent and taken out in a state he had never lived in and the guy they were looking for was young. The collector kept calling even when told not to and demanding my father’s social security # to “confirm” he was not the man they were looking for, eventually my father got tired of it and agreed to give them the last four digits.

At this point the guy on the phone seemingly agreed my father was not the guy, but said he did not care all he cared about was collecting the debt and my father should pay it if he was sick of dealing with them. :mad:

They continued calling and harassing him and even called his workplace, no matter how many times he would explain he was not this guy they still wanted money to leave him alone basically. Eventually they got a better lead or just stopped.

What course of action should a person take in this case? Is it really legal to harass someone you know is not the person responsible for the debt?

2

Under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) you have the right to tell a debt collector to never contact you again. The FDCPA also says that once you tell the debt collector not to contact you, the debt collector cannot contact you again except to tell you that he received the letter and/or to tell you he is taking legal action against you. Record the call and tell him you are recording the call. Violating the FDCPA can bring big fines so this should scare him off. If he continues, send him a cease and desist letter certified mail.

3

Here is a template for such a cease-and-desist letter.

4

It sounds to me like a. a scam. and b. extortion. Pay money that is not owed for the promise of not being harrassed? Yep, I think extortion.
I would have called police and a lawyer.

hh

5

Isn’t it illegal for debt collectors to contact you at work, or is that just a myth?

My (fortunately very limited) experience with debt collectors that they are amoral thugs. My sister once had a credit card taken out in her name. It was obviously a case of identity theft - the social security number wasn’t hers, and the address was in a place she’d never lived. Still, the debt collector kept harassing her about it, and admitted that he really didn’t care if the debt was hers or not. My parents finally had a lawyer draw up a cease and decist letter, essentially telling him to fuck off and never call my sister again, and that was that.

6

It’s not illegal for them to attempt to contact you at work unless you send them written notice that you don’t want them to contact you at work. They will contact you however they like until you have a paper trail forcing them to stop. You do NOT need a lawyer for this, there are plenty of cease and desist templates on the internet.

7

My mother went through this same situation. She never had an unpaid bill in her life. Was harassed for the last 2 or 3 years by a debt collection agency. They offered to stop bothering her for $250 or give them her savings account number.

Being the genius that I am, I told her to ignore the calls.

Just recently, a new store opened in the area and offered specials to anyone who would sign up for their credit card. My mom’s application was rejected due to past unpaid accounts. That debt collection agency had ruined her credit.

So…hind sight being 20/20, I can say that anyone being harassed by unscrupulous debt collection agencies needs to get a lawyer or whatever it takes to get to the bottom of the situation instead of just ignoring the problem!

8

That can be fixed without a lawyer. Contact the credit reporting agency with the bad report and dispute it. If it is bogus, they will remove it.

9

The situation is frightening. Maybe they are people that operate that way in order to get what they want from people who are defenseless. I suggest you have the situation reported to the police.

10

One thing I’d do the second time is to get name, rank and serial number of the caller, and of course the full name of the agency. That lets you look them up, and would make reporting easier. It might scare the caller off, also. All you need to do is to make it easier for the scum to call someone else.

11

Better yet, if the situation is as clear-cut as described, I’d sue and try to make some money from the collectors. Should have a good case if it can be shown to be malicious and without regard to the truth.

12

Best case, the debt collectors will lose, be slow in paying, and you can sell their debt to a different batch of debt collectors for a little less money but a far greater sense of personal satisfaction.

(Yeah, probably doesn’t work that way when it’s a legal judgement, right?)

13

I changed my phone number, and now I get nonstop calls from collectors trying to find the guy who previously had the phone number. Apparently, he was a complete deadbeat. :mad: I tell the callers they have the wrong number and they still keep calling. A lot of the calls are computerized; ie, you’re prompted to press 1 if you are “Fred,” and 2 if you’re not. I pressed 2 and the call disconnected. (Being woken up at 7 AM on Saturday by such a call was quite ridiculous.) I think they keep calling because I see the same number on my caller ID over and over. I call the number back but it “cannot be completed as dialed.”

14

In addition to all of that, the FDCPA allows you to sue the debt collector if they’re harassing you illegally. From an official FTC frequently asked question page:

The page also has an extensive list of exactly which debt collection practices are illegal. Lies, threats, harassment, etc are all strictly forbidden. If you can document any of these practices, I understand that it’s very easy to win a case in small claims court, even without a lawyer.

15

Yeah! Then they can harass each other!

16

People who prey on the elderly are much too clever to be trapped into a lawsuit. The ones who were harassing my mom never clearly identified themselves or their “agency”.

They had my phone number as well and were putting pressure on me to settle her “debt”. I talked to them several times and tried to find out exactly who they were. The corporate name they gave led nowhere. The phone numbers they gave went nowhere.

Possibly, if I had offered to send them a check, they may have given me an address, but I suspect they probably had anonymous drop boxes set up for that purpose, too.

Being able to sue them would be pretty difficult.

17

I had this happen once. Random debt collector calls me up to collect a something-hundred dollar old debt from a Sears credit card account. I had closed my Sears account at least ten years prior, because I never bought anything from Sears. There was no outstanding balance at the time I closed the account.

I have a very common name, equivalent to “Jane Smith,” so there’s at least six other women with the same name in just this city. Random debt collector dude rattles off an address I’ve never lived at. I tell him he has the wrong Jane Smith and I’ve never lived at that address. He starts yelling at me, telling me everyone says that and of course I’m the right Jane Smith and starts making all sorts of random threats.

At first, I was really really pissed off that this douchebag is reading me the riot act when I didn’t owe a goddamn thing to anyone at the time. In fact, I’d just paid off all credit card debt, had saved up a downpayment on my house, and had just closed on my house with a credit score in the low 800s. Then douchebag demanded my social security number, after accusing me of lying about what my middle name is. (“You’re Jane Anne Smith, right?” “No, I’m Jane Sue Smith.” “You’re lying.” “Oh-kay.”)

That’s when I ripped into him and told him I’d be an idiot to give my social out over the phone to some random stranger who called me up demanding it, claiming to be a debt collector. We went back and forth on this mess for about 20 minutes, so I agreed to give him the last four digits. He immediately accused me of lying.

It occurred to me that he had the wrong address and the wrong social, so it didn’t really matter what he threatened. He could call the cops, but he wouldn’t be sending them to my house. He had no way to track me down based on the information he had. So I told him I’d pay up immediately just as soon as he sent me another bill to the address he had on file. He tried to get my checking account info right then and there but I demanded to verify the debt first.

Then I cut off my land line and never heard from another debt collector (for someone who shares my name) again. I don’t know what happened to that other Jane Doe and I don’t care. And yes, I scrutinized my credit report several times after that and there were no repercussions. If he has the wrong info, there’s just not a damn thing he can do to affect my credit score at all. I never saw a bill.

It’s too bad, because I was rather starting to enjoy playing cat-and-mouse with him, once I realized he’d never “catch” me. There was nobody to complain to about this either. You have all kinds of rights if you actually owe the money, but if they are mistaken about identity and you don’t owe anyone a dime, I don’t know what you can actually do. I tried to verify my identity but he wouldn’t believe me. So what, call the attorney general? What’s the point – he wasn’t going to put a black mark on my credit report because he had a completely different SSN.

Cutting off my land line was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Stopped all the telemarketers too.

18

During my little research into debt collection lowlifes, I learned about Allied Interstate, the grandfather of all debt collection lowlifes.

19

I kind of have the reverse problem! I have an “unpaid account” that was turned into collections on my credit report, but have NEVER been contacted about it. It’s for like, 100 dollars or something, and it’s to an old local cable company. This company never called or contacted me about any debt, ever. No debt collection company has ever called me about this debt either.

The debt is almost 7+ years old so I’m just going to wait it out for a while and then let it just disappear from my credit report, but just recently one of my credit card limits was lowered because of this negative mark on my credit (not a big deal because I’m not using the card anyway, but it does lower my available to used credit ratio). I DID try disputing this with Equifax last year when I found out about it, but they verified that it was a valid mark against me. Whatever! I wouldn’t even mind PAYING it off, honestly, since it is so small… but I have no idea who to contact over it. And I’m not making any big purchases for several years, so I think I can just wait it out and my credit score will go up eventually.

Anyway, I guess I’m probably the only guy who actually WISHES he had been contacted by debt collectors when this all went down years ago. Wouldn’t it be funny if I actually called them up and offered to pay, out of the blue, if I could get a number for them?

20

In general, paying off a old debt does not help your Credit Report.