512-806-7629

A lady by the name of Linda Berry called to say that I took out a payday loan in 2012 from payday one LLC and that she was with the Law Office of Brooks and Morgan.  They were going to file charges for bank fraud, bad check, etc and that it would be a federal felony offence.  She claimed they had sent cert mail on July 17th and normally they don't call before they file charges but that the cert mail was never claimed they were calling me to answer the charges before they went in front of a judge in an hour.  She had me convinced that my ex-husband had taken out a loan in my name and that they were going to pursue charges against him but if I paid x amount of money to Enhanced Recovery within the hour they would not proceed with the charges against me.  The only payment they would accept was Money Gram or a cert check deposited into an account at BofA.  My lawyer verified that this was a scam and just to be on the safe side I called the county clerks office and they verified the case number I was given was bogus.  When I called the number back the vm belonged to Leslie Hall, Dept of TCL.  These were by far the best scammers that have every called.  They spoke perfect English and had more of my and my ex husbands personal information than any before them have ever had.  Be careful, the scammers are getting better and I almost fell for this one.

This is a common ploy by criminals attempting to extort money from people by scaring you into believing that you will be criminally charged, go to jail, lose your driver’s license, have wages garnished, be sued, and a variety of other variations on this,  all for an alleged or nonexistent debt.  They also use the “process server” who calls and claims he is going to serve you, but then says you could avoid it by calling another number.  Now why would a “process server” want to do you, a stranger, a favor, and at the same time not get paid to deliver the papers?

Federal law (FDCPA) requires them to send you a letter (US MAIL ONLY) within 5 days of their first contact that contains their name, physical address, the creditor’s name, and the amount of the alleged debt.  It also must contains “mini-Miranda” telling you that it is an attempt to collect a debt and that all information will be used for those purposes.  The one other important thing that this letter must also have in it is that you have a right to dispute the debt within 30 days of receipt of the letter and if you do so, all collection activity must be stopped until the debt is verified.
Read up on your rights here, get template letters to send and also make a complaint at this government site:  http://www.consumerfinance.gov/
Also file a complaint with your State Attorney General's office.
List of State AG’s offices:  http://consumerfraudreporting.org/stateattorneygenerallist.php