Junk debt collectors and buyers should realize by now that while AG Lori Swanson stands watch it's not safe to commit robo-perjury in Minnesota courts or deny alleged debtors their due process rights. Hers was the office which dropped the detonator plunger on the scandalous National Arbitration Forum and its debt lawyer cronies. It was also the first to bring a major action regarding non-mortgage debt for using factory-issued bogus affidavits against consumer defendants, landing a long overdue upside slap on Midland Funding.
Yet the remaining fiends persist in the belief that lying their way to default judgments is the only way to get their jobs done. Florida debt buyer United Credit Recovery, LLC simply had to learn the hard way this week that its standard protocol is considered illegal, to put it politely. The debt buyer, which scrapes up the leftovers from uncollected bank overdraft fees, was named in a lawsuit seeking "injunction against UCR and its officers, and a civil penalty of $25,000 for each violation of the Uniform Deceptive Trade Practices Act", said Courthouse News Service.
Get a load of how costly UCR's bill could become, from the Minneapolis Star Tribune:
"United Credit Recovery LLC was allegedly churning out computer-generated affidavits with bank logos, cutting and pasting supposedly notarized signatures of bank officials onto the documents to make them look authentic. The electronically robo-signed documents were used for years on a “mass scale,” not only to persuade people that they owed the money but also to convince courts to award judgments and to hike the value of portfolios for resale ..."
"In one case in 2008, UCR allegedly fabricated 1,600 affidavits for accounts involving Minnesotans. The ... affidavits all bear the exact same signature of a U.S. Bank officer, but the bank’s signature is clearly dated one month later than the signature of the notary."
Courthouse News fills in this naughty detail:
"A supposed UCR employee, Edward Thompson, signed some of UCR's debt resale agreements, but UCR CEO Leonard Portillo testified that the name was a pseudonym for himself, and not a real person, according to the complaint."
You can imagine the huge mess created when an already dubious chum asset is collected using 'wet inkjet' supporting docs and signed by phantom bankers. Now imagine barge-loads of them *resold* to some other collection jackals who lazily use the same crap-idavits packaged with them. Now multiply that by a couple million accounts acquired over five years. Now open your eyes; the complaint says it went that way.
The AG's press release plugs in the numbers: "UCR paid US Bank approximately $31 million to purchase overdraft debt with an estimated face value of $820 million between 2007 and 2011, or less than four cents on the dollar. UCR paid Wells Fargo approximately $19 million to purchase overdraft debt with an estimated face value of more than $700 million between 2010 and 2012, or less than three cents on the dollar."
Between the lines we read, as usual, that the fire sale pricing of junk debt balances the risk from ridiculous lawbreaking while collecting it. Invest a penny, maybe get back a fiver, and to hell with whoever gets hurt. The Star-Trib quoted Swanson in reflection: "It takes traditional robo-signing to a whole new level. We have not seen this scale both in terms of the brazenness of it and the sheer numbers."
Minnesota Attorney General press release
http://www.ag.state.mn.us/Consumer/PressRelea ... dAffidavits.aspMinnesota AG sues Florida debt buyer over fake affidavits
Minneapolis Star Tribune
http://www.startribune.com/business/229901441.html?page=all&prepage=1Minnesota AG Scorches Florida Debt Collector
Courthouse News Service
http://www.courthousenews.com/2013/11/01/62549.htm. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
If the United Credit name rings a tarnished bell in your memory, it might be that you've also known one of its several past names.
https://800notes.com/forum/ta-4dc2cdef75700bf ... -st-op-ks-66213https://800notes.com/forum/ta-4ed7146aacaaae9 ... -world-recoveryNumber threads citing UCR in its various guises and possibly its hired collectors:
https://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-714-975-7606https://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-816-410-0835https://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-877-365-0025https://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-877-531-6993https://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-877-762-4122https://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-888-203-1833https://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-888-203-2435
Reply to topic