Scam Creditor Calls
THE NAMES HAVE BEEN CHANGED TO PROTECT THE GUILTY
I hope you will forgive me for getting off on a bit of a rant here, but we have spent a good bit of the past two days reviewing and responding to a torrent of collections emails with multiple apparent sources, but all directed at one client and purporting to be collecting on behalf of one particular “payday” lender. I say “purporting”, because I am not certain that even a payday lender would be this low, this scummy, this blatantly in violation of both Texas and federal law. After all, the payday lenders usually have a fixed place of business at which we can reach out and touch – or, which is more fun, restrain – them. Like a fence, they are more vulnerable to law enforcement because they have a brick-and-stick location.
Not so the internet terrorist. Nor is this client the first such example, just the most egregious so far. These scum, these maggots, these hemorrhoids upon the posterior of our nation, have deluged this particular client with abusive and threatening emails from email addresses which, when we attempt to respond, cease functioning. It is far from certain my client has any balance remaining at all with the real payday lender, but that lender is either employing these criminals or has been terribly lax in data security, since some of the details are (or at least were at one time) accurate.
At least two of these odiferous end products of the digestive process have signed themselves with the designation “Assistant United States Attorney”. Wouldn’t you just love to see the reaction of the real Department of Justice to that? A few choice quotes:
Your S.S.N is put on hold by US Government,
[BOGUSMADEUP] INVESTIGATION BUREAU HAS STATED 4 SERIOUS ALLEGATIONS AGAINST YOU … (4) AND THE BIGGEST ONE IS E.F.T. THAT IS ELECTRONIC FUND TRANSFER *** [signed] UNITED STATES OF ATTORNEY
if you are found guilty under the bench of jury
From: attorney[madeupname]@hotmail.com To: [redacted] Subject: RE: Arrest Warrant Date: Fri, 4 Mar 2016 20:10:59 +0000 ***Your SSN is put on hold by the US Federal Government[.] *** Now, FTC is pressing charges against you regarding 3 serious allegation: 1. Violation of federal banking regulation act 1983 (C) 2. Collateral check fraud 3. Theft by deception (ACC ACT 21A)
Your creditor will be in contact with your current employer & the state credit bureau to garnish your paychecks until the total amount gets paid back to your creditor in full with the interest amount & the late payment charges. Your Credit score will hit by negative 85 points & your driver’s license will get blocked. You do have right to hire an attorney, if you don’t have one or you can not afford to have one that shall be appointed to you by the Federal Court, but make sure you have someone to who can bail you out once you lose this case in the county court.
Your salary and all your wages confiscated. Do revert back if you want to get rid of these legal consequences and make a payment arrangement today or else we would be proceeding legally against you. And we apologies that this notification will also sent to your current employer.
Reading through these, I was repeatedly tempted to revert to my east Texas roots and respond “Y’all ain’t from around here, are ya, Bubba?”
It may indeed be that these anii are scammers who have somehow managed to obtain my client’s email address and the name of the payday lender who once, long ago, entrapped the client. They are on the same level, then, as the telephone terrorists who claim to be from the IRS and panic people into wiring thousands of dollars to avoid arrest and seizure of assets by the dreaded IRS (who try to warn the public against this very scam; https://www.irs.gov/uac/Tax-Scams-Consumer-Alerts). Or it may be that the payday lenders are so close to being the sort of creditors that collect by repossessing your kneecaps; they already target the poor and desperate with their exorbitant interest rates and fees, vampirishly bleeding the victim just short of killing him off. The poor man’s version of being a trader in creative mortgage-backed securities in 2006.
It is the sort of thing that makes one long to see bodies hanging from lampposts or a flying squad of unreconstructed Comanche women to teach them the error of their ways. But that would be contrary to my multiple oaths to uphold the Constitutions and laws.
So I rant instead. Thank you for your patience with an angry old man.
