I am Special Agent Ted Wilcox a Private Investigator. The company in question is a fraud and the US Attorney General is currently prosecuting them. It appears they use an overseas call center so it will take time until these fellons can be brought to Justice. Please note that Bulletins have gone out to all state Attorney General's Offices and the Federal Trade Commission.
The scam is the call unsuspecting clients telling lie's about being involved in fraudulent activities. In reality they are nothing more than a bill collector committing illegal activities.
Tip: They will immediately ask you for an out of court settlement. This is your clue. If you don't cooperate, they will begin a berage of verbal harrassement and abuse.
Note: Do not give these people any information of any kind. Any legit Bill Collector will tendor their claim in writing. The Courts require a mandatory time frame of no less than 30 days for settlement before anyone can bring litigation to you. In all probability, this is a company trying to collect on old debts at cost to the original creditor for pennies on the dollar.
Note: In most cases if these claims are legit, they have long since passed the statute of limitations and are legally uncollectable. Any repubtable Bill Collector knows this and won't jeopardize their business by committing illegal acts.
Note: Most of the telephone numbers they use are from various states in the Midwest and East. The minute they call you outside of the calling state they are committing interstate fraud. You can trace these numbers but in most cases they are calling through an untracable cell phone. Legit Bill Collectors do not hide to collect on debts.
Note: The consumer has rights. They are all spelled out in the Fair Debt Collection Act. Advise reading it. Copies are all over the internet. If these people persist in calling. Hang up. Do not engage them in conversation or subject yourself to verbal abuse. Any debt that is legit will catch up to you in writing with all of the rights, remedies and code spelled out.
Don't be fooled by liars and theves.
Lastly, if you have available on your cell or landline blocking services, use it. It's the surest way to force them to comply with the law. Many of these services are free. Find the one that works for your phone company and cell provider.
I received a call at work from Kathy Wilson a representative of a company called ACS (a collection agency) telling me I owed another company a debt from an old loan. I asked for and they told me the company and gave me the phone # of 202-379-2317. I had done business with this company before so I called the number I had for them (not the one they gave me) and verified that I did NOT owe them any money.
Today (Feb 17, 2010) for the 1st time I received a phone call from this number (646-224-9884). It was hard to understand what he was saying because of his extra thick indian/middle eastern accent. I kept making him repeat himself because I couldn't understand. He informed me that I was being taken to court for delinquency on an internet payday loan taken out in January of 2008. He recited all of my personal information to me as if to "prove" that he was a legit company, it was all correct from my SSN down to the checking acct number...He even had the names of my references that I used. He kept saying he was calling from the parent company of whatever the loan company was that I had taken this loan through. He said the original company I took out the loan through had probably gone out of business but he couldn't tell me which one it was. So I asked him how come the first time I hear anything about a delinquency on this account is when I'm being sued for it. he supposedly transfers me to his manager by putting me on hold and playing a ringtone in my ear to simulate music u hear when someone puts u on hold. The "supervisor" comes to the phone and this [***] proceeds to tell me that this "loan" that I signed a "contract" for states that if I become delinquent, the company doesn't have to contact me to collect, they can just sue me for it. Then he has the audacity to say he doesn't know how the account ended up in his legal department and that "someone may have stolen your identity". So I asked him if he had a phone number for the "company" he says yes and gives me the name of the company ("Advanced Cash USA" which, remember, he didn't have any record of before because it had supposedly gone out of business) and gives me a phone number to call which was (202-379-2317).
So, I hang up from him, call this 202 number and low and behold..it sounds EXACTLY like the guy I just got off the phone with. Then he says, since I won't pay, he's gonna tell the legal company to go ahead with the proceedings and if I had paid off the loan then I could prove it in court and I wouldn't have anything to worry about. Or I could just go ahead and give him a payment now and be done with it. Then I went off on him and told him I feel like I'm being scammed and he says "well since you're being concerned, I will tell the ACS not to contact u" and then he just hung up on me.
So I call all of the payday loan places I had ever borrowed from just to make sure that they had all been paid off. And one company was hard to locate...MTE Financial, which did in fact fold, and another company called Instant Cash USA took over their accounts. (I suspect MTE Financial is where this person got my personal information since they were the hardest to contact and the only company which had transferred my loan to someone else).
I found an old email from 2008 which told me that MTE would no longer be debiting my account and that Instant Cash had taken over. The email also said I could call MTE to verify. The number it gave was 866-859-6129. I called that number and the representative had no clue who MTE was, but instead transferred me to her company's collections manager (Tracy) who apparently new more about MTE and the aquisition and was able to help me a great deal. She showed all of my accounts had been paid in full before the loan was transferred. She informed that the call i received was probably a fraud and that MTE was somewhere in California, not in the DC Area. Then I started putting the puzzle pieces together.
After I hung up from her, I decided to do a reverse phone lookup on Google for the 646 and 202 (which is the area code for Wash, DC btw..I live in the DC Area) numbers and VOILA!! I found all kinds of people complaining about the exact same thing...a payday loan that was supposedly delinquent and they were getting threats from some middle eastern [***] claiming his name was Brian Smith or some obvious american name with an extra thick accent saying that they would supposedly be sued and/or arrested.
I have since closed my accounts and put security alerts on the new ones. I've also called all of the 4 major credit bureaus and put security freezes and fraud alerts on my credit reports.
I also called the 646 number back, which turned out to be a fax machine and then I called the 202 number back and informed Mr. "Brian Smith" that he and his "company" along with his "legal department" was under investigation with the FBI and my local police agency for suspected ID Theft, Wire Fraud and Scams...He of course hung up in my ear.
KEEP THIS GOING FOLKS!!! Hopefully some other unsuspecting consumer will read these and not be fooled!!!
I received a call and they told me that a company called Advance America was going to take me to court for a bill that I owed. They told me two different companies when I spoke with them. Like an idiot I believed them and they took money from my account ACS that's the name of the company that called. The manager of the company ACS gave me the number 202-379-2317 and ACS called me from 646-727-4437 and 646-224-9884.