I received a call from this company at my place of employment today. As a debt collector for a legitimate company, this has all of the signs of a shady company that does not collect debt as the law stipulates, or maybe they're a flat-out scam.
When I took the call, the woman id'd herself as Sarah Ryan and proceeded to tell me in a very loud and rude tone that she was with a law firm (didn't catch the name of it) and I was being served for a lawsuit regarding a debt. (Red Flag number one: A court summons has to be hand-delivered by an authorized agent such as a sheriff, private process server, or a non-involved third party. A court summons cannot be served over the phone.) She proceeded to tell me it was a recorded call and was attempting to collect a debt. Not to mention that she began divulging all of this information about someone without making any attempt to verify that I was the person they were after (Red Flag number two: Any legitimate collections agency will at least attempt to verify some piece of the debtor's personal information before divulging details about a debt.)
Knowing that I myself have no accounts in collections, I cut her off and advised her she probably had the wrong person, she told me that she had already verified my employment. I then asked her to read me back my date of birth, to which she said that she did not have it in the system (Red Flag number three: Every legitimate collections agency that I know of would have that piece of information about their debtors.) She then asked me if I could verify my SSN, to which I said yes. She then proceeded to read me the FULL Social Security number of someone who is not me (Red Flag number four: She just gave out someone's full SSN, which could potentially be used to commit fraud against this person.)
I advised her that was not my SSN. I even offered to give her the last four of my SSN, but she said she didn't need it. I told her she definitely had the wrong person, to which she responded "We were given this information for you from the law firm, which is usually accurate." I told her it wasn't me and to never call me at work again, at which point she hung up.
A few minutes later I called the number back on my recorded line to inform them that I was a collector myself and I knew that she had broken several provisions of the Fair Debt Collections Practices Act, but nobody picked up the phone after ten rings. No legitimate debt collector would call a business which announced that it records all incoming calls (as mine does) and boldly break debt collections laws like that. If I receive another illegal call from this company, I will be pursuing legal action against whatever company this is.