Wolpoff & Abramson

I would suggest verifying with the court that a suit was filed. If it has you need to show up, otherwise they will receive a default judgment. I have a debt validation letter template you can access via my signature, feel free to use it if you like. Instead of paying (probably) the much higher amount that FedEx will charge you can send it USPS certified mail, return receipt requested.

At the very least you can use the items requested in my validation letter for a checklist of items to ask for during discovery. If they cannot provide you with sufficient documentation to prove that this debt is yours and they have the right to collect on it you can motion to dismiss the case with prejudice.

If you have any further questions please feel free to ask.

Well we sent a debt validation letter asking for proof of debt, etc, and sent it with tracking/return receipt. We tracked it and they received it four days later (sent it on a Friday they received it Monday or Tuesday).

Well we come home today and see "court documents" yellow bag, this time with the information and a case # written in pen.

They have yet to send him any validation.

I assume we should keep all documents and the copy of the receipt of the debt validation letter for the court date (May 14th).

Shouldn't the warrant in debt be notarized (i.e. embossed?)? Shouldn't the case # be typed on?

Thank you so much.

First I would suggest checking your local court house to see if the summons is real. If it is then you need to file your answer before the due date. (speaking of which, check with the court house when the due date is so you can make sure they don't try to cheat you and get a default judgment) Where they state in the civil complaint that you owe this money or anything that would say that the account is yours answer that you do not have sufficient information to confirm or deny. During discovery request the same information you requested for validation to determine if they own or manage it and are able to legally collect on it. If they cannot provide sufficient validation then motion to dismiss with prejudice.

Also you can request assignment contracts or bills of sale that trace it back to the original creditor. Without a strong representation of the chain of custody it's hard for them to prove their case.

Also if you could answer the following questions I may be able to better assist you.

1. What type of debt is it?
2. When was the last time you paid on this debt?
3. What state do you live in?

Also they did hand you one thousand dollars with continued collection activity (the lawsuit) after you disputed the debt.

on the court website and did see his name there with the case number... actually... the one written case number on the paper dropped off at the house was only a partial. the one on the website had some additional letters.

What was on the doorknob today is only a copy of what was sent some time ago, only with some pretty red stamp and a written case number.

This is in the state of VA and is an attempt to collect on a credit card debt.

ok, this is not necessarily a violation of the fdcpa. The thing is this-it sounds to me, from what you have said, that they had already filed this case with the court before receiving your DV request letter. If so, then no law has been broken, yet.

To find out whether this is a violation of the law or not, you need to check with the court clerk's office, or possibly that website will have it--you are looking for the docket detail for this case. It will list the date that they filed the complaint with the court. If that date is AFTER the date they signed for your DV letter sent by FEDEX, then yes, they broke the law. And, you can often have a lawsuit thrown right out of court when it is filed illegally. Not always, but often the judge will kick it out because they willfully broke the law.

If they filed it before the date they signed for your letter, then they did it legally.

Have they provided any information about this debt? Such as, when this debt was incurred? If you could post up any such info about this, we may find something that can help you there. But you definitely do NOT want to skip out on this court date. If he doesnt go, they will win by default and even if he doesnt really owe this money, they will get a judgment against him.

The website says it was filed April 9th, 2008. We sent the DV letter April 10th or 11th and they received it April 14th, 2008.

The only thing I see on the "Warrant In Debt (Civil Claim for Money) regarding a date is

Claim:

Plaintiffs claim that defendant owes plantiff a debt in the sum of $5595.47 and ___ attorney's fees, $48 costs and interests as follows:

6% per annum from 12/29/2005 until judgement and thereafter at judgement rate of interest with the basis of this claim being "Open Account".

On an attachment I read:

LPYMT DT 12/29/05
OPEN DT 08/01/95
CHRG OFF DT 01/16/04
PURCHASE DT 10/19/07

It is my assumption that:
LPYMT DT is date of last activity
With the Charge off date being 01/16/04 the last Payment date would have to have been sometime in June or July of 03 NOT 05.
Check your Satute of Limitation to see if the debt is outside of it.

A site I looked at for SOL states Open Account in Virginia is 3 years, Promissory Notes 6 years, Written Contracts 5 years, Oral Agreements 3 years.

Since the paper said "Open Account", does that mean the SOL is three years?

When was your last payment, if it was 3 years prior to the day before they filed suit then it would be past the SOL.

If I may ask, how old is your fiance?

OK, here is what that all means. First, they didnt break the law--they filed it before you sent the letter.

Second, they are claiming that he opened an account in August 1995, that it went delinquent and was charged off in January 2004, then he made a payment in December 2005, and then the CA bought the debt in 2007. I asked his age because of the account supposedly being opened in 1995. Was he 18 or older in 1995? If he was younger than 18, then there's your case right there--he wouldnt have even been old enough to enter into a legal contract, which is what a debt is.

The problem with W&A is that they have a massive reputation for not following the law. There is a good resource that most of us use--budhibbs.com If you go there, you will find this about these guys:

Bud Says...
ONE OF AMERICA'S WORST COLLECTION AGENCYS!



Can you say BILLIONAIRES?? Yes, Wolpoff & Abramson are on target o become the first BILLIONAIRES of the collection industry.

They have an incredible network of law firms across the country who sue on debt that were purchased for pennies, then many have arbitration claims files and/or sue upon. They buy themselves whatever they want and sometime, whomever they want to achieve their goals. To put this empire of scam in perspective here are some of the players:

First, one false rumor is that Wolpoff & Abramson (W&A) own the National Arbitration Forum (NAF); that is FALSE! They are the single largest supplier of claims to the NAF and at $ 250.00/per claim, it????????s easy to see why they win approximately 95-98% of all claims filed. This is further bolstered by the fact that NAF pays their arbitrators (attorneys, retired judges) a fee of $250/hour to handle claims. The rules state they must handle six claims per hour for this $250, so you can understand that any claimant would be lucky for even a cursory review of documents.

Buying bad debts for 2-3????on the dollar (many for a lot less), paying the NAF $250 with an almost guaranteed award in your favor and a network of lawyers filing suits spells money on the level of a South American drug cartel to Wolpoff & Abramson.

W&A pulls the strings for NCAN; the National Collection Attorney Network which is comprised of over 100 law offices across the U.S. of attorneys who sue on debts. A few of these attorneys are good, honest, hard working, many more are inept, have very little understanding of the fdcpa, have no knowledge of any material facts other than what they are told to say and do. They get paid a contingency fee to show up in court, many never do, hoping to take default judgments.

Thank goodness for NACA attorneys who have the skills and experience to litigate against them, I recommend you always contact one at: www.naca.net

Think your going to beat an arbitration claim? Not when the arbitrator is being paid $250/hour and can be fed claims all day long. Think your rights under the law mean anything? Think again! I have been contacted on hundreds, perhaps thousands of arbitration claims and only one attorney from Texas had the guts to stand up and say??????????????Hey! This is wrong!??????? The good news is he took his job seriously; the bad news is he is no longer an arbitrator for the NAF. Many of these arbitrators would feel very comfortable performing their jobs in a Nevada brothel as the two jobs perform similar services.

Think your going to get satisfaction from the Montgomery County, MD or Maryland State Bar for ethics complaints against W&A? NOPE! Seems Daddy sits on both boards and not many complaints ever go very far. Here is a partial list of collectors owned/used by W&A:

Alegis Group, Sherman Acquisitions, LVNV Funding, LLC

arrow financial services

Asta Funding

Colonial Credit Corporation

Palisades Collections, LLC

Preferred Platinum Plan aka The Porn Collectors

Great Seneca Financial

Centurion Capital

Sage Financial

Monarch Financial

Hawker Financial

W&A cannot purchase debts as a law firm, so they apparently use these shell organizations to accomplish that goal.

Some of their largest NCAN Attorneys include:

Cohen & Slamowitz, LLP

Hosto & Buchan

Javitz, Block, & Rathbone, LLP

Mitchell N. Kay, P.C.

Love, Beal & Nixon, P.C.

Mel S. Harris & Associates

Messerli & Kramer

Johnson, Riddle & Mark fka/Riddle & Associates

Trauner, Cohen & Thomas

Weltman, Weinberg & Reis

W&A also has offices in many cities where the phones and faxes all ring in at Rockville, MD. They use an auto dialer that calls some consumers as many as 20 times daily (according to complaints I received) and make it near impossible to get wrong persons removed.

They file cases by the hundreds every day and reportedly even supply court clerks to work side by side with real court clerks to get the filings done.

Want to validate a debt? Fuggettaboutit! ???????Won????????t happen! Slows them down, who gives a damn about the law and consumer rights? They have daily, weekly, monthly goals to hit. Besides, they will manufacture most documents in-house for court filings; even notarize them by employees attesting to hearsay facts that are not admissible in most courts.

Some smart consumer attorney may one day put W&A employees under oath and learn that Affidavits that are legally supposed to be signed in the presence of the person attesting to the truthfulness (?) of the documents, have instead taken them home to be stamped and signed because of the work load. Again, the law and consumer rights are not the issue at W&A, profits are!

NOTE TO EMPLOYEES AT W&A:

THINK YOU HAVE PRIVACY WORKING THERE? THE NEW SECURITY PEOPLE (former CIA?) HAVE CAMERAS EVERYWHERE INCLUDING SEVERAL IN AREAS YOU DON????????T EVEN KNOW ABOUT. THINK YOUR COMPUTER ISN????????T BEING MONITORED? THINK AGAIN! THERE ARE EYES EVERYWHERE, WATCHING YOU, CAREFUL WHAT YOU SAY, THIS IS SECURITY ???????CIA STYLE??????????????? NOTHING IS SECRET AT WORK!

W&A will go to no end to protect their Niagara Falls of cash flowing into their coffers. Nobody is protected, nothing is sacred, whatever it takes. Money rules this organization, EVERYTHING else is secondary. They don????????t own the NAF but they damn sure control them. My advice is to make them spend as much money as possible on each and every account they collect. Send them validation notices and tie up their collectors for as long as possible. NEVER fail to show up in court-- they miss a lot more court dates than they keep. Make the NAF work, send them validation notices, and force them to prove you are party to any arbitration agreement. Many, many courts are moving closer to consumers, and attitudes are changing, W&A has lost several BIG court decisions; keep as much pressure on them as you can. Each and every consumer fighting at the grass roots level will help, as well as making their illegal deeds known to your Congressman, Senators, and Judges. Use the experts at NACA www.naca.net

This is a struggle Americans can win, one account, one consumer at a time.

After you get over getting mad, GET EVEN! Make it costly to come after every account, it adds up quickly, a phone call, a stamp, a collector who can????????t collect; dispute, validate, make them pay with time and money at EVERY step.

ok, that really long post was me--I guess I wasnt signed in again...

cellular--the payment date, I suspect, is fabricated, not real. however, this info only shows when the current owner of the debt bought it. It doesnt show who owned it before that, perhaps another collection agency. And, think about it--a charge-off doesnt mean that you cannot make a payment after it was charged off. ANY activity on the account, regardless of who owned it at the time, reages the debt. So, what they are claiming is definitely possible.

JC--thats just the thing--she says that he does not owe this debt at all. Now, that could mean it was paid off, or it could mean that he never owed this creditor any money for anything at all. If it's the latter, then this is gonna be just another example of a CA fabricating documents or claims to try to get money they arent legally entitled to.

NotMyDebt--what you need to do is question EVERYTHING that they try to present as evidence. You need to make them prove that last payment. you need to make them produce the original credit agreement with your fiance's signature written at the bottom. You need to make them produce account statements, to prove that the amount they claim as owed is really owed. Do NOT take their word for ANYTHING. Force them to prove it--they are required to in court, since they are the ones bringing the allegations. The burden of proof is on them, not you. Some general things for you--

1--discovery is going to be your friend here. Here's the basic idea--you already sent a DV letter, but since they already filed the suit they most likely wont answer it. So, you will need to file a motion for discovery with the court, and request proper legal validation of this debt. Request the following:

1--the original signed credit agreement
2--proof of the last payment as they claimed it
3--documentation showing that they are either assigned by the current owner to this debt, or that they are the owner of it(proving that they have the legal right to collect on this debt)
4--statements on the account to prove that the amount they claim as owed is legitimate

well, I am kinda jumping the gun here a bit. First, your fiance will need to answer the summons. If you have not done so already, here is basically how it works.

The plaintiff makes a statement, such as:

1) Defendant took out a loan with the original creditor, XYZ, on (insert date here).

In your answer, you simply reply to each statement in their complaint....like this:

1) Defendant has no knowledge whatsoever of this account, and therefore denies all statements made in paragraph 1.

Deny anything that you honestly feel is untrue. In this case, based on what you have told us this far, I would deny the account, the amount they claim is owed, and anything else except for any statements they might have made that pertain to the current county of residence--if it is in fact your county. You go down the line on each of their statements, replying to each. Then, in this case, I would add an affirmative defense. This is VERY important, as you cannot bring some defenses later in the case--they MUST be done from the start. For example, if that last payment is in doubt(in my mind it really is), you can move for dismissal on the grounds of expired statute of limitations. This would force them to prove to the court that your claim of expired SOL is bogus--and when they cannot, you win.

At this point, I would recommend that you do some further investigating on this one, and do so before the first court date, or even before you file your answer. Did they list an original creditor on the complaint? Contact them--even though the debt was sold they might still at least have some very basic information. They might not. but they might. You should do anything you can to try to identify this account before it goes to court--lets say that this WAS your debt. Lets say that the last activity was four years ago, and not the payment they claimed. If you know that, you can definitely declare 'expired SOL' and put them in their place. But you need to know it first. Check all three major credit bureaus, to see if there are any entries on them that match up with the info on this debt. And also, please remember to let us know if he was 18 in 1995 or not--that could answer this whole thing by itself.

My fiance is 32 (33 at time of the court date).

We are talking to a lawyer on Monday, hopefully he can scare them into backing out, or give us a good defense.

My fiance is going to look through his files before Monday to see when his last payment was to them.

"So, you will need to file a motion for discovery with the court, and request proper legal validation of this debt. "

Do you have a template for this? On the paper we have it does not state "summons", just "Warrant In Debt (Civil Claim for Money)".

As I stated we are talking with the Lawyer on Monday. I just want to get all of our ducks together before then so we can give him everything and hopefully he'll play hardball with them.

So its been 30 days, with no validation of the debt.

The lawyer and W&A are in court right now.

I'm totally stressing, thinking "what if" and "we should have" and other things.

Hopefully hearing the ruling soon.

i am currently being sued by Palisades assignee Great Seneca assignee Wells Fargo. they sent a court appearance letter to a past address to receive a judgment against me. do they have to show proof of ownership of the debt from the original creditor?