Recently I've been hearing a lot about charged off debt being bought by third party companies and then those companies try to collect on it. About four years ago, I did a huge debt settlement with several companies and negotiated my debt through a company and paid off the settlement accounts. Most of them show on my credit history as "charged off" and several still say that I'm 60 to 120 days late, even though the accounts are closed. This, of course really hurts my credit rating, and now I'm really worried that someone is going to come after me for that charged off debt.