International Debt Collection Scheme

Dealing with debt collectors is not an easy job. In fact, our government has invested more time and money into regulating and investigation allegations of fraud in the past few years than ever before. Unfortunately, their efforts are proving to be much needed as several new scams are popping up and costs innocent consumers millions of dollars in combined losses.

Global Scam

The Federal Trade Commission has had its work cut out for them in recent years looking out for consumers and shutting down fraudulent debt relief, debt collection or loan companies. A recent discovery of international cooperation in a new scam has lead to several lawsuits and federal charges. American Credit Crunchers and Ebeeze, LLC are both charged with violating the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.

These two companies have been reportedly acquiring bank account and Social Security numbers of consumers who were told they had “inquired about, applied for, or obtained online payday loans”. Using callers from India to contact consumers and convince them to pay nonexistent debts, these companies scammed more than $5million from victims since 2010. The FTC received more than 4,000 complaints from consumers and began investigating these two companies. Since callers from India were used the Security Exchange Commission (SEC) has gotten involved to help trace and confirm the use of international numbers in the scam.  Although only the two companies are currently being charged, there is a potential for an international lawsuit involving the callers from India to take place in the near future.