Before we were married, my wife had an account at a bank (2005-2007) and had overdrawn her checking account by a few hundred dollars. she is...

Question

Before we were married, my wife had an account at a bank (2005-2007) and had overdrawn her checking account by a few hundred dollars. she is not a criminal but she was going through some financial difficulties at the time. I am sure she was contacted a few times back in 2007 but then everything went quite. Fast Forward to today, she is getting calls from a legal firm telling her she is being sued for quadruple the amount and they are trying to serve her with papers. However they are willing to settle for 50% of the amount she is being sued for. Does this sound like a legal firm or a collection agency? Is there a Statute of Limitations on the debt trying to be collected or does it just apply to consumer credit accounts?

Answer

Never trust any collectors nor any other requests which arrive only via the phone or email. Instead, insist upon something in writing which fully identifies who you are dealing with (both the individual and the company), together with contact info, acct. numbers, identity of original creditor, etc. There are numerous scammers pretending to be collectors these days who initiate these calls just to pump you for information which they will subsequently use to steal your identity. And, if you are sufficiently gullible, the crowning achievement in this scam would be to actually convince you to send them money. If you do that and they turn out not to be the true owners or authorized agents to collect the debt, you will end up needing to pay it twice (or even more than twice if you are fooled again in the future). Agencies proceeding by phone only can also be offshore agencies who are not subject to U.S. collections laws, dealing with whom is only slightly better than a scam. Instead, first insist upon a postal letter, together with the number of their WI collectors license. Feel free to ignore anyone who will not produce these items and consider referring them to the FBI or FTC as scammers. Since they are offshore, it is doubtful that they will ever be able to follow up their threats with actual litigation as a practical matter, regardless of whether or not they are real collectors. Anyone with collection problems also owes it to themselves to at least schedule a brief free consultation with an experienced bankruptcy lawyer.

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