We started to write about JA Cambece today but this article – compliments of author Bud Hibbs takes priority.
Enjoy! Times are a-changin’ AMERICA!!!
 

Should Consumers Pay Purchased Citibank Accounts to
Unifund & LVNV Funding?

March 25, 2009 by Bud Hibbs – © Consumer Justice – Voice of the American Consumer
Things could not be any worse for Citibank and its related entities Citicorp and Citi Holdings. U.S. taxpayers now hold a 40% stake in the bank. Additionally, China, Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi have a stake in the future of this rapidly diminishing former world financial icon. At the closing bell the last day in February, Citi stock had plummeted to $1.50 /share.
We are all familiar with the greed that fueled Wall Street’s meltdown. Citicorp was a big player, skirting regulations, purchasing billions of mortgage loans, and extending easy credit to anyone with a social security number, all while financing, re-financing, raising card limits and floating cash to consumers, all of whom thought the ride would never end.
At the first signs of implosion, Citibank executed their debt collection tactics, except now they were both proactive and aggressive. Their corporate policy was to sue anyone and everyone who defaulted. It did not matter where you lived or what your circumstances. Citibank hired a nationwide group of lawyers to sue on defaulted accounts. Tens of thousands of cases were filed in courts across America leading to a default rate well above 80%. As the judgments piled up the Citibank lawyers felt the pressure from corporate in Sioux Falls to brighten the balance sheets. The pressure was then directed to levy bank accounts, garnish wages, and make deals resulting in more money in the coffers.
One former attorney Citibank collection attorney revealed Corporate was aware many debtors had checking accounts in financial institutions where Citibank had the name and account number. The attorney was told to access those accounts via the web and use the last four numbers of the consumer’s social security number to gain access. This trick worked in unprecedented numbers, garnering Citi a large amount of funds, all garnished under the guise of Citibank judgments.

Several years ago, Experian credit reporting created a scoring model to identify consumers who were more apt to pay a defaulted credit card account. Citibank jumped on the program by instructing its national attorney network to file on those who the computer program identified as a possible paycheck. The result was a larger number of lawsuits, followed by a greater number of defaults upon the unsophisticated consumer.
Stop the Hamster, You Stop the Wheel

One infamous consumer attorney challenged the validity of the Citibank filings by deposing the employee signing hundreds if not thousands of affidavits attesting to the authenticity of the court filings. Persistent questioning on behalf of the attorney directed the “employee” to confess that she actually did not work for Citibank, but rather a Citibank subsidiary in another state and signed or verified anything her superior instructed. The testimony resulted in a number of cases dismissed by the court.

Even the accounts identified by Experian as less likely to pay proved profitable to Citi. Enter two bottom feeder junk debt buyers; Unifund Credit Card Receivables Fund, Inc. of Columbus, Ohio, owned by David G. Rosenberg. Unifund bought into this high stakes game with payments of 4-10 cents per dollar of face value and recovers an average of about 20 cents, grossing profit between 150-200 percent. Unifund puts the hamster back to work by hiring professional liars to read a computer screen, and sign affidavits that they had personal knowledge of the authenticity of the accounts. The wheel would continue to spin until these accounts too were in default. Depositions taken of Unifund employees contain information loaded with perjury and swearing to false statements.

Unifund owner David G. Rosenberg is partnered with ZB Limited Partnership out of New York. ZB stands for Zises Brothers, Jay and Henry, influential New York investors along with some other big name American and foreign partners. Rosenberg owns a sixteen room mansion on almost four acres across from the 12th tee of the Cincinnati Country Club. Born in Izmir Turkey in 1965, he owns a Challenger 604 private jet, is single and known for throwing lavish parties. Unifund has earned the nickname of ‘Unifraud’ based on a long history of allegedly illegal debt collection practices ranging from falsified court documents to using the three major credit reporting bureaus as a tool of extortion on purchased debts.

Bottom Feeder Two

LVNV Funding, LLC, Aka, Resurgent Capital Funding, LLC, Aka, Sherman Acquisitions, LLC of 15 South Main Street, #700, Greenville, SC are junk debt purchasers and collectors of Sears accounts that are handled exclusively by Citibank. Owner Tony Ettinger has a wide variety of subsidiaries and is a Delaware corporation. Director Scott Silver is listed as the manager of the LVNV Funding operations, guiding the war room from suite #206 in the same building. Sherman Financial Group owns Credit One Visa cards, which targeted subprime borrowers looking to build and repair credit profiles. Their income, according to SEC filings, exceeded more than $1 Billion. LVNV’s exclusive deal with Citibank gives them all Sears’ accounts that go into default. They attempt to revive old, out of statute accounts by offering consumers fee-harvester type credit cards, which ultimately costs them much more in fees and interest, not to mention the card agreement calls for a re-affirmation of a debt they may not legally owe.

Smoke and Mirrors

A trick employed by junk debt collectors such as Unifund and LVNV Funding that confuses consumers, lenders and barely skirts federal law, the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) is the manner in which these purchased accounts are reported to Experian, Trans Union and Equifax. When an account is opened with an original creditor such as Citibank and Sears, information is on all three-credit reports: the date the account was opened, the payment history, the date of last payment and the charge of date. The charge off date is no more than six months from the date of the last payment. The bottom feeder collectors use mis-direction by ignoring the date of last activity and the charge off date. Instead, they post information to the consumer report, intentionally designed to give a false impression that the defaulted account was more recent and exclusively that of the junk debt buyer. Additionally, many consumers complain that these bogus accounts are updated monthly and numerous ‘pulls’ are performed in an intentional extortion effort to lower FICO credit scores. Both Unifund and LVNV are guilty of this practice. Several states are already exploring remedies to prohibit this type of intentional infliction of collections. Several consumer groups have discussed a revision to the Fair Credit Reporting Act that would outlaw this practice.

Pulling Back the Curtain

Consumers unfortunate enough to find themselves stuck in a UNIFUND or LVNV nightmare of having to deal with Unifund and LVNV Funding should consider some options in response.

Citibank is in trouble, and with the government stepping in to help, most agree it will be cut up, dissected, spun off and by the end of ‘09 be a shadow of its former self. One Citibank lawyer told me he had accumulated tens of thousands of Citibank judgments with almost no chance of ever collecting anything on them. Literally hundreds of thousands of dollars wasted on court filings that gave them nothing in return. 

Bucket clanging may mean the well is dry.

Overloading the dockets with greed may have backfired on Unifund and LVNV. Close examination of their affidavits by battle weary consumers only served to be another kink the the debt buyer’s armor. Now, if it is legally proven the information being reported to the three credit bureaus by LVNV Funding and Unifund is not accurate as required by law (FCRA) those accounts would have to be removed. The grip on the claim gets looser. In the near future, if CitiBank is shattered and scattered, UNIFUND and LVNV may not have the luxury of collecting. Should that happen (the demise of Unifund & LVNV Funding); federal law allows that you can get their information deleted from your credit files.

TIME FOR AMERICA TO ROLL THE DICE

The odds are now in your favor. Consider: if either LVNV Funding or Unifund CCR Partners file a lawsuit for a Citibank account, they stand a greater chance of defeat than ever before. Based on information already available, in the form of employee depositions and court verdicts you have greatly increased odds of beating them in a lawsuit than they do of getting a judgment against you. That is, if you take an offensive approach the odds favor you over them.

First, remember that you have never entered into any type of agreement with a junk debt buyer and you never received goods or services from them. The documentation supporting their claim is manufactured in-house, and likely contains perjurous by employees who NEVER SEE AN ORIGINAL DOCUMENT. That is called hearsay and not admissible in most courts.

Your gamble is to retain the services of a consumer law professional, skilled in dealing with junk debt buyers and their bag of tricks. Weigh the cost of hiring an attorney verses their inflated claim and you end up paying a fraction of what they get if you fail to act. Additionally, you benefit by not being crippled by a judgment on your credit records, or having your wages and bank account garnished. Further, once dismissed, the vultures are out of your life for good. On the other side: seven years of additional bad credit, the enormous costs to you and the Yuk factor of dealing with a slimy debt collector.

The American Consumer controls the money in this country. The Wall Street whores need to understand we are sick and tired of being ripped off and taken advantage of by those who think its okay to bend and break the laws for profit. A backlash is coming; we will hold you accountable for your actions. STOP the frauds, STOP the rip-offs and STOP stealing our money.

NEXT LEVEL CREDIT

“Taking Your Credit to the Next Level”

ps. Our emphasis in bold letters  :)

 

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