Sep 26, 2014
I received a call saying that I owed on a payday loan from over 10 years ago, they had no current info on me, so I blew it off. What really freaked me out was that he said a bank I'd been to years ago did not honor the check. I;ve only ever taken 1 payday loan in my whole life & there was an issue because I went into labor the pay-off date, but they sent it to the bank. He seemed to have legit info and then said that the local sherrif was coming to put me in jail for 90days. He said my kid (that's how he got me, I never told him that), was going to be "remitted to foster care" because check fraud is a felony. He said the state paid my debt and now I owed the state, I would serve 90days. They could stop it if I paid a huge amount (original debt, legal fees, criminal fines, etc.) w/in the next hour. I lost my common sense and paniced; I told him I didn't have it. He said"Good luck w/the judge!" and told me the authorities would be there w/in the hour, I freaked and tried to borrow from a friend who was on top of things, thankfully, She called local police & I called my state's Attny General's Office.
1) No state pays your debt! I mean, that would be nice but every state would go bankrupt the first day before lunch.
2) You don't get a warning for an arrest, if that happened criminals would never get caught, also there must be a warrant. (no such warrant in my case)
3) The US does not have Debtors Prison, you don't serve time to work off a debt
4)Illlegal to threaten your children's removal or harm
5) If you really are going to court there is no stopping it, no last minute pay-off
6) Call the original creditor to see if they actually did hire whoever is calling you. (I called and the matter was closed the day my child was born) Also, a creditor must, legally give you info/access to whoever they sold the debt to, (the place for me never heard of these Silverman crocs)
7) A true collector must give all identifying info- address, qualifications, etc. They must provide tangible, written proof and a legit way to pay, A Monetgram into a random acct is a dead give away fot BS!
Here's the clincher, after all was said and done, I felt a deja vu type thing; I keep EVERYTHING and looked in old files... I had fallen for this before! I had been scared yrs ago about being arrested and paid over $1000 for the exact same "debt"! I remember repeatedly requesting a receipt, payoff letter, etc. Never.
Well, David Silverman, Scam Artist At Law... never again!