Received call from a "Legal Department" telling me that that they are needing to serve me papers. When I call back, all I get is a voicemail box stating leave a message for the "legal department".

The phone number is 731-438-4781. Any help on who this is greatly appreciated.

It's the same-o [***] ploy that a debt collector uses to get you to call back, usually a fear tactic. There is almost never anyone there when you call back.

I got this call again today and this time I answered. I did some reading last night and found that I need to request a validation notice to find out if this is even a legitimate debt. When I answered, all I got was the recording again, with no opportunity to speak to a live person.

The name he gives is Rick Douglas, but he gives no company name at all. He did give a phone number to call to speak with the plaintiff: 888-386-0143. That number comes back to this business which apparently writes software for warehouse management: http://www.impactwmss.com/news/news.htm. I have never had any dealings with this company. There is also an entry for the company here: http://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-888-386-0143.

I have confirmed that it is illegal to threaten legal action if they have no intention to follow through. Clearly they have no such intention, because the recording says he wants to schedule a time to meet face to face to serve the papers, but since he "cannot reach me" he will go ahead. Well, he could have reached me if he was there when I answered, instead of being a recording. So therefore, this is a complete scam. I will be contacting an attorney, and I suggest others do the same.

i agree with this as well they keep calling me once a week from a recording saying that they were going to sevre me papers at my home or my employment so the recording saids to call 888-386-0143 so i call back and the lady said that i owe alot of money to a bank of america now i called bank of america and they have no records of me ever having a bank account with them. so i will call a lawyer's office and i will talk to a lawyer to find out if this is a scam.

I just got a call from Abbott Newman & Associates, a taped message telling me they were going to serve me a summons. I called them back at the number they left, 877-487-9932.  If you didn't reach anyone when you called them back you were lucky.  I got a real person that had little or no information to give me regarding my debt, which they claimed was a bad check (which I knew it wasn't) and just before hanging the phone up threatened me criminal charges!  I'm going to look some more around the Internet and see if I can post a complaint against them for using collection tactics that I'm sure are against the law.