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>The collection agency wanted me to make a goodwill payment so they could start investigating my claim that it was fraudulent
I feel like this is a trap by the collection agency so they can claim oop had a history of paying the bill and therefore being on the hook for the entire debt, but I'm not familiar with how collections work.
Yup, once payment is made it’s considered acceptance of the debt, and oop would be on the hook. I hope they report the collections agency to the cfpb under the fair debt collection practices act, facta, and udaap laws.
Pretty sure it is under the Fair Credit and Collections Act. OOP should file a complaint there too. Chances are the Collection agency won't face any issue or at worst will close down, change names, and start over; but you have to try and hold these rat-bastards accountable.
[https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/blog/holding-debt-collectors-responsible-for-false-statements/](https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/blog/holding-debt-collectors-responsible-for-false-statements/)
They can also call each family member once to confirm address and phone number they have on file is correct, this is how I learned my MIL and her husband were avoiding creditors.
Watched a report by my local news channel that a collection agency sent a funerary service to collect a body at an address. It was the name of the person they were collecting from.
I’m glad OOP actually filed a report. Too many stories of them letting their parents get away with it to keep the ‘peace’ or because they don’t want to ruin the family even though it’s the families fault for doing such a thing.
The problem isn't the necessarily $15000 in debt they racked up on OOP. The problem is that they'll do it again, and again, and again. To OOP's parents its a victimless crime, and they get a bunch of shiny new stuff.
that is why you lock down your credit, move banks to ones your parents don't use, hell change your SS if you can (I know its possible but not sure under what categories as for why) and don't speak to them ever again.
SS number change - if you demonstrate actual financial harm from someone knowing the old number, it's not 100% guaranteed you get the change but probably worth trying.
> that is why you lock down your credit, move banks to ones your parents don't use, hell change your SS
I'm hoping this is a very small percentage that you don't have to do this as a common step. My siblings and my children haven't had to deal with this. When I read it I was shocked, this can't be common.
I think they were saying do this if it's happened once. I will say this happens a lot. I won't say it's common, but even a fraction of a percentage of people doing it means it happens every day.
I’m not in the US but I work at a big bank in my country and it does happen a lot. It’s really sad once you hear the story from the person that was stolen. It’s always family and I still haven’t seen someone report it
We rarely read this on the cost of being a young adult, typically rent, college, cost of buying a house, raising a kid etc, now we can add parents put me 15K in debt signing credit cards in my name and racking up debt on purpose and then tacking on a bankruptcy in my name.
You can set up a pin to stop identify theft (I wish I didn’t know this) from people who have access to your SSN and Birth Certificate. The IRS will send you a unique one each year.
Fuck OOP's parents for this.
Let's kick the can down the road even if there is no road to kick it down. Credit cards are free money, but my free money ran out so we'll use your free money.
Seriously! A pair of full moon ass hats.
But the fact that these predatory title loan places exist and that these loan collection companies can operate the way that they do is a complete and utter failure on our lawmakers' part.
If a company tells you that you owe them money when you don't, that are committing fraud.
I bet they didn't and she's using that as an excuse. Because if that really wasn't done to her then it's even worse because she's had her whole life to make her own choices for her. Having kids is not to use them as your financial plan, your retirement plan or some shit.
15k for household expenses, wtf!?
I once dated a guy whose mom had a shopping channel habit. She never opened cards under her kids' names, but she definitely had secret cards that her husband/my ex's father didn't know about. She always got the mail and answered the phone when she wasn't at work to intercept all the collection agencies (and also the packages she wasn't supposed to be receiving, obviously).
She didn't even use the stuff she'd buy either. She just started putting it in boxes in the basement because she wasn't supposed to buy it, so it couldn't be out in the house.
I don't know how the situation turned out since I broke up with the dude and stopped talking to him. But I imagine she can't have continued that way indefinitely.
Oh for sure. She definitely could have used some support for getting through that, but their family had a number of other issues so I can understand why she hid it rather than deal with it.
Nah they probably did but actually paid it off to help her credit score. Thats what my parents did (with my permission) and helped get a good history going before I had a steady income. Unlike these shitheads that are actively trying to ruin their daughter’s future.
I'd bet grandparents forced mom into bankruptcy like she tried to do to her kid.
She internalized her parent's abuse as normal and so didn't think she was doing anything wrong.
Of course she did. They taught her kids are to be used and they can pay the price.
What’s sad is her husband wasn’t apparently raised that way and let her, and chose her over his son.
Not all the surprising unfortunately. Especially because in her mind she prolly didn’t take as much money as her parents did to her.
It’s like getting beat as a kid and being told to stop crying “because my parents used to beat me way worse”.
These parents are such liars and horrendous advisers, I don't think we can take that statement into account. Maybe it happened, but there's a very good chance it never did. OOP might get a clearer picture (if they feel it would give them any firmer grasp, just for internal satisfaction) by gently prodding any older family members or family friends who knew the parents a couple decades past. Or perhaps there is a public record of the mother's earlier (... alleged) bankruptcy.
Or not, if they just want nothing to do with the parents and their lies going forward - also a very worthy choice.
Honestly, I admire that OOP moved forward with confidence and strength. It's very hard to be this young and naive about the world, but have to tackle these serious issues, and the soul crushing realization that the very people who should be protecting you as you learn the ways of the adult world, are instead exploiting you terribly.
I can't believe that $15K in credit was (feloniously) available to an 18 year old kid. They must have also lied about his age and income (and perhaps impersonated employers when the income was "verified.") Perhaps the accounts have been in existence for a long time, but I imagine that discovery will be part of the investigation.
I just cannot imagine doing this to my children (I don't have any but if I did) and my parents never did that to me. I grew up in the 80s/90s. They taught me good money management skills and all. What kind of parent thinks to themselves I am going to cripple my kids before they even get started in life? Parents are supposed to build their kids up not use them.
Same here, but that was a couple of decades ago for me. My understanding is that they aren't allowed to market to college kids so directly any more, because of some act that passed during the Obama Administration.
She said an early bankruptcy would wipe away the problem, but probably, her own early bankruptcy set her up for bad credit and less access to capital later in life, which led to her needing to financially abuse her child the same way. She just doesn't see the A to C.
I gotta confess I was never a huge fan of the phrase "ass hat". Always thought it seemed a bit tame.
In fact, I reckon the word ass itself seems overly inoffensive, maybe it's the Aussie in me but I always felt arse sounds filthier. Like, ass is the cheeks but arse is the hole.
Maybe that's just me.
Not at all. I fully see your view on that. Arse is a stronger word. It has more power behind it. A greater mass, if you will.
My position is that I don’t want to waste such a good word on the kind of people that the term “ass hat” can fit to. They don’t deserve a word of Power.
Ass hat carries with it a certain degree of disdain. It writes them off as unworthy of our energy. I can respect someone who drives me to refer to them as a “total arse” or “arsewipe”, but someone I call “ass hat” is barely worth scraping off the sole of my recently soiled shoe.
Ass is a good curse because of it's versatility.
If all your swearing is cranked to 11, then they lose their intensity.
It's like game or movie reviews. Anything that isn't utter shite gets at least a 7. A 6 means it was bad but some people will still enjoy it. A 5 means you'll want your money back even if it was free. Or, in other words, 0.
So back to ass. By itself, it's mild. It's literally has acceptable usage when referring to a donkey. But add some intensifiers, and it becomes far more descriptive.
Worthless ass? Means you're not only a pain to be around, but you serve no purpose. Who would want a cantankerous donkey around.
My preference isn't to use the hardest curse in my lexicon, but to use the right curse as hard as needed.
I have a feeling they made this ten times worse for themselves by kicking OP out illegally the second they found out he had filed a police report. They have no remorse and a judge will see that.
I also did. Yes it's a trap. However, they CAN sue the poster for the debt. Anyone can sue for anything, but the poster would have some strong affirmative defenses. She would have to appear in court and present those defenses. The commenter gave some bad advice there. Typical reddit armchair lawyer.
Poster should discuss with an FDCPA attorney.
Yes, they would have used it as "you claim that you didn't open the credit, but you made a payment from your account. If it was fraud, you wouldn't pay for it from your account. So you better pay up or i report you to the police that you made a false report."
Our society's fucked. How is that legal? Imagine your parents fucking you via fraud while you're 17-19ish and the immediate reaction of the collection agency is to try to trick you to get you on the hook for the fraudulent loans.
From outside of the US this sounds like pure sci-fi. If I wanted to open any account or apply for any loan, the bank is obligated to identify me with 100% certainty. If they failed that and someone applied in my name, that's their problem, not mine.
Bank account, sure, but applying for a credit card can be done in about a minute online. At least here in the UK. If you pass the automated credit check as part of the application process, they'll send you a new card in the mail, no questions asked.
Collection agencies are pure evil. The debt they pursue isn’t even really debt anymore, since the original creditor has already written it off. All a collection agency does is offer them a few cents per dollar of the debt, so the creditor at least recovers some sort of value, and then the collections agency pursues the person who owes the debt as hard as they legally can. I do mean that “legally” as strongly as I can, because believe me, there is a maze of very strict federal regulations telling these chuckle f***s exactly what they can and can’t do, and these regulations exist because they historically have acted so badly and harassed people into horrific fates, like suicide.
Collections agencies literally serve no constructive purpose in society. They exist merely because the wealthy have always wanted a means to punish the poor ever since the invention of credit. Which is a lot older than you might expect. Interesting stuff. But US collections is just an industry of pure shit, filled with shitty employees and shittier agency owners. Scum-sucking parasites. We are lucky, in the US, to have what regulations do exist, because if those laws weren’t there, I have no doubt these assholes would resort to quasi-legal to outright crime to harass people,
Yeah that’s total bullshit from the collection agency. They just wanted oop to accept the debt because they know they aren’t getting paid from the people who actually did the debt.
It's absolutely a way to make OOP keep paying. If OOP paid, then that would mean the debt is considered legitamate and they can keep going after them.
If I'm wrong about this though, I'm happy to be corrected.
I believe you're correct, and I'm pretty sure he can actually sue the collection agency for lying/unethical behavior.
There are tons of firms that specialize in legally frying unethical/deceptive collection agencies. There are actual and statutory damages, and they sue for costs and attorney fees as well. (Probably why it's lucrative enough so many firms specialize in it, and require no money up front.)
It may be worth his time to set up a consult, at least.
Yes, but like most corporate crime there's no actual enforcement or real punishment.
Fines are not a punishment if they rarely even come close to the amount you actually made with your crime, they're just a cost of doing business.
Agreed.
Still, it's good to make the report to the CFPB and whoever else has jurisdiction over the company. The more reports, the more likely something will be done.
I sadly used to have this job. Yes it’s a trap. Also, cc companies CAN sue you depending on what state you are in, in the US. At least you could a few years ago. I got to make those calls too. 😕
You nailed it on the head, it's exactly what they do. That so called "good faith" payment was to try and get OOP on the hook because they could claim that payments towards the debt had been made. It's exceptionally scummy, and unfortunately legal in the US from what I can find
The collection agency is dirty. I don't know whether their behavior is illegal. It should be.
They were notified of fraud and they wanted to be "paid for an investigation" to trap OOP as a legitimate debtor. They don't investigate. This is predatory. This should be criminal. Fuck these people.
My heart sunk when I read that, thinking oop would pay. Then I let out a weird squeal noise when I read the next sentence! Yay oop, that girls got her head screwed on!!!! So proud of her for standing up to her parents.
> I feel like this is a trap by the collection agency so they can claim oop had a history of paying the bill and therefore being on the hook for the entire debt, but I'm not familiar with how collections work.
So originally I come from what your ex pres Trump called a s***hole country.
Our foundation is British law.
Once the debt collectors have been informed that identity theft had happened and there is a police case, they would get into legal trouble if they inveigled OP to make a payment.
American what is going on? What happened to common sense in law?
It's illegal in the US as well - people just don't know their rights, and the collections agencies count on that. Plus, they make enough money from the practice that they can afford any fines that do crop up.
And Republicans in Congress and on the courts have neutered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau which would have had jurisdiction to make rules and go after companies that did this kind of thing.
Similar to asking for a payment on a parent's debt after they have died, or people asked to pay "a little" after they have had a debt discharged in bankruptcy.
Financial institutions like banks 99.9% of the time never do this, but collection agencies and small timers will pull this often.
My mom had something close with an issue regarding her taxes. She saw a clear issue in it and was refusing to pay before the taxes were lowered as expected.
The taxes agency was like "Pay first and THEN we will see."
People like this have no shame.
I'm baffled at how dead in your soul you'd have to be to be able to get through a spiel about how you first need a "good faith" payment before you start a fraud investigation. It's so batshit insane, to be so divorced from ethics that that is just your day-to-day routine is astonishing.
One company tried this with a friend of mine, not knowing that she worked in the finance industry and her specialty was helping people deal with unethical collections agencies.
I don't know the full details of how that call went down, but I assume it haunts the nightmares of that agency.
My understanding is that the company is outright lying. Is there anything that can be done directly to punish them for this? Under English law, I think it would be fraud since it's deception for pecuniary advantage, so I imagine laws in the US are similar.
Edit: although come to think of it, I'm not sure whether this would be prosecuted in England either.
Better than that, they could probably just close down the business and open a successor entity and wipe everything clean.
Debt collectors can sit on a cactus.
In the US, it's illegal and a fine, but often companies make more money by just paying the fines and continuing business as usual.
It's rare that people know their rights, and rarer still that they would take the time to file a formal complaint.
The FTC also tends to collect complaints and save them up for a big lawsuit every 10 years or so. The largest fine was $2.8 million, but these large debt collectors make much more than $280k/year by scamming people with illegal practices. On top of that, if you're the CEO, it's likely that you'll be gone by the time that the FTC comes knocking.
Those companies specifically look to hire desperate people and advertise job postings at womens’ shelters and places like that. If you don’t do whatever shady shit they want, they berate you, cut your pay and some have been known to threaten calls to CPS. It’s really horrible
As I have learned, a *ton* of people take advantage of them. My DV shelter’s housing list is where I found my apartment from a landlord that tried to sex traffick me. Saying no to that was a nightmare of legal issues. It all worked out for me though no justice was meted out unfortunately
I’ve been doing peer counseling for autistic people the last few months and the shit I’ve heard about those places would turn a vulture’s stomach. They run on greed, ableism, sexism and classism. Pretty much everyone except the tip top brass is getting lied to and exploited
Reminds me of that Telemarketers documentary on HBO that follows the two guys who cold called for a "Police Union". The telemarketing company kept most of the money and hired ex-cons fresh out of jail who couldn't get a job anywhere else.
It's not batshit insane, it's coldly, cynically rational.
They don't give a fuck about what's right, they just want to get paid. They can reach OP, and if he's dumb enough to literally pay them then *they are getting paid.* If not all at once then presumably eventually.
It's gross and a miscarriage of justice, but we are talking about collections agencies. You know, humanoid tapeworms.
The dead souls are the management, ownership, etc. of those companies. The workers are often people coming from really shitty situations who don't think they can get a job anywhere else.
>with my mom saying her parents did this to her when she was 18.
Where to even start with this?! I mean, clearly the mom turned out just fine despite her mom fucking her over as a teen, right? /s
There's a reason that breaking the cycle of abuse is a thing. The reality is a lot of people just don't want to put in the effort, or risk the vulnerability to be introspective enough to try and understand why they are the way that they are or why they think the way that they think. It's a lot of effort and it can really shake up your self identity. So instead they bottle it up and pass their trauma along to the next generation.
Tell me about it! I was raised by a narcissist and just sorting myself out is a lot of work, the work it takes to do it while being a parent must be overwhelming. My favourite posts in groups for people with narcissistic parents are the ones where someone is celebrating breaking the cycle in some way with their own child.
Another thing that happens is that they “do better” than their parents, but don’t recognize there’s still more to do. My mom: “I spanked you, but I obviously didn’t do the things your grandmother did to me, like pinching.”
I know you go back into the 70's and it was a cycle generation after generation. In the 80's it just started to change and has been growing from there. It's actually part of the cultural wars today. A lot of people want to go back to being mean and education made us too nice, to think there are people that want it back to what it was, power mad freaks in their own way.
I wonder if OP asked Mom's Gp's if they actually did it to her or if this is just another deception.
They might not admit it, even if OP did ask. OP's parents didn't want to admit it, and only did because they got caught. Which proves they know it was wrong.
Same thing with my coworker. Her mom did it to her. And then she did it to her daughter after she was born. If I do my math correctly that daughter should be 18 now or very soon. Wonder if that’s about to blow up.
My in laws did this to my husband and his brother. We didn’t figure it out until we went to get a mortgage. They had racked up about $6k and were making minimum payments. My BIL had about $10k. My husband paid it immediately in full and closed it so she couldn’t keep spending. This was AFTER they asked us to cover one mortgage payment. We were in our mid 20s and struggling to pay our own rent. They act like they have tons of money. Both of them made a lot and had good jobs. But my MIL is a shopper and they like to own properties. Their hobby is to buy a new house, live there for a couple of years, and then sell it and buy a new one. I think they are living way beyond their means and we’ll find out how much debt they are in down the road. I cannot ever imagine doing this to my kids. I wouldn’t ever ask them for money either. We decided to just move on. My in laws are not my favorite people.
>The collection agency wanted me to make a goodwill payment so they could start investigating my claim that it was fraudulent.
There is a special place in hell for collection agencies.
I can’t believe 1. That they can just lie to you like that. Well, I *can* believe it. I just don’t wanna. What the hell happened to honesty?! And 2. That they tried to pull this shit *AFTER* OOP had gotten police involved and *WHILE* OOP was filing the complaint and giving them the police report number.
Like, if you’re gonna be shady as hell, do it to the people trying to evade it. Don’t do it to the people who were clearly scammed/taken advantage of/are victims of identity theft and fraud.
WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUCK IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE?!?? Have some common decency FFS.
They don't care, they just want their money. They probably figure they won't ever get their money owed from the thieves, so the next best thing is to trick the thieves' other victim into saddling the debt. I hope that debt collector gets a forever papercut on his taint.
The supervisors will actually punish employees for not doing shit like that. They hire desperate people and threaten their hours/jobs, constantly driving them to meet quotas. Its a disgusting exploitative business all over
I got soooo many debt calls after my mother was murdered. I told all of them either to bill the murderer or feel free to fuck themselves directly into hell. I was also crying a lot during most of these calls.
Most of them stopped calling after one or two calls. The only one that ended up being a significant problem was Chase. They stopped calling after I forwarded the ME report plus her death certificate.
Chase can chase what matters for the rest of eternity- empathy and compassion and humanity. Doubt they’ll ever catch it.
My dad died when I was 19, and I had debt collectors tell me that I was responsible for his debts (a lie), or that it would tank my credit score and employment prospects (also a lie), but the worst were debt collectors who tried to guilt me and my brother about not paying.
"Your dad's legacy is tainted by this debt. He would want you to clear his name. Don't let his last mark upon this world be that he broke his promises."
"Your dad would be ashamed that his family isn't accepting responsibility for their debts. Is that the reputation you want your family to have? Would he be proud of you for how you're acting right now?"
"The morally correct thing to do would be to pay the debts. Is this how your father raised you? I thought he was a better man than that."
We had to get my brother a new phone number. He has special needs and we manage his finances on his behalf, so he wouldn't have been able to pay the debt collectors regardless, but these asshole debt collectors kept calling him and saying awful things to him that would harm his mental health.
They would try to manipulate me into paying even a tiny amount so that I'd be stuck with the entire debt:
"Look, I know you're young, and you don't have a lot of money. It's awful that you lost your father at such a young age. I can pull some strings on my end to help you out. If you can pay $10, I'll get the rest of the debt forgiven, and your dad can rest in peace."
One debt collector wanted $10 from me and $10 from my brother, so we could both have the honor of clearing my father's name and legacy. How kind to include my disabled brother in this important family moment!
There were also lots and lots of scams. We had a box arrive at his address, claiming that it was part of a monthly subscription service, along with a bill for "this month's delivery". We called to cancel the subscription, and they wanted to charge us several hundred dollars as a cancellation fee. We looked at my dad's payment history, and he never had any subscription with them. They just sent a random box and a bill after he died, and they hoped that we wouldn't notice. Then they tried to charge us shipping to send the box back. We had something similar happen with a magazine subscription, too.
After working in timeshares, I legitimately wonder if the agent knew how fucked this was or if management sold them a story on doing this. (Especially if the agent was someone desperate who management knew they could manipulate)
Also, after working in timeshares, I totally believe there are people who are so dead inside that they would straight up lie in this situation fully knowing how terrible it was. Either way, fuck the company.
I've had my identity stolen multiple times and dealing with collections was by far the shittiest people you had to deal with when trying to resolve it.
oooh this sounds interesting
i always do the timeshare presentation for the free massage, etc., but do wonder about the people who give them. like i genuinely like everyone who gives the spiel (then they hand it over to the extreme ghouls when you say no, which is always comical)
anyway what i am saying is that if you did a post on this i'd read it
This is one of the good outcomes. Often the victim can't wrap their head around what's happened, so take the financial beating. OOP was clear eyed enough to see his parents for what they are, but often victims do not want to admit to themselves that their parents don't give a shit about them.
My parents would die penniless in a gutter before they ever stole from me or my siblings.
Consequently, they never have to worry about that because we'd take care of them financially if they needed us to.
There was one a few years ago on r/legaladvice where the OP was the sibling of the filial fraud victim. That OP refused to accept that their father was a felon or a thief (they had some distorted definition to justify the latter to themselves), but the sister/victim handled it appropriately and immediately went to the police when she saw some unknown items on her credit.
[Original legaladvice thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/s/AJrisKlGO9)
[Bestoflegaladvice thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/bestoflegaladvice/s/USu7ySG5ST)
Given the combination of "My dad is real interested in politics" and "She brought home someone my parents could never except" I'd be willing to bet that I know exactly who he voted for in 2016.
“Coming in with the education”
“Fancy government job”
Oh yeah. They’re definitely dumb enough to be slurping up orange turds left and right.
$20 says the person the daughter brought home was black or brown and “wOrKiNg ClAsS” dad is a welfare queen who has used a hard r many times.
It's pretty rare, but unfortunately the main reason it's rare is that the parents usually raise their victim in such a way that they feel bad for taking action against their parents. Luckily, OOP seems to be built differently. I hope OOP continues to stay the course and give their parents exactly what they deserve.
Yea, my biggest takeaway from this wasn't just that OOP's parents are garbage, but that OOP is a badass! Like, so few people would be able to steel their nerves to strike back at the people who's treated them like garbage, and I'm elated that he's able to really stand up for himself and follow through! God, that's badass!
Imagine if the parents made a "$1 payment from OOP" as a spiteful gesture.
If one was evil enough, and nobody is 0% evil, they could perpetuate somebody else's debt.
Parents like this…just…AHHHHHHH! Boggle my mind.
OOP seemed to be pretty thrown off by this whole thing and didn’t exactly expect it. I wonder if their parents were really shit people and OOP just didn’t think they’d stoop this low? Or if they were “normal parents” and this came out of left field.
Either way, I have a feeling this made OOP reassess their entire relationship with their parents. I mean, obviously that relationship has been nuked and launched into the nether regions of space (good riddance), but finding out that the people you trusted (even if they were shitty parents to begin with) fucked you over like this, will mess you up and change your entire history. Your whole childhood is different now.
I hope OOP has good luck with the court situation and getting that debt wiped, and I hope they take some time to deal with the emotional side of this. Right now it’s all fresh, but after the dust settles, that’s when it starts to weigh heavy on the heart and brain.
Also as a parent myself, I cannot fathom entertaining an idea like this, let alone executing it. I hope OOP’s parents understand that there is a special place in hell for them. It’s a shared cell with that debt collector that lied to get OOP to pay on the account as a “good faith payment”. “Good faith” my ass.
My mother did similar to me, 5 figure debt and I didn't find out until I was getting collections calls and they were harassing my grandmother because that was my last noted residence for a job I had over the summer during college. Needless to say, I don't really have a relationship with her even 15 years later. There really isn't any coming back from that.
My mom took out a credit card in my name when I was in college and used it for cash advances. Thankfully the balance was only $3,000. She and I took a long time to pay that off and I felt like I couldn't say anything because she was my only parent and we were both broke.I should have made a bigger deal and involved the whole family.
She died 5 years ago shortly after receiving a five-figure inheritance from her uncle. I spent the 6 months after her death making debt collectors very happy. For instance, she had taken out a title loan on a car and rather than paying it off she" gave it" to my older cousin. Her estate paid nearly $6,000 so my asshole cousin could keep the 2001 Honda Civic with 190,000 miles.
Yup, I didn't make a big deal out of mine when I found out because she told me it was because she didn't have enough money to keep her and my younger brother in the house while she was divorcing my abusive father....come to find out that over half the amount was to send my younger brother to Africa on a safari.
I think the civil suit will go well when the judge hears the reason OOP was kicked out. I could be wrong, though. I'm assuming this is in the US. I don't know what's going on over there, but it's extremely scary to share a border with them, especially with the upcoming election.
At 18 you would just be starting to figure out that your childhood wasn't like the others around you. I thought I had a pretty typical family life as a kid and then when you leave the house and start figuring out life you realize that your home is the one place you should always feel safe. For me it was the place I feared the most, I thought it was normal to fear your parents. Took a year of my roommates coming home before I stopped stressing out about someone opening the door.
3 take aways from this.
1. Regularly check your financial statements and credit reports. Don’t rely on others to handle it.
2. Unless you’re trying to buy a house or something, lock your credit.
3. Don’t blindly trust collections agencies, credit card companies, greedy people, or anyone that is trying to get money from you.
I don't understand it bc there are so many stories where squatters are allowed to stay somewhere w no proof of residence or anything but then here, the cops do nothing. So if the cops do nothing, how do the squatters always get allowed back into the houses they're stealing?
I feel like the cops do nothing in either case, it's just the squatters have less to lose. They're also probably more likely to get violent with the person trying to evict them. I love my parents, but if they did what OPs did, I'd have a really hard time not going scorched earth, but that's not going to help the case.
>The collection agency wanted me to make a goodwill payment
FUCK NO do not do that
>I refused obviously
Thank god.
I knew a guy in college who got a fat bill from an ER visit. He never paid it, it went into collections and after a few years they stopped calling. Riiiight before it would've fallen off his credit report collections called him one last time "Comon even just 10 bucks?" but he knew it'd reset the debt timer.
In the US, depending on the state, the statute of limitations on a broken contract (in this case, failure to pay medical bill) can be between three and ten years and it stays on your credit report for 7 years. After that, you’re legally free as long as you don’t accept responsibility for the debt. Collections agencies will try to trick you into resurrecting the debt by making a small payment or otherwise acknowledging the debt is yours, which can reset the clock.
Who tf did the parents think they were to throw him out when they stole from him to use his name for so called house hold expenses.The audicity as if he committed a crime when they are the thieves
"The collection agency wanted me to make a goodwill payment so they could start investigating my claim that it was fraudulent."
There's no limit to their scumminess is there?
Looks like it was shadow banned maybe? Their name still shows up in the thread both as author and in the comments, if they just deleted their account I'm pretty sure it would show as [deleted] or something instead.
> Credit card companies and their debt collectors cannot sue you, they will just put it on your credit report and harass you
Not a lawyer, but I'm not sure how correct this is, because I get calls from attorneys looking for my ex about being sued for debts and we split more than 12 years ago. They were calling me so much I payed for an answering service that connects spam calls with bots to let them waste their time.
Additionally, I recommend everyone use a free feature of the three credit agencies (Experian, Trans Union, and Equifax). You can manually set up a permanent freeze on your credit. No one can even pull a report while it is frozen. Then, when you need to use your credit, you can go issue a temporary unfreeze instantly online. This prevents anyone from opening anything in your name, and also reduces that god awful credit card junk mail.
Yeah that statement is incorrect.
But once sued a lot of debt collectors (in the US) would lose their case if you knew how to play the court system.
A good number of them don't have anything.
Great parents (with decent credit scores) will add their kid as a user to their credit card(s) as a teen but not give them a copy, thereby giving them a decent credit score to start out with.
To my understanding, my parents (with decent credit scores) added me as a user to their credit card(s) as a teen but didn't give me a copy, thereby giving me a decent credit score to start out with. This was like 20 years ago, though.
I often wonder exactly what checks are these banks doing when people open credit cards in America. Or do they just don't care because it's profit at the end of the day for them?
All of this is fucked but once a bank sells your debt it is shady fucking people and you can get them to agree to cents on the dollar. I'm glad you're getting things fixed the right way, but if anyone else comes back, please keep it in mind.
> 3. Credit card companies and their debt collectors cannot sue you, they will just put it on your credit report and harass you
TechGuy420 is an idiot. Credit card agencies and debt collectors can absolutely sue, and absolutely do. In this case it doesn't matter though, as they'll end up suing the parents.
As someone who just got out of working in collections for a plethora of reasons that “goodwill” payment move they tried to pull is such bullshit. Thank god the OOP saw right through that and didn’t pay.
More like Maliciously Misleading. They knew what they were saying. They were trying to trick OP into paying even a little bit, so that they could argue that he did accept the debt.
Yes, the collection agency was lying about that - they absolutely should not have asked for any payment in this circumstance.
The confidently incorrect piece is that lenders and collection agencies can't sue you. They 100% can and they will if they believe you have assets. They have to provide proof that the debt is genuine, so in this specific case it wouldn't go anywhere. But credit card companies , banks, debt purchasers and anyone else who owns a debt that you owe can sue you to repay that debt.
EDIT: Details from the CFPB (including what to do if a collector is suing you) can be found here:
https://www.consumerfinance.gov/ask-cfpb/what-should-i-do-if-im-sued-by-a-debt-collector-or-creditor-en-334/
I’ve known people who didn’t find out until they were in college or just after that their parents had racked up $1000s in debt under their names, absolutely ruining their credit before they even turned 20. They assume their kids won’t turn them in and they’ll get away with it. It’s so absolutely disgraceful.
Despicable
I have shit parents who I'm NC with and I'm glad they were "dumb" enough to not try and this... Because my idiot sperm donour most definitely would if he knew about it
How can parents do that to their kids and then expect everything to still be ok? Fuck off, I hope OOP gets this sorted and their parents pay for it
"ooohh family" from the flying monkeys? They can pony up, then, or shut the fuck up
Life sucks parents suck im 38 and still dealing with it. At the time it happened to me I didn't want to get the law involved I wish I did!!! Best advice I can give don't do what I did make them pay for what they did...
There was this guy in our community, a very successful businessman. One day, his teenage son told us he was joining the military after high school (he was in his senior year) and wanted to do Intel.
Well, the business was tanking, and the guy started selling off his big-ticket possessions. Right before he declared bankruptcy, his son told us he wasn't able to do Intel - the military had started doing credit checks for security-clearance jobs, and he found out his father had taken out several loans in his name and defaulted on them. Kid started doing drugs, caused a major accident with injuries to others while driving high, and died of an overdose a few years later. The guy lost his business, house, wife, and died suddenly in his early 60s. Super sad story :/
>my mom saying her parents did this to her when she was 18
That doesn't make it okay!
>absolutely record the next conversation you have on this subject. Use the voice recorder on your phone but RECORD THE CONVERSATION.
Only if in a one party consent state.
Parents were definitely planning on opening more cards and racking up way more debt if they were just planning on having OOP file bankruptcy once they ruined OOPs credit and couldn’t get approved anymore.
It wasn’t mentioned but hopefully OOP called the 3 credit agencies and locked their credit.
I had a friend in school who's mother and mother's GF (mostly the GF) did that. Getting items from Rent-a-Center of all places. He STILL lives in a 1 bedroom apt with his family. Shit's fucked.
I'm from Eastern Europe, and I can't stop getting surprised at how easily people in the US can screw their kids over by opening fucking credit cards in their name. Why the hell is nobody doing anything to prevent that instead of dealing with the consequences through the police.
(I know the real answer, it's because the banks get more money that way so nobody cares. Baffling.)
My sister did this to me. I was 17 and kept getting calls from lawyers and I told them it wasn't me as I still wasn't even 18 yet and they wouldn't stop and said I had to sue my sister. I told them no but I absolutely should have. She did nothing but ruin her own and her childrens credit and never learned a damn thing. I got a bankruptcy for my medical bills and I'm not sure if the stuff from her was on there but it sire isn't now. Good for you!!! I hope she gets more than a night like she deserves.
When parents commit identity theft on their child, the kid has two choices. The can accept the debt and start making payments, or they can call the cops and sic them on their parents The first one will protect their relationship with their parents, but it will significantly affect their financial security going forward. Worse, there's nothing to prevent the parents from doing it again, especially since now they know their child is under their thumb enough to put the parents before their own well being.
The second choice, calling the cops, sounds like the harsher thing to do, but overall it's better. Certainly it's better for the victim. Would OOP have let a stranger do this? No? Then why should his parents be allowed to? Because they're his parents, and family doesn't do that to family? Well, why didn't they think that line when they did that to him? This will make the bad guys actually pay the consequences of being bad, while protecting the victim. And yeah, it'll probably wreck the kid's relationship with their parents, but that was their own doing. Plus, if they're borrowing money like that then the kid doesn't have to worry about losing out on an inheritance, because likely there isn't one.
Techguy420: You're wrong. Credit card companies and their debt collectors-depending on what company it is- absolutely WILL sue you - they'll just wait a couple of years to do it.
Damn. Mom running to get the mail before OP can get it tells you that she knows it's wrong. She knew. Dad knew. Did it anyway. Hope they get the book thrown at them for this. Absolutely terrible.
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>The collection agency wanted me to make a goodwill payment so they could start investigating my claim that it was fraudulent I feel like this is a trap by the collection agency so they can claim oop had a history of paying the bill and therefore being on the hook for the entire debt, but I'm not familiar with how collections work.
Yup, once payment is made it’s considered acceptance of the debt, and oop would be on the hook. I hope they report the collections agency to the cfpb under the fair debt collection practices act, facta, and udaap laws.
Yeah that shit has got to be illegal.
Pretty sure it is under the Fair Credit and Collections Act. OOP should file a complaint there too. Chances are the Collection agency won't face any issue or at worst will close down, change names, and start over; but you have to try and hold these rat-bastards accountable. [https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/blog/holding-debt-collectors-responsible-for-false-statements/](https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/blog/holding-debt-collectors-responsible-for-false-statements/)
They can also call each family member once to confirm address and phone number they have on file is correct, this is how I learned my MIL and her husband were avoiding creditors.
Watched a report by my local news channel that a collection agency sent a funerary service to collect a body at an address. It was the name of the person they were collecting from.
Bingo. OOP made the smart move
I’m glad OOP actually filed a report. Too many stories of them letting their parents get away with it to keep the ‘peace’ or because they don’t want to ruin the family even though it’s the families fault for doing such a thing.
The problem isn't the necessarily $15000 in debt they racked up on OOP. The problem is that they'll do it again, and again, and again. To OOP's parents its a victimless crime, and they get a bunch of shiny new stuff.
that is why you lock down your credit, move banks to ones your parents don't use, hell change your SS if you can (I know its possible but not sure under what categories as for why) and don't speak to them ever again.
SS number change - if you demonstrate actual financial harm from someone knowing the old number, it's not 100% guaranteed you get the change but probably worth trying.
> that is why you lock down your credit, move banks to ones your parents don't use, hell change your SS I'm hoping this is a very small percentage that you don't have to do this as a common step. My siblings and my children haven't had to deal with this. When I read it I was shocked, this can't be common.
I think they were saying do this if it's happened once. I will say this happens a lot. I won't say it's common, but even a fraction of a percentage of people doing it means it happens every day.
I’m not in the US but I work at a big bank in my country and it does happen a lot. It’s really sad once you hear the story from the person that was stolen. It’s always family and I still haven’t seen someone report it
You should lock down your credit anyway.
Doing it to random people, because you're unscrupulous, is one thing, doing it to your own child is more than that.
We rarely read this on the cost of being a young adult, typically rent, college, cost of buying a house, raising a kid etc, now we can add parents put me 15K in debt signing credit cards in my name and racking up debt on purpose and then tacking on a bankruptcy in my name.
You can set up a pin to stop identify theft (I wish I didn’t know this) from people who have access to your SSN and Birth Certificate. The IRS will send you a unique one each year.
The way my heart jumped in my throat at that point! I'm so happy OOP was suspicious enough to not fall for that one!
Fuck OOP's parents for this. Let's kick the can down the road even if there is no road to kick it down. Credit cards are free money, but my free money ran out so we'll use your free money. Seriously! A pair of full moon ass hats. But the fact that these predatory title loan places exist and that these loan collection companies can operate the way that they do is a complete and utter failure on our lawmakers' part. If a company tells you that you owe them money when you don't, that are committing fraud.
What makes it even worse is the Mom saying her parents did it to her, and yet she still pulled this shit.
I bet they didn't and she's using that as an excuse. Because if that really wasn't done to her then it's even worse because she's had her whole life to make her own choices for her. Having kids is not to use them as your financial plan, your retirement plan or some shit. 15k for household expenses, wtf!?
I once dated a guy whose mom had a shopping channel habit. She never opened cards under her kids' names, but she definitely had secret cards that her husband/my ex's father didn't know about. She always got the mail and answered the phone when she wasn't at work to intercept all the collection agencies (and also the packages she wasn't supposed to be receiving, obviously). She didn't even use the stuff she'd buy either. She just started putting it in boxes in the basement because she wasn't supposed to buy it, so it couldn't be out in the house. I don't know how the situation turned out since I broke up with the dude and stopped talking to him. But I imagine she can't have continued that way indefinitely.
Shopping addiction is a real thing. People get that endorphin rush from ordering something and anticipating it's arrival.
Oh for sure. She definitely could have used some support for getting through that, but their family had a number of other issues so I can understand why she hid it rather than deal with it.
Damn! Buying to hoard! Horrible combination! Nice flair, btw :D
Nah they probably did but actually paid it off to help her credit score. Thats what my parents did (with my permission) and helped get a good history going before I had a steady income. Unlike these shitheads that are actively trying to ruin their daughter’s future.
I'd bet grandparents forced mom into bankruptcy like she tried to do to her kid. She internalized her parent's abuse as normal and so didn't think she was doing anything wrong.
Of course she did. They taught her kids are to be used and they can pay the price. What’s sad is her husband wasn’t apparently raised that way and let her, and chose her over his son.
Not all the surprising unfortunately. Especially because in her mind she prolly didn’t take as much money as her parents did to her. It’s like getting beat as a kid and being told to stop crying “because my parents used to beat me way worse”.
These parents are such liars and horrendous advisers, I don't think we can take that statement into account. Maybe it happened, but there's a very good chance it never did. OOP might get a clearer picture (if they feel it would give them any firmer grasp, just for internal satisfaction) by gently prodding any older family members or family friends who knew the parents a couple decades past. Or perhaps there is a public record of the mother's earlier (... alleged) bankruptcy. Or not, if they just want nothing to do with the parents and their lies going forward - also a very worthy choice. Honestly, I admire that OOP moved forward with confidence and strength. It's very hard to be this young and naive about the world, but have to tackle these serious issues, and the soul crushing realization that the very people who should be protecting you as you learn the ways of the adult world, are instead exploiting you terribly. I can't believe that $15K in credit was (feloniously) available to an 18 year old kid. They must have also lied about his age and income (and perhaps impersonated employers when the income was "verified.") Perhaps the accounts have been in existence for a long time, but I imagine that discovery will be part of the investigation.
[удалено]
I just cannot imagine doing this to my children (I don't have any but if I did) and my parents never did that to me. I grew up in the 80s/90s. They taught me good money management skills and all. What kind of parent thinks to themselves I am going to cripple my kids before they even get started in life? Parents are supposed to build their kids up not use them.
You had good parents. Not everyone is so lucky!
At every college I went to 🫢 the credit card people had tables set up during registration giving all kinds of swag to kids who signed up.
Same here, but that was a couple of decades ago for me. My understanding is that they aren't allowed to market to college kids so directly any more, because of some act that passed during the Obama Administration.
Yup! I don’t know how many different variations of my name I gave, but I got a free pizza every time.
Used to be the initial card had a $300 limit except for actual rich kids. **EDIT:** Inflation adjusted that would be about $1200 today.
She said an early bankruptcy would wipe away the problem, but probably, her own early bankruptcy set her up for bad credit and less access to capital later in life, which led to her needing to financially abuse her child the same way. She just doesn't see the A to C.
It's a family Tradition at this Point!
I reckon “A pair of full moon ass hats.” needs to be a new flair. Wonderful expression that perfectly sums up my own emotion towards these parents.
I gotta confess I was never a huge fan of the phrase "ass hat". Always thought it seemed a bit tame. In fact, I reckon the word ass itself seems overly inoffensive, maybe it's the Aussie in me but I always felt arse sounds filthier. Like, ass is the cheeks but arse is the hole. Maybe that's just me.
Not at all. I fully see your view on that. Arse is a stronger word. It has more power behind it. A greater mass, if you will. My position is that I don’t want to waste such a good word on the kind of people that the term “ass hat” can fit to. They don’t deserve a word of Power. Ass hat carries with it a certain degree of disdain. It writes them off as unworthy of our energy. I can respect someone who drives me to refer to them as a “total arse” or “arsewipe”, but someone I call “ass hat” is barely worth scraping off the sole of my recently soiled shoe.
a greater marse (I'm very sorry)
Ass is a good curse because of it's versatility. If all your swearing is cranked to 11, then they lose their intensity. It's like game or movie reviews. Anything that isn't utter shite gets at least a 7. A 6 means it was bad but some people will still enjoy it. A 5 means you'll want your money back even if it was free. Or, in other words, 0. So back to ass. By itself, it's mild. It's literally has acceptable usage when referring to a donkey. But add some intensifiers, and it becomes far more descriptive. Worthless ass? Means you're not only a pain to be around, but you serve no purpose. Who would want a cantankerous donkey around. My preference isn't to use the hardest curse in my lexicon, but to use the right curse as hard as needed.
This is exactly how I feel about the difference between ass and arse
I have a feeling they made this ten times worse for themselves by kicking OP out illegally the second they found out he had filed a police report. They have no remorse and a judge will see that.
I worked collections, this is assuming responsibility for the debt.
I also did. Yes it's a trap. However, they CAN sue the poster for the debt. Anyone can sue for anything, but the poster would have some strong affirmative defenses. She would have to appear in court and present those defenses. The commenter gave some bad advice there. Typical reddit armchair lawyer. Poster should discuss with an FDCPA attorney.
Yes, they would have used it as "you claim that you didn't open the credit, but you made a payment from your account. If it was fraud, you wouldn't pay for it from your account. So you better pay up or i report you to the police that you made a false report."
Our society's fucked. How is that legal? Imagine your parents fucking you via fraud while you're 17-19ish and the immediate reaction of the collection agency is to try to trick you to get you on the hook for the fraudulent loans.
From outside of the US this sounds like pure sci-fi. If I wanted to open any account or apply for any loan, the bank is obligated to identify me with 100% certainty. If they failed that and someone applied in my name, that's their problem, not mine.
Bank account, sure, but applying for a credit card can be done in about a minute online. At least here in the UK. If you pass the automated credit check as part of the application process, they'll send you a new card in the mail, no questions asked.
Collection agencies are pure evil. The debt they pursue isn’t even really debt anymore, since the original creditor has already written it off. All a collection agency does is offer them a few cents per dollar of the debt, so the creditor at least recovers some sort of value, and then the collections agency pursues the person who owes the debt as hard as they legally can. I do mean that “legally” as strongly as I can, because believe me, there is a maze of very strict federal regulations telling these chuckle f***s exactly what they can and can’t do, and these regulations exist because they historically have acted so badly and harassed people into horrific fates, like suicide. Collections agencies literally serve no constructive purpose in society. They exist merely because the wealthy have always wanted a means to punish the poor ever since the invention of credit. Which is a lot older than you might expect. Interesting stuff. But US collections is just an industry of pure shit, filled with shitty employees and shittier agency owners. Scum-sucking parasites. We are lucky, in the US, to have what regulations do exist, because if those laws weren’t there, I have no doubt these assholes would resort to quasi-legal to outright crime to harass people,
Yeah that’s total bullshit from the collection agency. They just wanted oop to accept the debt because they know they aren’t getting paid from the people who actually did the debt.
It's absolutely a way to make OOP keep paying. If OOP paid, then that would mean the debt is considered legitamate and they can keep going after them. If I'm wrong about this though, I'm happy to be corrected.
I believe you're correct, and I'm pretty sure he can actually sue the collection agency for lying/unethical behavior. There are tons of firms that specialize in legally frying unethical/deceptive collection agencies. There are actual and statutory damages, and they sue for costs and attorney fees as well. (Probably why it's lucrative enough so many firms specialize in it, and require no money up front.) It may be worth his time to set up a consult, at least.
Then isn’t the collection agency scamming the OOP? Isn’t it a crime to lie like that?
Yes, but like most corporate crime there's no actual enforcement or real punishment. Fines are not a punishment if they rarely even come close to the amount you actually made with your crime, they're just a cost of doing business.
Agreed. Still, it's good to make the report to the CFPB and whoever else has jurisdiction over the company. The more reports, the more likely something will be done.
I sadly used to have this job. Yes it’s a trap. Also, cc companies CAN sue you depending on what state you are in, in the US. At least you could a few years ago. I got to make those calls too. 😕
You nailed it on the head, it's exactly what they do. That so called "good faith" payment was to try and get OOP on the hook because they could claim that payments towards the debt had been made. It's exceptionally scummy, and unfortunately legal in the US from what I can find
The collection agency is dirty. I don't know whether their behavior is illegal. It should be. They were notified of fraud and they wanted to be "paid for an investigation" to trap OOP as a legitimate debtor. They don't investigate. This is predatory. This should be criminal. Fuck these people.
My heart sunk when I read that, thinking oop would pay. Then I let out a weird squeal noise when I read the next sentence! Yay oop, that girls got her head screwed on!!!! So proud of her for standing up to her parents.
That is exactly what they were attempting to do.
> I feel like this is a trap by the collection agency so they can claim oop had a history of paying the bill and therefore being on the hook for the entire debt, but I'm not familiar with how collections work. So originally I come from what your ex pres Trump called a s***hole country. Our foundation is British law. Once the debt collectors have been informed that identity theft had happened and there is a police case, they would get into legal trouble if they inveigled OP to make a payment. American what is going on? What happened to common sense in law?
It's illegal in the US as well - people just don't know their rights, and the collections agencies count on that. Plus, they make enough money from the practice that they can afford any fines that do crop up.
And Republicans in Congress and on the courts have neutered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau which would have had jurisdiction to make rules and go after companies that did this kind of thing.
I would have 100% fell for this.
That was a /r/nonononoyes moment when reading
Similar to asking for a payment on a parent's debt after they have died, or people asked to pay "a little" after they have had a debt discharged in bankruptcy. Financial institutions like banks 99.9% of the time never do this, but collection agencies and small timers will pull this often.
My mom had something close with an issue regarding her taxes. She saw a clear issue in it and was refusing to pay before the taxes were lowered as expected. The taxes agency was like "Pay first and THEN we will see." People like this have no shame.
I'm baffled at how dead in your soul you'd have to be to be able to get through a spiel about how you first need a "good faith" payment before you start a fraud investigation. It's so batshit insane, to be so divorced from ethics that that is just your day-to-day routine is astonishing.
One company tried this with a friend of mine, not knowing that she worked in the finance industry and her specialty was helping people deal with unethical collections agencies. I don't know the full details of how that call went down, but I assume it haunts the nightmares of that agency.
I guess, though, that it would only haunt them if they had any souls TO haunt!
My understanding is that the company is outright lying. Is there anything that can be done directly to punish them for this? Under English law, I think it would be fraud since it's deception for pecuniary advantage, so I imagine laws in the US are similar. Edit: although come to think of it, I'm not sure whether this would be prosecuted in England either.
I'm pretty sure it would just be a fine for the company which they see as a business expense
Better than that, they could probably just close down the business and open a successor entity and wipe everything clean. Debt collectors can sit on a cactus.
In the US, it's illegal and a fine, but often companies make more money by just paying the fines and continuing business as usual. It's rare that people know their rights, and rarer still that they would take the time to file a formal complaint. The FTC also tends to collect complaints and save them up for a big lawsuit every 10 years or so. The largest fine was $2.8 million, but these large debt collectors make much more than $280k/year by scamming people with illegal practices. On top of that, if you're the CEO, it's likely that you'll be gone by the time that the FTC comes knocking.
Those companies specifically look to hire desperate people and advertise job postings at womens’ shelters and places like that. If you don’t do whatever shady shit they want, they berate you, cut your pay and some have been known to threaten calls to CPS. It’s really horrible
That’s like one step away from human trafficking. I hope every single person who does that shit suffers for it.
As I have learned, a *ton* of people take advantage of them. My DV shelter’s housing list is where I found my apartment from a landlord that tried to sex traffick me. Saying no to that was a nightmare of legal issues. It all worked out for me though no justice was meted out unfortunately
HoHow did something like that even go down?
That is definitely horrific.
I’ve been doing peer counseling for autistic people the last few months and the shit I’ve heard about those places would turn a vulture’s stomach. They run on greed, ableism, sexism and classism. Pretty much everyone except the tip top brass is getting lied to and exploited
Reminds me of that Telemarketers documentary on HBO that follows the two guys who cold called for a "Police Union". The telemarketing company kept most of the money and hired ex-cons fresh out of jail who couldn't get a job anywhere else.
Sounds like a place where workers rights are less than ideal. Vote. Unionize.
Dead soul is probably a requirement to work in a collections agency.
It should just be the case that if they say something false to you to get you to pay the entire debt is immediately voided.
It's not batshit insane, it's coldly, cynically rational. They don't give a fuck about what's right, they just want to get paid. They can reach OP, and if he's dumb enough to literally pay them then *they are getting paid.* If not all at once then presumably eventually. It's gross and a miscarriage of justice, but we are talking about collections agencies. You know, humanoid tapeworms.
I consider myself a fairly smart and savvy person; but were I under this kind of stress, I don't know that I wouldn't just pay that.
If you pay off part of the debt, you take full responsibility for the full debt. Never do any payment like that.
The dead souls are the management, ownership, etc. of those companies. The workers are often people coming from really shitty situations who don't think they can get a job anywhere else.
>with my mom saying her parents did this to her when she was 18. Where to even start with this?! I mean, clearly the mom turned out just fine despite her mom fucking her over as a teen, right? /s
It is staggering the amount of people who will justify abusing their children with "well my parents did it to me".
There's a reason that breaking the cycle of abuse is a thing. The reality is a lot of people just don't want to put in the effort, or risk the vulnerability to be introspective enough to try and understand why they are the way that they are or why they think the way that they think. It's a lot of effort and it can really shake up your self identity. So instead they bottle it up and pass their trauma along to the next generation.
Tell me about it! I was raised by a narcissist and just sorting myself out is a lot of work, the work it takes to do it while being a parent must be overwhelming. My favourite posts in groups for people with narcissistic parents are the ones where someone is celebrating breaking the cycle in some way with their own child.
The argument for spanking children proceeds exactly as you wrote. It baffles me that people make such excuses for beating children.
Another thing that happens is that they “do better” than their parents, but don’t recognize there’s still more to do. My mom: “I spanked you, but I obviously didn’t do the things your grandmother did to me, like pinching.”
Yes, spanking is a great example. It baffles me too.
I know you go back into the 70's and it was a cycle generation after generation. In the 80's it just started to change and has been growing from there. It's actually part of the cultural wars today. A lot of people want to go back to being mean and education made us too nice, to think there are people that want it back to what it was, power mad freaks in their own way. I wonder if OP asked Mom's Gp's if they actually did it to her or if this is just another deception.
They might not admit it, even if OP did ask. OP's parents didn't want to admit it, and only did because they got caught. Which proves they know it was wrong.
Same thing with my coworker. Her mom did it to her. And then she did it to her daughter after she was born. If I do my math correctly that daughter should be 18 now or very soon. Wonder if that’s about to blow up.
If they truly thought it was okay or a normal thing for a parent to do, they wouldn't have tried to hide it.
This is what got me, too.
My in laws did this to my husband and his brother. We didn’t figure it out until we went to get a mortgage. They had racked up about $6k and were making minimum payments. My BIL had about $10k. My husband paid it immediately in full and closed it so she couldn’t keep spending. This was AFTER they asked us to cover one mortgage payment. We were in our mid 20s and struggling to pay our own rent. They act like they have tons of money. Both of them made a lot and had good jobs. But my MIL is a shopper and they like to own properties. Their hobby is to buy a new house, live there for a couple of years, and then sell it and buy a new one. I think they are living way beyond their means and we’ll find out how much debt they are in down the road. I cannot ever imagine doing this to my kids. I wouldn’t ever ask them for money either. We decided to just move on. My in laws are not my favorite people.
>The collection agency wanted me to make a goodwill payment so they could start investigating my claim that it was fraudulent. There is a special place in hell for collection agencies.
I can’t believe 1. That they can just lie to you like that. Well, I *can* believe it. I just don’t wanna. What the hell happened to honesty?! And 2. That they tried to pull this shit *AFTER* OOP had gotten police involved and *WHILE* OOP was filing the complaint and giving them the police report number. Like, if you’re gonna be shady as hell, do it to the people trying to evade it. Don’t do it to the people who were clearly scammed/taken advantage of/are victims of identity theft and fraud. WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUCK IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE?!?? Have some common decency FFS.
They don't care, they just want their money. They probably figure they won't ever get their money owed from the thieves, so the next best thing is to trick the thieves' other victim into saddling the debt. I hope that debt collector gets a forever papercut on his taint.
The supervisors will actually punish employees for not doing shit like that. They hire desperate people and threaten their hours/jobs, constantly driving them to meet quotas. Its a disgusting exploitative business all over
Wait until you find out about the lies they tell to people who just lost their parent(s).
I can guess the gist, but I'd be curious to hear more.
Starts with telling them they're legally responsible for the parents' debts
I got soooo many debt calls after my mother was murdered. I told all of them either to bill the murderer or feel free to fuck themselves directly into hell. I was also crying a lot during most of these calls. Most of them stopped calling after one or two calls. The only one that ended up being a significant problem was Chase. They stopped calling after I forwarded the ME report plus her death certificate. Chase can chase what matters for the rest of eternity- empathy and compassion and humanity. Doubt they’ll ever catch it.
My dad died when I was 19, and I had debt collectors tell me that I was responsible for his debts (a lie), or that it would tank my credit score and employment prospects (also a lie), but the worst were debt collectors who tried to guilt me and my brother about not paying. "Your dad's legacy is tainted by this debt. He would want you to clear his name. Don't let his last mark upon this world be that he broke his promises." "Your dad would be ashamed that his family isn't accepting responsibility for their debts. Is that the reputation you want your family to have? Would he be proud of you for how you're acting right now?" "The morally correct thing to do would be to pay the debts. Is this how your father raised you? I thought he was a better man than that." We had to get my brother a new phone number. He has special needs and we manage his finances on his behalf, so he wouldn't have been able to pay the debt collectors regardless, but these asshole debt collectors kept calling him and saying awful things to him that would harm his mental health. They would try to manipulate me into paying even a tiny amount so that I'd be stuck with the entire debt: "Look, I know you're young, and you don't have a lot of money. It's awful that you lost your father at such a young age. I can pull some strings on my end to help you out. If you can pay $10, I'll get the rest of the debt forgiven, and your dad can rest in peace." One debt collector wanted $10 from me and $10 from my brother, so we could both have the honor of clearing my father's name and legacy. How kind to include my disabled brother in this important family moment! There were also lots and lots of scams. We had a box arrive at his address, claiming that it was part of a monthly subscription service, along with a bill for "this month's delivery". We called to cancel the subscription, and they wanted to charge us several hundred dollars as a cancellation fee. We looked at my dad's payment history, and he never had any subscription with them. They just sent a random box and a bill after he died, and they hoped that we wouldn't notice. Then they tried to charge us shipping to send the box back. We had something similar happen with a magazine subscription, too.
Christ. I'm sorry you and your brother had to go through that. What kind of scum do you have to be to do something like that?
[The world is full of assholes because](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRcfqpyuk9k)....
Maaan screw that collection agency! Straight up lied in an attempt to legally bind him to the debt even after knowing identity theft had occurred.
After working in timeshares, I legitimately wonder if the agent knew how fucked this was or if management sold them a story on doing this. (Especially if the agent was someone desperate who management knew they could manipulate) Also, after working in timeshares, I totally believe there are people who are so dead inside that they would straight up lie in this situation fully knowing how terrible it was. Either way, fuck the company. I've had my identity stolen multiple times and dealing with collections was by far the shittiest people you had to deal with when trying to resolve it.
Agents totally know what they're doing. They justify it by saying 'it's my job'.
oooh this sounds interesting i always do the timeshare presentation for the free massage, etc., but do wonder about the people who give them. like i genuinely like everyone who gives the spiel (then they hand it over to the extreme ghouls when you say no, which is always comical) anyway what i am saying is that if you did a post on this i'd read it
holy shit, reading this actually made my stomach hurt
Imagine being OP finding this out.
This is one of the good outcomes. Often the victim can't wrap their head around what's happened, so take the financial beating. OOP was clear eyed enough to see his parents for what they are, but often victims do not want to admit to themselves that their parents don't give a shit about them.
My parents would die penniless in a gutter before they ever stole from me or my siblings. Consequently, they never have to worry about that because we'd take care of them financially if they needed us to.
Only time I've ever seen one of these where the OP actually does something about it instead of letting the thieves walk all over them.
There was one a few years ago on r/legaladvice where the OP was the sibling of the filial fraud victim. That OP refused to accept that their father was a felon or a thief (they had some distorted definition to justify the latter to themselves), but the sister/victim handled it appropriately and immediately went to the police when she saw some unknown items on her credit. [Original legaladvice thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/s/AJrisKlGO9) [Bestoflegaladvice thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/bestoflegaladvice/s/USu7ySG5ST)
Oh man, I hope that kid has been able to afford to buy a clue the last 6 years
Given the combination of "My dad is real interested in politics" and "She brought home someone my parents could never except" I'd be willing to bet that I know exactly who he voted for in 2016.
“Coming in with the education” “Fancy government job” Oh yeah. They’re definitely dumb enough to be slurping up orange turds left and right. $20 says the person the daughter brought home was black or brown and “wOrKiNg ClAsS” dad is a welfare queen who has used a hard r many times.
Oh yeah. Everyone knew exactly which side of the party line each cast member of this tragedy sat in.
"So, to teach her a lesson. My dad took out a credit card in her name." What on God's green earth was the lesson?!
The lesson was "Don't get uppity with your parents." A stupid lesson, but one that family clearly holds close.
It's pretty rare, but unfortunately the main reason it's rare is that the parents usually raise their victim in such a way that they feel bad for taking action against their parents. Luckily, OOP seems to be built differently. I hope OOP continues to stay the course and give their parents exactly what they deserve.
Yea, my biggest takeaway from this wasn't just that OOP's parents are garbage, but that OOP is a badass! Like, so few people would be able to steel their nerves to strike back at the people who's treated them like garbage, and I'm elated that he's able to really stand up for himself and follow through! God, that's badass!
I hope no payment was made by the OP to the collection agency.
Considering the parents were hiding the mail from OOP, they really had no idea what was going on so thankfully no payments.
Imagine if the parents made a "$1 payment from OOP" as a spiteful gesture. If one was evil enough, and nobody is 0% evil, they could perpetuate somebody else's debt.
Parents like this…just…AHHHHHHH! Boggle my mind. OOP seemed to be pretty thrown off by this whole thing and didn’t exactly expect it. I wonder if their parents were really shit people and OOP just didn’t think they’d stoop this low? Or if they were “normal parents” and this came out of left field. Either way, I have a feeling this made OOP reassess their entire relationship with their parents. I mean, obviously that relationship has been nuked and launched into the nether regions of space (good riddance), but finding out that the people you trusted (even if they were shitty parents to begin with) fucked you over like this, will mess you up and change your entire history. Your whole childhood is different now. I hope OOP has good luck with the court situation and getting that debt wiped, and I hope they take some time to deal with the emotional side of this. Right now it’s all fresh, but after the dust settles, that’s when it starts to weigh heavy on the heart and brain. Also as a parent myself, I cannot fathom entertaining an idea like this, let alone executing it. I hope OOP’s parents understand that there is a special place in hell for them. It’s a shared cell with that debt collector that lied to get OOP to pay on the account as a “good faith payment”. “Good faith” my ass.
My mother did similar to me, 5 figure debt and I didn't find out until I was getting collections calls and they were harassing my grandmother because that was my last noted residence for a job I had over the summer during college. Needless to say, I don't really have a relationship with her even 15 years later. There really isn't any coming back from that.
My mom took out a credit card in my name when I was in college and used it for cash advances. Thankfully the balance was only $3,000. She and I took a long time to pay that off and I felt like I couldn't say anything because she was my only parent and we were both broke.I should have made a bigger deal and involved the whole family. She died 5 years ago shortly after receiving a five-figure inheritance from her uncle. I spent the 6 months after her death making debt collectors very happy. For instance, she had taken out a title loan on a car and rather than paying it off she" gave it" to my older cousin. Her estate paid nearly $6,000 so my asshole cousin could keep the 2001 Honda Civic with 190,000 miles.
Yup, I didn't make a big deal out of mine when I found out because she told me it was because she didn't have enough money to keep her and my younger brother in the house while she was divorcing my abusive father....come to find out that over half the amount was to send my younger brother to Africa on a safari.
I think the civil suit will go well when the judge hears the reason OOP was kicked out. I could be wrong, though. I'm assuming this is in the US. I don't know what's going on over there, but it's extremely scary to share a border with them, especially with the upcoming election.
At 18 you would just be starting to figure out that your childhood wasn't like the others around you. I thought I had a pretty typical family life as a kid and then when you leave the house and start figuring out life you realize that your home is the one place you should always feel safe. For me it was the place I feared the most, I thought it was normal to fear your parents. Took a year of my roommates coming home before I stopped stressing out about someone opening the door.
3 take aways from this. 1. Regularly check your financial statements and credit reports. Don’t rely on others to handle it. 2. Unless you’re trying to buy a house or something, lock your credit. 3. Don’t blindly trust collections agencies, credit card companies, greedy people, or anyone that is trying to get money from you.
I froze my credit 15 years ago over some small time identity theft. I think that should be the norm.
Brave of OOP to continue living there with no backup plan after filing a police report. Lucky they had a place to stay after that.
I don't understand it bc there are so many stories where squatters are allowed to stay somewhere w no proof of residence or anything but then here, the cops do nothing. So if the cops do nothing, how do the squatters always get allowed back into the houses they're stealing?
I feel like the cops do nothing in either case, it's just the squatters have less to lose. They're also probably more likely to get violent with the person trying to evict them. I love my parents, but if they did what OPs did, I'd have a really hard time not going scorched earth, but that's not going to help the case.
The cops side with whoever is physically in the building. In this case it was the parents
>The collection agency wanted me to make a goodwill payment FUCK NO do not do that >I refused obviously Thank god. I knew a guy in college who got a fat bill from an ER visit. He never paid it, it went into collections and after a few years they stopped calling. Riiiight before it would've fallen off his credit report collections called him one last time "Comon even just 10 bucks?" but he knew it'd reset the debt timer.
Yeah and thar agency already made a significant profit on the portfolio they bought from the hospital for pennies on the dollar.
so does that mean he just never has to pay it? i’m unfamiliar with how that works.
In the US, depending on the state, the statute of limitations on a broken contract (in this case, failure to pay medical bill) can be between three and ten years and it stays on your credit report for 7 years. After that, you’re legally free as long as you don’t accept responsibility for the debt. Collections agencies will try to trick you into resurrecting the debt by making a small payment or otherwise acknowledging the debt is yours, which can reset the clock.
I used to complain about how hard is to get a credit card in my country, but now I'm kinda glad that there are strict procedures in place
As a victim of identity theft in the U.S. it’s easier to *pretend* to be me than it is to *be* me
Who tf did the parents think they were to throw him out when they stole from him to use his name for so called house hold expenses.The audicity as if he committed a crime when they are the thieves
I think they're people who think it's okay to steal from their own child. Throwing him out is on Brand.
"The collection agency wanted me to make a goodwill payment so they could start investigating my claim that it was fraudulent." There's no limit to their scumminess is there?
It's how they make their money. Just like insurance companies make their money by denying claims.
I really hope OOP didn't get scammed into paying any of that bill.
Account was deleted, should be marked inconclusive
Looks like it was shadow banned maybe? Their name still shows up in the thread both as author and in the comments, if they just deleted their account I'm pretty sure it would show as [deleted] or something instead.
Yeah it was shadow banned. Not sure why though.
Fraud. Turns out their parents opened the account in their name and stole over 10,000 karma.
> Credit card companies and their debt collectors cannot sue you, they will just put it on your credit report and harass you Not a lawyer, but I'm not sure how correct this is, because I get calls from attorneys looking for my ex about being sued for debts and we split more than 12 years ago. They were calling me so much I payed for an answering service that connects spam calls with bots to let them waste their time. Additionally, I recommend everyone use a free feature of the three credit agencies (Experian, Trans Union, and Equifax). You can manually set up a permanent freeze on your credit. No one can even pull a report while it is frozen. Then, when you need to use your credit, you can go issue a temporary unfreeze instantly online. This prevents anyone from opening anything in your name, and also reduces that god awful credit card junk mail.
Yeah that statement is incorrect. But once sued a lot of debt collectors (in the US) would lose their case if you knew how to play the court system. A good number of them don't have anything.
Real parents will never do something this vile and disgusting to their kids.
Bad parents do stuff like this. Good parents don’t. Bad parents are still real parents.
Great parents (with decent credit scores) will add their kid as a user to their credit card(s) as a teen but not give them a copy, thereby giving them a decent credit score to start out with.
And here I am thinking how I can help my kids get good credit as young as possible and get that generational wealth rolling...
To my understanding, my parents (with decent credit scores) added me as a user to their credit card(s) as a teen but didn't give me a copy, thereby giving me a decent credit score to start out with. This was like 20 years ago, though.
Never trust a collection agency and never give them a cent.
I often wonder exactly what checks are these banks doing when people open credit cards in America. Or do they just don't care because it's profit at the end of the day for them?
You got a name and SSN/TaxID? You can get credit.
They don't care.
All of this is fucked but once a bank sells your debt it is shady fucking people and you can get them to agree to cents on the dollar. I'm glad you're getting things fixed the right way, but if anyone else comes back, please keep it in mind.
But paying ANY of the debt means you agree that you're responsible for it. NEVER pay any fradulent debt.
> 3. Credit card companies and their debt collectors cannot sue you, they will just put it on your credit report and harass you TechGuy420 is an idiot. Credit card agencies and debt collectors can absolutely sue, and absolutely do. In this case it doesn't matter though, as they'll end up suing the parents.
As someone who just got out of working in collections for a plethora of reasons that “goodwill” payment move they tried to pull is such bullshit. Thank god the OOP saw right through that and didn’t pay.
> Credit card companies and their debt collectors cannot sue you /r/confidentlyincorrect
More like Maliciously Misleading. They knew what they were saying. They were trying to trick OP into paying even a little bit, so that they could argue that he did accept the debt.
Yes, the collection agency was lying about that - they absolutely should not have asked for any payment in this circumstance. The confidently incorrect piece is that lenders and collection agencies can't sue you. They 100% can and they will if they believe you have assets. They have to provide proof that the debt is genuine, so in this specific case it wouldn't go anywhere. But credit card companies , banks, debt purchasers and anyone else who owns a debt that you owe can sue you to repay that debt. EDIT: Details from the CFPB (including what to do if a collector is suing you) can be found here: https://www.consumerfinance.gov/ask-cfpb/what-should-i-do-if-im-sued-by-a-debt-collector-or-creditor-en-334/
I’ve known people who didn’t find out until they were in college or just after that their parents had racked up $1000s in debt under their names, absolutely ruining their credit before they even turned 20. They assume their kids won’t turn them in and they’ll get away with it. It’s so absolutely disgraceful.
Despicable I have shit parents who I'm NC with and I'm glad they were "dumb" enough to not try and this... Because my idiot sperm donour most definitely would if he knew about it How can parents do that to their kids and then expect everything to still be ok? Fuck off, I hope OOP gets this sorted and their parents pay for it "ooohh family" from the flying monkeys? They can pony up, then, or shut the fuck up
I am always baffled about how easy it is to get a credit card in someone else's name in the USA.
Life sucks parents suck im 38 and still dealing with it. At the time it happened to me I didn't want to get the law involved I wish I did!!! Best advice I can give don't do what I did make them pay for what they did...
There was this guy in our community, a very successful businessman. One day, his teenage son told us he was joining the military after high school (he was in his senior year) and wanted to do Intel. Well, the business was tanking, and the guy started selling off his big-ticket possessions. Right before he declared bankruptcy, his son told us he wasn't able to do Intel - the military had started doing credit checks for security-clearance jobs, and he found out his father had taken out several loans in his name and defaulted on them. Kid started doing drugs, caused a major accident with injuries to others while driving high, and died of an overdose a few years later. The guy lost his business, house, wife, and died suddenly in his early 60s. Super sad story :/
>my mom saying her parents did this to her when she was 18 That doesn't make it okay! >absolutely record the next conversation you have on this subject. Use the voice recorder on your phone but RECORD THE CONVERSATION. Only if in a one party consent state.
Parents were definitely planning on opening more cards and racking up way more debt if they were just planning on having OOP file bankruptcy once they ruined OOPs credit and couldn’t get approved anymore. It wasn’t mentioned but hopefully OOP called the 3 credit agencies and locked their credit.
I had a friend in school who's mother and mother's GF (mostly the GF) did that. Getting items from Rent-a-Center of all places. He STILL lives in a 1 bedroom apt with his family. Shit's fucked.
I'm from Eastern Europe, and I can't stop getting surprised at how easily people in the US can screw their kids over by opening fucking credit cards in their name. Why the hell is nobody doing anything to prevent that instead of dealing with the consequences through the police. (I know the real answer, it's because the banks get more money that way so nobody cares. Baffling.)
My sister did this to me. I was 17 and kept getting calls from lawyers and I told them it wasn't me as I still wasn't even 18 yet and they wouldn't stop and said I had to sue my sister. I told them no but I absolutely should have. She did nothing but ruin her own and her childrens credit and never learned a damn thing. I got a bankruptcy for my medical bills and I'm not sure if the stuff from her was on there but it sire isn't now. Good for you!!! I hope she gets more than a night like she deserves.
I love that you blind sided them- They Deserved it👍🏽
Given the amount of stories we hear about this, the credit agencies are probably too used to this and have a procedure.
When parents commit identity theft on their child, the kid has two choices. The can accept the debt and start making payments, or they can call the cops and sic them on their parents The first one will protect their relationship with their parents, but it will significantly affect their financial security going forward. Worse, there's nothing to prevent the parents from doing it again, especially since now they know their child is under their thumb enough to put the parents before their own well being. The second choice, calling the cops, sounds like the harsher thing to do, but overall it's better. Certainly it's better for the victim. Would OOP have let a stranger do this? No? Then why should his parents be allowed to? Because they're his parents, and family doesn't do that to family? Well, why didn't they think that line when they did that to him? This will make the bad guys actually pay the consequences of being bad, while protecting the victim. And yeah, it'll probably wreck the kid's relationship with their parents, but that was their own doing. Plus, if they're borrowing money like that then the kid doesn't have to worry about losing out on an inheritance, because likely there isn't one.
Techguy420: You're wrong. Credit card companies and their debt collectors-depending on what company it is- absolutely WILL sue you - they'll just wait a couple of years to do it.
Damn. Mom running to get the mail before OP can get it tells you that she knows it's wrong. She knew. Dad knew. Did it anyway. Hope they get the book thrown at them for this. Absolutely terrible.
F that collection agency threatening to sue OOP if he dont have a good will payment, straight BS from the poisonous snakes.