Expert: Creditwrench - 7/9/2009

Question
QUESTION: Can a debt collector obtain my credit report and send me a letter statng they see I have a recent loan of 52,000, and have paid off some debt and have available credit of 704.00,and I should be able to pay these old doctor bills.I then called and they said they were putting a lean on my house for 1700.00. It seems to be an Attorneys office. I sent them a registered letter yesterday asking for proof of this debt to be paid to them, to prolong the threat of the lean, and stated all correspondence will be done in writing. One of the Bills I know is 4 years old, is there a statute in Oklahoma on doc. bills? Can I deal directly with the originator of this bill as well?

ANSWER: Statute of limitations in Oklahoma on doc bills is the same as it is for any other written agreement. Five years. Who sent you the letter and what makes you think it is from an attorney's office? Do they already have a judgment? If they don't they can't put a lien on your house or anything else. Sounds to me like they are breaking the law big time. Maybe you should be thinking about filing a federal lawsuit against them before they file a local lawsuit on you.



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QUESTION: Malcom Hammond Law office in Jenks Oklahoma is who sent the letter, no judgment has been filed to my knowledge. How do I start my federal lawsuit? Are they allowed to get my credit report without consent?

ANSWER: So you need to know quickly whether they have filed a lawsuit against you or not. Do this every day. Go to http://www.oscn.net and click on the court dockets tab. Click on search dockets and scroll down to where you can enter your last name then your first name and hit your enter key and any lawsuit that has ever been entered against you will show up. As soon as a new one shows up you should immediately prepare your response, your demand for admissions, your certificate of mailing and go file them them and send a copy of all that to the plaintiff's attorney. If the lawsuit has been filed within 30 days of their first contact with you then you need to also prepare your validation demand and include that with your mailing. Whatever you do, don't let that 30 day window of opportunity go by without sending your dispute/validation letter to the attorney. That stops them from doing anything to attempt further collection activity until they do validate the debt meaning that if they have not yet filed a lawsuit against you they cannot file a lawsuit until they have provided you with documentation about the debt, who you owe and how much you owe. They can't call you or even send you any letters until they do comply with your demand for validation. Of course, they will probably get stupid and violate the law in some way which is what you hope will happen so you will have more causes of action against them in federal court. That is where you need to be aiming to go because that is the only way to beat them, the only way to win. You should go into this thing with the idea in mind that no matter what you do in local court they will win and get a judgment against you. That is because the only question before the local court is whether or not you owe the debt. You know you owe the debt, the lawyer knows you owe the debt and the judge believes you owe the debt so what is likely to be the outcome of their lawsuit? Don't take much imagination to figure that out. So the only way to win is to turn the table on them and become the plaintiff in federal court where the only question before the court is whether or not they have broken the law. If you can prove that they have then once again, it don't take much imagination to figure out what the outcome will be. You win, they lose. The nice part is that you don't even have to appear before the judge in federal court. It is all done by mail, on the internet and by phone.
Even many of the court papers they file or send you can contain violations and you need to be aware of all of their possible violations so you can use them to your advantage. Your response should be carefully prepared so you admit nothing and at least attempt to force them to prove to you and the court that you do owe the debt. You see, I know how to win and I know how to teach you how to win so if you want to make this all go away and get well paid for doing it then you need to start learning right away. If you choose not to do that then the alternative is they win, you get a judgment against you, they file for an assets hearing and you have to go tell them all about your assets. How much money you have in banks, what banks your money is in , give them copies of all your bank statements for the last year or more, all your income tax returns for the last few years, tell them how many cars you own, where you work or how you make your money, how much you earn, how often you get paid, when you get paid and any other assets you might have such as real estate, all your personal information. Then they go to your bank and grab any money you might have in your bank accounts. Then its go for your wages or other income. After that they can try to get vehicles, put lien against your home, even send the sheriff to your home to hijack any valuables worth selling at auction to get their money. It gets real vicious sometimes. So which way is it going to go for you? Its all up to you. Learn how to stand up and fight or lie down and take it on the chin.


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QUESTION: I will go all the way, and I appreciate your help, but my original question is..  Can this debt collector/ law firm who bought my debt,obtain my credit report without my consent, legally?

Answer
Yes, they can but that isn't the proper pertinent question. The proper question is whether or not they have permissible purpose to pull your credit report. Mike M. of Alamagordo, NM. who has been a student of mine for several years now and has filed several successful federal lawsuits against both debt collectors and the credit bureaus has won at least one or more of his cases based on the fact that they violated FCRA by even pulling his credit reports because they had no permissible purpose to pull unless they had already proven that he owed them money. Additionally, lawyers can't pull your credit reports if litigation is in progress. Mark M. of Providence, Rhode Island just won an $80,000 judgment against FIA card services/Bank Of America based partly on the fact that the BOA lawyers had FIA card services pull Mark's credit report while the case was being litigated in Federal Court. The case originally started because FIA had pulled Mark's credit reports without having permissible purpose to do so. Debt collectors routinely use false and misleading purpose codes to get the credit bureaus to accept their pulls. A data furnisher cannot provide any false or misleading information to a credit bureau but they do it all the time. So you may already have several violations and they haven't even filed a lawsuit against you yet. So far, my students have won an aggregate total of 171 federal lawsuits against debt collectors in a row with never a loss. I do hope you will make that 172.