Fake Debt Collectors 'Moreno And Woods' Strike Again
Another reader has contacted us to say that Moreno and Woods, the fake collection agency that likes to threaten and intimidate people into paying huge bills for collections they don't owe, "called my house last night and left a threatening message on my phone for my son." Luckily for Linda, she's got a recording of their threat now.
They left a case number to refer to when we call back. My son and his wife are separated and he and his son live with us right now. I called the number this morning to see what this was about, and they told me that he owed a bill from 2000 to JC Penny's for $2,750.00 and he could ask JC Penny's if they would take a "hardship settlement" now which would be for $1,500.00 payable in 2 payments in the form of post dated checks thru no later than 3/15/09.
He actually faxed over a so called letter with this information on it saying we had to respond no later than 2/6/09. He was very nice, the guy I talk to.
How can these people keep getting away with this kind of crap? It really upset me this morning, as my husband has cancer and I'm sitting here at work trying figure out how my son can pay this right now or we can help him... The phone message was really threatening, saying he would be served and it would be to his best interest to pay up or they would put a levy on his bank account.
[Update: I edited the email but inadvertently removed some relevant info. Linda says her son does not owe any money to JC Penney. She was unclear to me about whether or not they ever owed an amount that went to collections, but she indicated her son and his wife have paid off their debts and do not currently owe anything.]
As you probably learned from the comments in our post last May, the easiest solution is to ask for written proof of the debt, which should shut them up. But since you actually have proof of the attempt at fraud, you could also contact an attorney—you probably have what you need for an easy lawsuit. At any rate, don't erase that message—find a way to record it onto another medium and save it for posterity.
But even if you decide not to pursue a lawsuit, you should contact your Attorney General's office and file a complaint. And when they call back, insist that any further communication come through the mail and give them formal notice not to call you ever again.
Here's some good advice that reader joellevand left in the comments on the earlier post:
If someone has a judgment against you, they were required to notify you, in writing, and have you personally served (which can be registered mail in some states, btw, and in some states by sheriff) with the complaint against you. While failure to reply can lead to a default or summary judgment in your state (check statutes, court rules, etc.) you have the right to know what you are being sued for and the right to respond. Companies cannot just get a judgment against you (in most states, AFAIK) without your knowledge! Asking details such as "in what county" and "what docket number" are good, but better yet, ask
Date in which it was filed.
Method it was served upon you.
Date the judgment was entered.
Name of the judge who entered the judgment.If they then backpedal with the "oh, we're about to file it" then you can simply reply, "Well, when I am served with the copy of the complaint, then you can discuss the case with my attorney, but I have nothing more to say until I have reviewed the court complaint with my attorney." That should shut them the hell up as well.
Oh, and if they *do* have a judgment against you and you were never notified, you can and probably should demand proof of service and a transcript of the court proceedings, as now they've added perjury to their fraud charges!
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Comments:
Moreno and Woods? Couldn't they come up with a less fake-sounding name? I guess Dewey, Cheatum and Howe is taken.
Is it legal for a debt collector to "take you to court" for a regular debt? Like an unpaid medical bill?
@geoffhazel: To get a judgement that would then garnish your wages, absolutely.
The worst part is the "default" judgements that debt collectors are peddling these days. They come from legitimate (barely) debt collection companies but they just lie about their attempts to contact you.
Expect to see more of these in the future.
they can take you to court and they can say that to you but they cannot say things like 'we will garnish your wages' or 'we will garnish your bank accounts' these statements are threats, reaching and meant to intimidate you into paying. They could be argued as a violation against the FDCPA if they said those things.
888-716-0010?
I started getting robocalls from them - looked up on Internet - some kind of debt collector. I have had my phone # for over a decade and have no unpaid debts in my life, so I don't know what they wanted.
I think they troll randomly - some % of people have bad debts and can be easily threatened, so they figure calling N phone numbers randomly will get them .0001% response or something? I'd like to see investigative reporting about this trolling.
Debt from 2000? Tell them it's long past the statute of limitations, any further calls are considered harassment, and will be recorded without further notice.
Once they know that you know your rights, they'll stop calling.
@drjayphd: Goddammit, why must you beat me to the punch????
Now if you'll excuse me, I have a 2:00pm appointment with my makeup artist, Bud Tugly.
@geoffhazel: It is absolutely legal to take you to court for an unpaid debt. If somebody owed you money and they refused to pay, court is a way of compelling that.
Of course, the process can, and is, badly abused at times.
Where unscrupulous collectors get into major legal trouble is threatening to have you arrested for your debt. Since there is no such thing as debtor's prison in this country, it is absolutely illegal to threaten you with arrest for a mere debt. (Fraud, yes, normal failure to pay, no.)
SirWired
Don't pay them anything. As noted above, this debt is past the statute of limitations and they have no claims BUT if you pay them anything towards the debt, it renews the debt and the statute of limitations starts anew.
I had a similar issue with Nationwide Collections a year ago. I looked for help on the net and came across this forum: http://forums.fightback.com/showthread.php?p=14577 I followed the instructions listed in post #6 and have not heard back from them in 11 months & nothing appeared on my credit report. It was a great find!
As a point of clarification regarding the advice listed from the reader as quoted:
If someone has a judgment against you, you can certainly "demand" they prove they served you with the complaint properly, but they are under no obligation to comply. As is the case with my firm, we will provide you with a copy of the judgment, or the abstract of judgment, tell you that the matter has already been adjudicated by a court of competent jurisdiction, and that you can either seek relief from the court through the statutory mechanisms set in place for you to do so, or fuck off and wait for us to come eat your children and levy you into oblivion.
On the bright side, according to their website, they are hiring!
@sirwired: Though you can be arrested and jailed for failure to appear in court if they do take legal action, which was a practice a local hospital tended to despicably engage in:
I'm a little confused about this and this statement by the OP is key:
I'm sitting here at work trying figure out how my son can pay this right now or we can help him...
Maybe Chris Walters can shed some light on how this debt has been determined to be fake? The OP seems to think it's real, but maybe part of Linda's original email that shows that she knows that it's not real was edited out.
So.. maybe I missed it at some point, but is this a real debt? Does the son (or the son of the son, again, not sure) actually owe this money to JC Penney?
@scoosdad: Followup to my own question: I do realize from past stories here that they do have a history of making false claims about debts owed, but do they play that game 100% of the time, and that's how you're sure it's fake this time? Just asking.
I would think Linda's son would know for sure whether or not he even owed this debt orignally, and she doesn't touch on that in the portion of her email that was included in the original post. Didn't she ask him?
@scoosdad: Good point. Yes, I edited out some of the letter because it was of a more personal nature than I think Linda meant to be made public. Also, it's really her son's business to talk about it, not hers. (No offense, Linda.) But yes, she said that she confirmed that the debt is not legit. They did have a JC Penney account, but Linda did not make it clear to me whether or not it was ever in arrears (*snicker*). She did indicate that it has been paid off and was never as high as the amount quoted to her today, and that her son and his wife always paid off their debts.
@ajlei: Whether or not he originally owed it, it's almost certainly past the statute of limitations now. I think there might be some cases where it's ten years instead of seven, but maybe I'm thinking of bankruptcy or something.
@floraposte: Well I'll be damned. I didn't know somebody could toss you in jail (in some states, anyway) for failure to appear in a civil suit. I always thought you just a default judgment slapped on you, and then you got your wages and property garnished/seized/whatever-happens-to-be-legal-in-your-state.
SirWired
@FDCPAGuy: I always thought it was legal to threaten to garnish your wages or bank account if they actually intended to and legally allowed to.
Certainly, it is a violation if your state does not allow wage garnishment. And of course if the statute of limitations has expired they can't even take you to court.
SirWired
@mike_bruns_99: That depends on a few things actually. The SoL varies from state to state and the counter only starts when the company writes off the debt. I live in hawaii, where the SoL is 6 years, so if I spent money in 2000, id still be on the hook since most companies dont write off debts after a year or 2.
They need to make blatant fraud like this where a debt collector just makes up a debt that doesn't exist extremely illegal. Like 30 years in PMITAFP illegal.
They also need to tie some sort of victim compensation to it. These crooks waste a ton of time from people to resist and prove this is a fraud not to mention the stress involved.
@sirwired: Our handles appear at the top of our posts; there is no need to repeat them at the bottom.
@tylerk4: Eat my children?? HHHEEEyyyy, you aren't the writer of the "cash4kids" advertisement, are you???
come'on, don't lie.
By getting rid of my land line. I have completely eliminated shit like this, as well as, unsolicited sales calls.
@B:
Dewey, Cheatum, and Howe
Our Firm's History
The practice of Dewey, Cheatum and Howe has served the people of Mundelein and the surrounding community for over 70 years. Initially established in the 1920's by David U. Dewey, Sr., the firm's name was changed to Dewey and Howe in 1953, when Harrison A. Howe joined the firm. The firm's name was again changed in 1959 to become Dewey, Cheatum, and Howe, with the addition of Steven U. Cheatum, Sr.
@Parapraxis: Huh, ask if he's seen Bugsy yet... he should be back from the Vietnam honey ham, pickled spam, battered clam, curried lamb, fatted ram, cherry jam, candied yam and no-cal Pam lunchogram by now.
@CumaeanSibyl: Okay.. I guess what I meant is, did he at any point owe that money to JC Penney's? From the tone of this letter it seems like they did owe this money at one point or another, and just didn't know about this gap in years affecting that. However, if they never owed it at all, I'd think they'd be a little more suspicious and not so much stressing about how to pay.
@tylerk4:
I don't think either of those actions would be approved by any court in the US.
They could ALSO be quite easily viewed as threats by those same courts, thereby losing you any judgments you may have won as well as getting you a hefty fine AND the privilege of paying the debtor the amount of the debt and his previous court costs.
So you just go ahead and froth, I find it amusing.
I had a very similar encounter with Moreno and Woods a few months ago. The debt was from 9 years ago, which was admittedly a rough time in my financial life, but try as I might I couldn't find ANY proof in my financial records that this debt was mine, and all phone calls to the credit card company they mentioned went nowhere.
When Moreno and Woods called me back, I told them I needed some proof of the debt, and they faxed over a letter from their "lawyer" attesting to the fact that I owed the debt. In other words, their proof was their word that I owed the debt. It was ridiculous.
Another tip that this is a fraud, besides the obvious source of Moreno and Woods is that the collector discussed the amounts allegedly owed with the mother of the person who they're claiming owes the money.
No reputable company will discuss that information with anyone other than the debt holder.
@sirwired: Correction, they CAN take you to court, but you have an affirmative defense with the fact that it's out of the Statute of Limitations.
@xtc46: SoL doesn't matter when they write it off. It starts on the date of last action, which is the moment the account went delinquent.
we got one of those, and when we sent a certified demand letter for more information it stopped. But two weeks later got a negative report on the credit score.
3re party Debt Collection should be illegal or very closely monitored
@nucwin83: So I've heard. I did a bunch of research on these guys though, and they seem completely fake. You'll probably see some posts on message boards around mentioning them. At least they quit harassing me when I sent them the "only communicate by mail" letter. They never tried to collect after that either. I'm sure I'll have to deal with them again though, now that they have my address.
@Trencher93: Do you have a common last name? I have no unpaid debts but am constantly rung up by debt collectors looking for people with the same last name. It's gotten to the point where I have to unplug my phone every Friday night b/c they like to call at 8:30 on Saturday mornings. Bloody irritating.
@Trencher93: Its a little more than that, but not necessarily much. They had my name and ssn, somehow connected to my parents' address. The curious thing is that I've never even lived at that address - the last time I lived with my parents at that address, or the one they lived in prior to that.
This is Cavalry Portfolio Services, LLC, which is one of the bottom feeder collection agencies.
Check out the information on them at the Bud Hibbs Consumer site:
In my case, they were coming after me for (what they said was) an old debt from Sprint.
Just a small tip that can work wonders for people who are being contacted by collectors. If you received something in the mail threatening legal action or stating that some kind of action has been taken, verify where the law firm is. At the very least they must be in your state to take any kind of legal action, sometimes even in your 'area'.
If you live in Texas and you get a letter from a law firm in Denver, you don't have to worry quite yet. Lots of people fall for those and send money.
Moreno & Woods - Mr. Justice (ha ha - perhaps a play on words) also threatened me with garnished wages, lien on home, etc. I was so scared I agreed to pay 25% of what he was asking to hold off any court preceedings until I could sort things out - which, of course, he glady accepted. After I got it sorted out and discovered the scam, luckily my credit card company backed me up with their attempt at fraud and I will not be liable for the $500 charge. I have filed complaints with the NY States Attorney, the FBI and the FTC. Everyone who has paid anything to these people or been contacted by them should do the same - that way Moreno & Woods will be investigated and, hopefully, prosecuted and put in federal prison where they belong. I wish I had looked for and found this web site before I ever called this creep back - that way I could have avoided all the stress and inconvenience. Thank goodness for my credit card company - I rarely use my credit cards, but when I do the next time, I will certainly use that one!
I got a call out of the blue two days ago from Moreno and Woods. They told me that they were going to file a lawsuit in the county I live accusing me of fraud for lying about my income on the credit application if I didn't pay right the debt right there and then.
Scared, I gave them a credit card number to provide a 'down payment on the debt,' which they gladly took and then said that if I paid the entire balance by the end of the month (in 1 week) they would not file the charges. The credit card is from HSBC, was written-off by them in 2005 and appears on my credit report as written off with no further entries.
I called HSBC and asked them who they 'sold' the debt to, and they gave me a company (not Moreno and Woods) name and a number to call. I called the number and the folks there told me that they had no account in my name or with that card number.
I got the info in the mail from Moreno and Woods and it basically amounted to the same thing a user posted above: A letter stating that the only proof of the debt was their word indicating it was. I immediately called my credit card company and had the charge removed. Oh and the kicker: Moreno and Woods called my parents (I'm in my mid-thirties) and informed my father that I was being brought up on fraud charges.
i also have just received a call from moreno and woods a man named michael may who claims i owe a 6300.00 credit card bill from 2002. i have never had such an account or have i received any bills from them in the last 7years. i refinanced my house last year and paid everything in collection so i figued this was a scam im so glad i found this site so now i know for sure they are full of shit.. they took money out of my bank account but i realized my mistake and cancelled my checking account so they can no longer attack my checking again.thank you for opening my eyes ill be much more aware of things now!
Well, I too am another victim of Moreno and Woods. I was told that I owed Chase $23,000 and they are filing 5 charges against me tomorrow. She also told me that they can garnish my wages, take my tax refund, freeze my bank account and take away my driver's liscense and car. I needed to call her back by 7 PM and send a check for $200 and pay the settlement of $4562.17 by the end of the month. and maybe they could stop the legal pursuit. Needless to say, I was terrified trying to figure out where I was going to get that kind of money. A friend showed me this site and told me to hold tight and wait for them to call me again.
Sounds like the USPS equivalent of a Nigerian 413 scam. Look through some old credit reports, send out mass mailings of collection notices and hope you get 0.1% of all the people to send you a check.