Legal Question in Credit and Debt Law in Pennsylvania

NEVER take out a payday loan. They are legal in PA but only if the payday lender is registered with the Attorney General's office. Most are online and overseas and are not registered.

No legitimate debt collection agency threatens to send police to your place of work. The police are not debt collectors and the collection of money owed is a civil, not a criminal, matter. If the debt collector is making these kinds of threats, they are in violation of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) and the PA version called the Fair Credit Extension Uniformity Act (FCEUA).

Never pay a debt collector over the phone or give them access to your bank information. If and when you decide to pay, you only pay once you have a definitive letter outlining the terms of payment and you have a valid physical address (not a PO box or mail drop box at at place like the UPS store). Once you receive the letter, then payment can be sent via a money order or bank certified check which you make a copy of before you send.

You are morally obligated to repay the money you borrowed. Whether you have a legal duty to pay depends on the facts which you do not relate. If it has been 4 or more years since you last paid, then the lender or any junk debt buyer cannot legally sue you. If its been less than 4 years, I still would not worry too much about getting sued. If the payday lender is not legitimate and licensed, then it would be like a drug dealer trying to sue a drug user for money owed for drugs - drugs are illegal and the courts will not enforce the user's duty to pay for the drugs.

If you get any more calls by debt collectors, they are bound by the FDCPA and FCEUA as noted. The problem I have encountered for clients is that payday lenders and the scam collectors they use do not abide by US law if they are overseas and them damn well do not follow the FDCPA and FCEUA. You getting threats of the police coming to your job is evidence of that. Since they do not follow the law, writing to them and threatening them with the law does not work.

I suggest that you contact the PA attorney general's office about this first. The attorney general has greater enforcement powers under the law and they may be able to assist you.

If they can't, I would not pay the lenders/debt collectors until they act right. I would find creative ways to deal with any calls or simply don't answer the phone. Eventually, they will stop calling and move on to other prey. These parasites will not miss the money. They charge exorbitant interest and make it up from whatever they do manage to steal back from you and other payday lending victims.

I find it very unlikely that a police officer would come to your job and think you have a better chance of hitting the lotto, getting kidnapped by aliens or meeting Bigfoot. However, if the police do show up to arrest you, get a criminal lawyer. A bond will be set and the lawyer should be able to get the charges dismissed.