Legal Question in Banking Law in Wisconsin

Never trust any collectors nor any other requests which arrive only via the phone or email. Instead, insist upon something in writing which fully identifies who you are dealing with (both the individual and the company), together with contact info, acct. numbers, identity of original creditor, etc. There are numerous scammers pretending to be collectors these days who initiate these calls just to pump you for information which they will subsequently use to steal your identity. And, if you are sufficiently gullible, the crowning achievement in this scam would be to actually convince you to send them money. If you do that and they turn out not to be the true owners or authorized agents to collect the debt, you will end up needing to pay it twice (or even more than twice if you are fooled again in the future). Agencies proceeding by phone only can also be offshore agencies who are not subject to U.S. collections laws, dealing with whom is only slightly better than a scam. Instead, first insist upon a postal letter, together with the number of their WI collectors license. Feel free to ignore anyone who will not produce these items and consider referring them to the FBI or FTC as scammers. Since they are offshore, it is doubtful that they will ever be able to follow up their threats with actual litigation as a practical matter, regardless of whether or not they are real collectors. Anyone with collection problems also owes it to themselves to at least schedule a brief free consultation with an experienced bankruptcy lawyer.

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