Feb. 21--One of the newest consumer scams involves phantom-debt collectors who use scare tactics to try to get people to pay debts they don't even owe.
One scam, which bilked U.S. consumers out of some $5 million so far, involved about 8 million phone calls originating from India and being placed to American consumers over an eight-month period, the Federal Trade Commission said Tuesday.
In the first case of its kind in the United States, the FTC filed suit against American Credit Crunchers, related company Ebeeze LLC and their owner Varang K. Thaker, all related to a fraudulent debt-collection operation that somehow got ahold of the personal information of people who applied for loans through one or more payday lenders.
The alleged criminals, often pretending to be law enforcement or other government authorities, would falsely threaten to immediately arrest and jail consumers if they did not agree to make a payment on a delinquent payday loan. They demanded payment typically in amounts of about $500, authorities said. Some consumer complied even if they knew they didn't owe money, just to avoid a potentially embarrassing situation, authorities said.
So far, the FTC has received thousands of complaints from across the country about the scam. "We think we have a really serious problem," said C. Steven Baker, director of the FTC's Midwest Region based in Chicago. "As economies have globalized, so has fraud." A U.S. district court ordered the operation to halt and froze its assets while the FTC moves forward with the case.
According to the FTC's complaint, Thaker allegedly obtained information that often included Social Security or bank account numbers about consumers who had inquired about or applied for online payday loans. Thaker allegedly worked with telephone callers in India who called consumers using lies and threats to persuade them to pay debts that were not owed or that he was not authorized to collect.
"Nobody actually owed them a dime," Baker said.
Thaker could not immediately be reached for comment.
Click here for information from the FTC on how to protect yourself from phantom-debt collectors.
Copyright 2012 - Chicago Tribune
