business loan scams, loan scams online, home loan scams, student loan scams

How to Stop Debt Collectors

Advice, letters and tools for those being harassed by debt collectors.

 wanted to provide an update on the payday loan scam that appears to be getting worse, unfortunately. There have been numerous media reports and warnings about this issue from state Attorney Generals. However, it seems that the publicity has done nothing to stop these scammers from trying to rip off innocent payday loan customers. In fact, they have even gotten more sophisticated and aggressive from what I’m seeing.
Here are some of the recent developments with this scam:

They have begun to use a variety of vague lender names, designed to mislead customers. They usually use some combination of “Cash” “Net” “USA” and/or “Advance.” Some outlets are reporting that they must have stolen data from CashNet USA since they use these names. I believe this to be completely false and giant leap being made due to the fact that they use Cash and Net in their scam. It would make sense to do this because CashNet USA is the largest online payday loan company in the U.S.

They have started asking for smaller amounts. In my original article on this scam, I noted that they usually asked for $1,000 or more. However, they are now asking for lower amounts.
As I posted earlier, they have started sending fraudulent payday loan collection e-mails. These e-mails are coming from legal@lawofficeusa.us and show up in most e-mail programs as LawOfficeUsa. I can’t believe this will last long, as they should get blocked for Spam pretty quickly.
They have also started sending debt validation letters, which are obviously fake. A common tactic that is often mentioned in forums and elsewhere on the internet is asking an agency to send a letter validating a debt (personally, I don’t recommend this unless you truly don’t know if you actually owe the debt or not). The scam company has responded by sending fake validation letters by e-mail. The e-mail is a dead give-away that they are fraud since any real agency will send letters via the mail.