Central Ohio Debt Collection Agency Reaches Milestone

Capital Recovery Systems, Inc. (CRS) a full service receivables management and debt collection agency, serving the local government sector, recently reached the $150 million collection milestone for its Ohio court clients.

“We are quite proud of reaching this milestone,” said Dennis Johnson, Vice President of CRS. “When our Senior Management team got together recently, our Director of Sales, Phil Cornell reminded us all that we went over the $150 million mark about midway through September.  This milestone is not only big for our organization, but for citizens and taxpayers in hundreds of Ohio counties, municipalities and villages.”

Johnson said CRS has returned huge sums of revenue to local governments at no cost to the taxpayer, their legislative authorities, or from local court budgets all due to an Ohio statute that allows courts to add the cost of collection to the defendant.

“That statute is a great example of our legislature working with local governments to give them the tools to generate revenue without raising taxes, fees and court costs,” Johnson said. “Although the law is not new it is seeing a large uptick in its use by local courts. Many of our clients have told us the money recovered has saved jobs, kept court costs down and in some cases was the difference in upgrading and building new facilities.  Every court clerk using this program should be commended. Using outside debt collection is not always the popular thing to do and in most cases our clients are elected officials.  The clerks using this statute are obviously dedicated to keeping costs down and budgets and revenues safe.”

CRS was founded by Craig Klein in 1997 and has more than 90 employees at two different locations in Gahanna and Steubenville, Ohio. The focus of the company is on the collection of government debt, and more specifically, collecting outstanding fines, costs and fees for court clients at no cost to the client through its No Fee for Partial Payments Program© and No Cost Court Collections Program©.

Many other states have passed legislation similar to Ohio’s which provides for the cost of debt collection and allows it to be assessed to the defendant. Currently, CRS has more than 500 government clients in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, West Virginia, Florida, New York and Missouri. CRS clients in Central Ohio include Fairfield County, Franklin County, Minerva Park, Canal Winchester and Delaware Municipal Court.

“CRS’ No Fee for Partial Payments Program© allows our clients to maximize revenues without any financial risk on their part,” said Phil Cornell, Director of Sales and Marketing for CRS. “The financial benefit they derive from that program is the primary reason that CRS has added one or two new clients per week every week for the last eight years.”

During its 15-year existence, CRS has developed a company-wide customer-service culture which has created a remarkable A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau and all federal, state and local regulatory bodies.