Warnings Going Out About Debt Collection Scams

The North Carolina attorney general is the latest public official to sound a warning about illegal debt collection scams. But his office isn’t the only one trying to inform the public on the difference between legitimate debt collectors and crooks.

Attorney General Roy Cooper of North Carolina raised the warning flags in a statement Friday. He said that his office had received dozens of complaints recently about debt collection calls that did not seem legit. A distinct pattern developed in which the callers would purport to be from groups that sounded vaguely governmental, like the “Federal State Bureau of North Carolina.”

When Cooper’s office began to investigate, it found that most of the victims had recently taken out payday loans on the Internet. Further, the office said that the calls appeared to be coming from overseas.

The warning is the latest in a series of official acknowledgements that there is a major difference between legitimate debt collection calls and ones initiated by scammers.

Late last year, the Mississippi Attorney General — with the help of ACA International — issued his own warning about phony debt collection calls also related to payday loans. Various Better Business Bureau offices have also been sounding alarms within their jurisdictions.

But some officials are still conflating the issue. In March, the Missouri Attorney General listed debt collection on his “top scams” report for 2010, failing to make a distinction between honest debt collection and criminal efforts. It took the intervention of the Missouri Collectors Association to clarify the mistake.