InfoBytes Blog
New York AG settles with student loan debt collector for $600k
On September 11, the New York attorney general announced one of the nation’s largest debt collectors will pay $600,000 in restitution to student loan borrowers and will make significant changes to its debt collection practices in order to resolve allegations that it made false, misleading, and deceptive statements in lawsuits and in communications with borrowers. According to the AG, the debt collector, among other things, (i) filed complaints that falsely identified trusts, which hold the defaulted loans, as the borrower’s “original creditor,” when in fact, the trusts are the assignees of the original financial institutions that originated the loans; (ii) filed various misleading sworn affidavits; (iii) filed complaints that represented borrowers applied for loans from a “servicing agent” when, in fact, borrowers never dealt with the entity; (iv) filed lawsuits beyond the applicable three-year statute of limitations; and (v) threatened legal action against borrowers even though the trusts “could not or would not sue because the statute of limitations for suing on the debt had expired.”
The assurance of discontinuance requires the debt collector to stop identifying the trusts as the original creditor and to cease using misleading language in communications with borrowers. In addition, the debt collector must (i) provide enhanced staff training; (ii) stop filing lawsuits beyond the statute of limitations, and voluntarily dismiss all wrongfully-filed lawsuits; (iii) voluntarily release “all pending garnishments, levies, liens, restraining notices, attachments, or any other judgment enforcement mechanism” obtained as a result of judgments obtained in wrongfully-filed lawsuits where the statute of limitations has expired; (v) take steps to vacate any judgment obtained in any of these wrongfully-filed lawsuits; and (vi) pay restitution to certain borrowers or to the state to be disbursed as appropriate.