Bottom Feeders

What would you think if a guy came to you and said "Hey, I've got a great idea for a business! Let's go to Vegas, drop max bet into a row of slot machines, and sue the machine for contract violation if it doesn't pay out 100:1! It's a sure thing! After all, they are supposed to pay out!"

You'd probably show him the door, at least, or request a sanity hearing if he was your investment advisor. Any sane person would.

Yet there are businesses, backed by the banks and the stock market, that do essentially that. It's called the secondary collections industry. These bottom-feeding companies buy known bad debts, and then harrass, using every legal and dubious technique in the book, and sue the original debtor - often for debts that have been re-aged or otherwise monkeyed with by a series of secondary account owners. They sue to recover the original amount, plus some farcical interest, in spite of the fact that the original debt was written off years before and that they only spend pennies on the dollar for the bad paper.

Now, 90% of the time, the debt was written off because the debtor didn't have the money to pay it! Why do these people assume that adding fees and interest will make it more likely to be paid?? Stupid, but they drive people into depression, drinking, suicide or panic attacks with their constant harassment. "Oh, it's just business" they say - the business of ruining already shaky lives.

I know someone who is going through this. A bottom feeder, LVNH, and their scum-sucking lawyers, Wolpoff and Abramson, are suing her over a long dead account - original value of less than $2000 - in full civil court. She had to do full financial disclosure (yet another humiliation) in order to have her filing fees waived by the court. Her finances already suck, and she has no work. Now she can't get any work because of the depression and anxiety. When she says to me "I want to curl up and die!", I want to commit mayhem on these bottom feeding scum. Don't say "Oh, file bankruptcy" - she can't afford the fees for that either, or for a lawyer.

Yes these scum have shareholders, and people who invest in the stock of companies like them. People are making money on other people's humiliation and misery. Great example of the American spirit ... NOT! Why don't they just invest in a betting pool on whether a person will get sick or not - oh, wait, that's the "for profit", stockholder driven health insurance industry, where the stockholder profits trump the customner's need for life and health (another rant forthcoming...)! Maybe they should all be honest and put bets on who cries out first when whipped with a cat-of-nine tails, it would be more honest!

These creeps' "business model" should be illegal - it's institutionalized gambling of the nastiest sort.