Wide-open market for debts feeds abusive tactics
Buffalo News - Debt collection lawyer Timothy Collins says debt sellers sometimes sell an account more than once. Outsiders don't have to hack a bank's computer to get your account information. They can just buy it - cheap. In Buffalo and around the country, banks

Focus On Bigger Problems Than The Trustee - And Response
Chattanoogan - It would seem that the back tax collections attorney costs Hamilton County taxpayers less than the FIRST YEAR INCREASE for our new Superintendent of Schools. Repeat for emphasis, the first year increase and this is all that has been advertised in

LifeQuest offers deduction
Sauk Prairie Eagle - If no payments are made on a claim LifeQuest will send out a letter from a collections attorney advising patients that their state tax refunds can be intercepted. If no payments are made, delinquent claims could be reported to the tax intercept

About This Series
Minneapolis Star Tribune - We don't know when our neighbor is living on borrowed money; we have no idea when collection agencies are calling a colleague. This series began as a search for a few Minnesotans with money questions. The idea was to pair them with financial advisers

LIPA electric shutoffs rising
Newsday - than 30 days late receive a "reminder" notice and a phone call, Cunningham said. That continues until the customer is 90 days late, at which point, if an agreement can't be made to pay in installments, service can be shut off. Collection agencies are

What to Do When a Debt Collector Calls
KHNL News 8 - By Andrew Housser Every year, the U.S. Better Business Bureaus (BBB) rank their worst 10 industries by number of consumer complaints received, and collection agencies appear with great regularity. For 2005, collection agencies rank No. 6 on the BBB

New Campaign Targeting Delinquent Tax Payers
WISH-TV - So while tax amnesty is considered a success, state government collected only a fraction of the outstanding taxes. $1.1 billion worth is still out there so the state hired three collection agencies. "There is a lot of taxes paid and owed by

Experian's Vision Conference Sold Out for Third Straight Year
Experian , a global information solutions provider, today announced that its Vision 2006 Conference is sold out, marking the third consecutive year the financial services industry has booked the conference to capacity.

Consult appraiser on pricing waterfront property
A reader writes: "We own a nice house on a high bluff on Whidbey Island that we may sell soon. A real-estate agent told us the market is slow so even prime..."

Food-Stamp Recipients Are Targets of Scam
By Greg Edwards, Richmond Times-Dispatch, Va. Oct. 6--Some food-stamp recipients have been tricked out of personal information that could be used to steal their identities. The U.S.

Unlicensed, 2 debt firms close doors
Boston Globe - On Sept. 7, Norfolk Financial hired an Uxbridge debt-collection lawyer, Richard R. Hubbard, to handle about 1,000 cases in which Norfolk had already filed suit against Massachusetts consumers, according to court filings and an interview with Hubbard

Wide-open market for debts feeds abusive tactics
Buffalo News - Debt collection lawyer Timothy Collins says debt sellers sometimes sell an account more than once. Outsiders don't have to hack a bank's computer to get your account information. They can just buy it - cheap. In Buffalo and around the country, banks

Debt collectors hunt the innocent
For Maureen Coffin of Stoneham, it started on July 21 -- the insistent calls from debt collectors demanding she pay $900. For what, they never said. Since May, Deborah A. Donovan of Weymouth has received at least 25 calls -- many of them abusive, she says -- and two letters asking her to pay $4,900 for a delinquent Sears credit ...

Aggressive debt collectors hunt the innocent
For Maureen Coffin of Stoneham, Mass., it started on July 21 the insistent calls from debt collectors demanding she pay $900. For what, they never said. Since May, Deborah A. Donovan of Weymouth has received at least 25 calls many of them abusive, she says and two letters asking her to pay $4,900 for a delinquent Sears credit card.

Financial Literacy Executive Discusses Do-It-Yourself Debt Settlement
24-7PressRelease.com - Things have only gotten easier for consumers with the advent of fair debt collection laws and the realization that it is better for banks to settle for something rather than lose the entire debt to bankruptcy." Many creditors send automatic

Thank you, Thank you, Thank You
PRWeb - "After being picked-up by over 1,190 PRWeb subscribers, and ending up on E*TRADE radio as a result, we're more than happy with the value proposition you folks have put together. Where else can you put out a measly $200 and be seen by such high

High-level Verizon exec. is ex-official who long-argued for more
Raw Story - He lauded the PATRIOT Act in that testimony, which, he said, "fixed many of the problems with FISA and filled a number of other gaps in our surveillance and intelligence collection laws." FISA, which stands for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance