Complaint Review: Midland Funding LLC

I received a summons from court, but theres no court appearance date, no judge or magistrate name or signature, and I never heard of a court clerk signing a summons with just initials. Sounds like this is a scare tactic, and as I'm 62, disabled, unemployed with no savings, and own nothing, I don't scare or intimidate easily. Plus it's sent from an attorney's office in a city 65 miles from me to an address I haven't lived in since 2006 and a city that doesn't exist. Who do I call? Court that's listed even though there's no name listed to contact? Attorney's office? Or Midland Funding LLC?

 First off do not think that I am defending this Collection Agency, as they do have a very bad reputation and are known to at the very least "skirt around the regulations", but they are not known to make up debts.   That is, the debt they are trying to collect is a debt they receive from another company, it just may or may not be your debt. 

So this is something you can not just ignore.

If when you got the letter(s) you did nothing figuring it may have been a mistake..that was YOUR first mistake.  This is why "Identity Theft" or "Mistaken Identity" is such a problem because you have to go through all of these hoops to get things cleared up.  You should have sent them a Debt Validation Letter per the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act(FDCPA).  If they can not validate the debt they must not only remove the listing from your Credit Report they must stop all further collection efforts.  But if you don't send this letter and just ignore them...they have every right to continue actions against you.  If you have proof of sending this letter and they still went ahead with collections without validation you can actually turn around and sue them.

Now, not really sure how this caused an issue with your ex-roomates, but that not withstanding.  If you have a document that looks like it is from a court...CONTACT THE COURT..ASAP.   Just look up the phone number on the Internet for the Clerk of the Court at the Chatsworth division of the LA Courts.  You can verify on your own but it appears it is (818) 576-8506.  They are the only ones who can tell you with 100% certainty if the documents are in fact real or fake.   If by chance the documents are fake, again not only can you turn around and sue them, but they may have violated some criminal laws.

If the document is real and it is a summons for a suit...you MUST show up in court to defend yourself.  I can not stress this enough that you can not ignore this.  In your case it would be to have them prove it is actually your debt.  If you fail to show up and just ignore the summons you will have a judgement against you.  Now, if this notification of a judgement, that means it already went to court and you missed the hearing.  In this case if you can prove you were not properly served you can attempt to get the judgement vacated.  The first step on this is when you contact the clerk of the court is to get the proof of service from the original suit.

Midland Funding is a subsidiary of Encore Capital Group, and is located in San Diego, California. The company is a debt buyer, which means that they buy old debt - for pennies on the dollar - that others haven't been able to collect. They mostly buy debts from credit card companies, and then try and track down the consumers years later for payment.

Midland Funding has received a lot of press lately because they've been involved in quite a few lawsuits. But the lawsuits haven't stemmed from Midland suing consumers, rather from consumers - and Attorney Generals - suing them. For instance, the Minnesota Attorney General sued Midland Funding, as well as its parent company, Encore Capital, for "robo-signing" thousands of collection documents, without bothering to verify whether or not the debts were valid. This led to lawsuits being filed by Midland Funding against people who allegedly didn't legitimately owe the debt.

In Ohio, a class-action lawsuit was brought against Midland Funding for the same type of behavior. The suit was settled for about $5.7 million. Similarly, Maryland consumers had enough of Midland Funding and its illegal tactics, and after a lawsuit, a judge ordered that the collection agency drop claims relating to $10.2 million in illegally filed lawsuits.

Stop Midland Funding Harassment

If you're being hounded by a debt collector then you should quickly learn your rights under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. Because some debt collection agencies deal with very old debt, there is more reason than ever to know your rights before ever speaking to them.

Debt has a statute of limitations, which is different in every state, and once the debt has reached that limit, a debt collector cannot take any legal action against you, such as filing a lawsuit or garnishing your wages. But rogue debt collectors count on the fact that most consumers don't know this. So they file lawsuits on the so-called "zombie" debt (old debt), and hope that the consumers are so scared that they simply won't show up in court. When that happens, the judge issues a default judgment against the consumer, even though if the consumer had shown up, the case would have been dismissed. The debt collector then has gained the right to garnish the consumer's wages.

If you're being harassed by a zombie debt collector, learn the rights that the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act affords you, and then fight back. If you don't, the debt collector will win by default.

Midland Funding Contact Information

Midland Funding 8875 Aero Drive, Suite 200   San Diego, CA 92123-2255 800-825-8131

How to Stop the Harassment Now

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 They are telling me I owe them something like $3000 for rent on a house I rented and had me kicked out for not paying them rent on the last month of my 12 month lease. When I paid first and last month rent before I moved in. I also had a deposit they kept.