NCO Financial ripoff Wilmington Delaware
I have recently been a victim of identity theft and numerous collection agencies have contacted me in order to pay the debt owed by the people who started accounts uncer my SSN. In April of 2004 my SSC was stolen and since then, my credit has gone down.
Just last month I had been at my parents house and had answered their phone (which I never do but I thought I was recieving a return phone call). A boy in his 20's (I assume) told me that Reliant energy had an account that was recently sent to NCO in attempt to get a debt paid. I told the man everything that had been going on with the fraudulent accounts and asked him to send me all the information to my real address and I would return all of the necessary documents to NCO in order to complete the procedure.
What I found odd is that (1)he would not tell me his name, (2) he almost forgot to ask for my address until I reminded him, (3) I never recieved anything in the mail. Today (May 23, 2006) I called Reliant Energy to enquire about the account past due and the woman on the other line looked into the past 3 years and she could not find a single account (other than the one I already have that has a 0 balance) that has been sent to THEIR collections agency. She also had no knowledge about any NCO company.
I am a full time student about to graduate and I currently hold 2 jobs in order to support myself through school. This is not what I need right now. What is the next step I should do? Is it possible to sue this company?
Jennifer
Dallas, Texas
U.S.A.
1 Updates & Rebuttals
Jace
Chicago,Illinois,
U.S.A.
If you can prove that these debts are due solely to identity theft, you most likely are not liable for them.
#2Consumer Suggestion
Wed, May 24, 2006
You should contact the FTC or a good lawyer to confirm this. And yes, it is possible to sue NCO for violating the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, since NCO has to prove that you incurred these debts in the first place. Reliant might not be much help, although they should be able to confirm if you ever had a balance with them and if they turned it over to NCO.
As for NCO, you can read all about them here or at budhibbs.com. Having dealt with them regarding a business debt from my employer, I have nothing good to say about their ethics (or lack thereof). To say that NCO is lower than a snake's testes is putting it mildly. After reading the other posts here you'll find that NCO's schemes are pretty similar across the board.
Don't count on receiving any info from NCO, and if you do, it'll be misleading, blurry, hard to read or all of the above (at least that was my experience with them). Don't let NCO bully you into anything, since the burden of proof is on them. Read up on the FDCPA and know your rights.