Better Off Deadbeat: People Get Into Debt, Learn the Law, Become “Credit Terrorists”
January 27th, 2010Via: Dallas Observer:
While most Americans with unpaid bills dread the collector’s call, Cunningham sees them as lucrative opportunities. Many collection and credit card companies, intentionally or not, violate little-known consumer rights laws, and Cunningham’s favorite pastime is catching them doing so and then suing them. In fact, it’s a profitable side job.
Call it ironic, but the only house on the block that appears to be the foreclosed end to some sad financial story is in fact the home of one of the debt collection industry’s emerging and persistent threats. Cunningham calls himself a private attorney general—someone who files private lawsuits in the public interest. Debt collectors call him a credit terrorist.
Patrick Lunsford, who edits InsideARM, a trade magazine for the debt collection industry, knows the term. “There is a sub-group out there that does actually advise people on how to bait [collectors],” he says. “That’s something that really gets under the skin of, well, obviously, collectors.”
Cunningham beats the debt collectors at their own game. He turns their money-making practice into a financial liability. He is a regular guy who has become a radical enemy of the banking system.
Research Credit: JH
On a tangential note, I saw an hysterical (to me) web-clip a couple days ago of Henry Blodgett and some finance-industry shill doing a point-counterpoint on why people should/should not walk away from their mortgages. It was almost painful to watch this woman argue that people are “morally” and “ethically” responsible to support these banks. Blodgett was all too clearly pulling his punches, simply pointing out that banks don’t deal in morals and eithics, certainly don’t treat their customers that way, it’s a risk business, etc. etc. Anyway, it’s just so interesting to get the opportunity to watch the lies of this culture exposed to the light of reality…