Former Chase Employee Exposes Unlawful Collection Practices
A class action lawsuit has been filed in federal court against JP Morgan Chase. The lead plaintiff, Johanna Sierra, was fired by Chase Co., and has since exposed the systemic fraud behind corporation’s robo-signing scheme. Sierra sued JP Morgan Chase & Co., its collections subsidiary the NCO Group, and the Austin-based debt-collection law firm Bickerstaff, Heath, Delgado & Acosta, in Manhattan Federal Court; she is represented by Jeremiah Frei-Pearson, with Meiselman, Packman, Nealon, Scialabba & Baker, of White Plains, N.Y.Sierra claims the defendants “unlawfully obtained hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars from consumers,” through fabricated evidence, lack of evidence, and downright fraud. As it did in the mortgage and foreclosure crises, Chase and its business partners preyed on consumers in the unregulated debt market, using procedural shortcuts and constant harassment to collect on false and inaccurate debts. Chase took tens of millions of dollars from debtors, and from people who don’t owe debts, through robo-signing and “intentionally inaccurate record-keeping.” Chase and its associates knew that people didn’t owe the underlying debt, but ruthlessly pursued them nonetheless; Sierra will show in court that Chase cannot prove people actually owed them money.Chase, one of America’s largest credit card companies (and banks), has issued $137 billion in loans in recent years, with over 90 million open accounts. Chase and NCO, its debt collection partner, “have instituted a debt collection system designed, not to ensure that the so-called ‘debts’ on which it attempts to collect are in fact past due amounts owed by its customers, but instead to ensure that it can collect on as many debts as possible regardless of their validity.” (quotes from the class-action lawsuit). Individual debtors are relatively powerless in the face of Chase’s army of lawyers—and many times, people weren’t aware that they didn’t actually owe Chase any money. This predatory behavior has generated millions, possibly billions, of dollars for Chase Corp.”Robo-signers” are people who fill out affidavits that attest the validity of a debt; working for Chase, these robo-signers certified affidavits “without making any effort to actually validate the debts, or even to review a single document or the contents of the affidavits they are signing. These affidavits are filed in courts across the nation in what is nothing less than a massive fraud on the courts.” Not only did Chase and its cohorts collect on its own debt, real and otherwise, it also bought debts from other creditors—American Express, Citigroup, Bank of America and Capital One—and went after those too.Sierra’s lawsuit is encouraging; finally, the unethical and greedy practices Chase has engaged in for decades is coming to light. The lawsuit was filed in lower Manhattan’s district court, a few blocks from Wall Street (and Chase’s headquarters); its judgement will have real consequences for millions of people.If a collection agency has harassed you, you may be entitled to money damages up to $1,000.00, based on the FDCPA, which has been around for almost 35 years. The FDCPA is a federal law that applies to every state. In other words, everyone is protected by the FDCPA. The FDCPA is essentially a laundry list of what debt collectors can and cannot do while collecting a debt, as well as things debt collectors must do while collecting a debt. Plus, the FDCPA has a fee-shift provision. This means, the collection agency pays your attorney’s fees and costs. Founding attorney, Michael Agruss, has settled over 1,500 debt collection harassment cases. We want to help you, too.
