They can literally pursue you until you die.

Student Loan Providers

#1 way the government makes money off the backs of students WAS through the *Federal Family Education Loan Program now
All new loans will be made under the Direct Loan program.

Who's Profiting From $1.2 Trillion of Federal Student Loans?

President of Nelnet, Inc. Jeff Noordhoek
Student loan servicer Nelnet is trying to stave off downgrades on US $3.25bn of its debt, series of bonds, all underpinned by FFELP loans  and wants investors to help by agreeing to extend the maturity date of its bonds.  The notes are at risk of being downgraded by Moody's, which this week announced sweeping changes to its method of rating bonds backed by loans from the Federal Family Education Loan Program.

Bonds backed by student loans have come under pressure with the advent of programs to ease the student debt burden - in some cases meaning borrowers make no monthly payments.  

YEAH!  LIKE WHEN THE

FOR PROFIT COLLEGE BUSINESS MODEL

GETS CAUGHT IN FRAUD THEN SHUT DOWN. 

That has raised the possibility of a technical default on the bonds because they would not be repaid in time, even though the debt is guaranteed by the US government.  

A federal judge told for-profit Corinthian Colleges to pay more than $500 million to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for defrauding students. A former Trump University manager testified that the school "preyed upon the elderly and uneducated to separate them from their money." 2016 the average tuition at for-profit colleges was more than $15,000, compared with around $3,000 at community colleges, $9,000 at in-state public universities, and $30,000 at private nonprofit universities. Of the student borrowers nationwide who default on their loans, 70 percent attend either for-profit college. https://archive.is/VNIKq

Greer McCurley brings five years experience from two investment banking groups at JPMorgan in New York where he served as a Corporate Finance Associate. In the Asset Backed Securities Origination group, McCurley structured and executed ABS transactions for student loan, home equity, and credit card clients. He was also responsible for the marketing and secondary trading of JPMorgan's exotic interest rate derivatives book in the Structured Products Derivatives Marketing division.
McCurley graduated magna cum laude from Yale University with a bachelor's degree in eCONomics.

Greer McCurley, Nelnet executive head of capital markets, said his company was encouraged by fellow issuer Navient, which secured the required 100% consent from bondholders to extend maturities on some of its FFELP bonds.  "Until we saw the success of Navient, we didn't think it was achievable," he told IFR. "I wish we would have done this three or four months ago."  

Both Navient and Nelnet turned to DealVector, an online identity-protected network that allows investors to find other holders of their bonds, and issuers to communicate directly with many bondholders at once.  Nelnet's bond terms also require 100% consent for maturity extension. But that is tricky to achieve, especially when the bonds are liquid and trade actively, making it hard to locate all their holders.  DealVector CEO Mike Manning said his company had contacted six other issuers about a similar effort but had received a tepid response thus far.  "There's a separation between the number one and number two issuers - those who have been very proactive about it and others who are waiting," he said.  Issuers with no plans to sell more FFELP-backed bonds have less incentive to avoid downgrades, Manning said.  

Even though FFELP was discontinued - its last loans were issued in 2010
- Navient is still an active issuer, having priced a US$761m FFELP-backed bond last week.  

Nelnet's last deal was in May 2015 but it hopes to be back in the market later this year, said McCurley.  It is not immediately known when any downgrades might be implemented, but Moody's said it was putting more than 400 tranches of FFELP bonds on review for downgrade.

Deutsche Bank analysts said the downgrades may not come until the fourth quarter.  "It might take months for them to work through the various cash flow scenarios and ultimately decide on ratings," they said in a report.  "This could potentially give sponsors more time to support their transactions via additional loan repurchases or working with investors to amend and extend legal final maturities for watch-listed bonds."

SALLIE MAE

SALLIE MAE RAT BASTARDS

Rat Bastard Sallie Mae was built by idiot politicians not built by enlightened geniuses with disastrous consequences for the 99% when the dominant governance is feudalism.

America's Debt

5/7/07 Sallie Mae the gargantuan student loan provider would be sold to two private equity firms and two banks for $25 billion, completing a transformation from government entity to privately held company. Under the terms of the deal, JC Flowers & Co. and Friedman Fleischer & Lowe LLC together would own 50.2 percent of Sallie Mae, and JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Bank of America would each own a shade less than a quarter of the company. The proposed sale of Sallie Mae into private hands would represent the final stage in a process in which it evolved from a "government-sponsored enterprise" (buying existing student loans from banks using low-cost debt guaranteed by the federal government) into an independent, publicly traded company into, if this deal goes through, a privately held one. This deal fell through, however. Through 2024, the CBO expects our government to rake in a $149 billion profit on new direct loans to students. Grad school lending will generate about three-quarters of those returns, which fall to $127 billion once you subtract administrative expenses and costs associated with the discontinued guaranteed lending program.

Portfolio Recovery Associates, one of the biggest and worst debt collectors, posted 4Q profits of $47M in 2014

These Rat Bastards and What a failure for America. 

One Guy is responsible for why we are broke. We can demand that he fix it.  This is the rat bastard where if only this one SOB would sell the debt to us - the 99%, the world could get out from under the banksters jackboat of oppresion.

Rat Bastard Douglas St Peters INDIANAPOLIS, IN 46259
currently the vice president of portfolio management at Sallie Mae spinoff Navient manages all aspects of defaulted loan portfolios, collection agency outsourcing, operations, call centers, strategy and analytics. The collection agency network produces over $2.3 billion in recoveries annually. Develop industry leading strategies, with the quantifiable results. (NASDAQ: NAVI)

The Vice President of Portfolio Management at Sallie Mae, who packages that company’s debt into securities and sells your loans on the secondary market. He confirmed that Sallie Mae does sell its private loans to two large debt buying companies. He would not name names, and he refused to sell us any of these portfolios when he learned that we intended to abolish the debt. 

SOLD FOR

15 CENTS

ON THE DOLLAR

According to RAT BASTARD Douglas St. Peters,
private Sallie Mae loans are sold for as little as 15 cents on the dollar.

We repeat: a Vice President at Sallie Mae confirmed that they sell private loans for 15 cents on the dollar!

Multiply the total of your student loan by .15 CENTS AND THAT IS ALL YOU REALLY OWE!!! !!!  https://archive.is/1reaW

RAT BASTARD Douglas St Peters NAVIENT CORPORATION PAC (NAVIENT PAC)  

Political Action Committee Campaign Contribution Details '14 Election Cycle
THE FAT CATS in charge of keeping you in debt!

Navient (NASDAQ:NAVI) will be replacing Sallie Mae as the America's federal student loan issuer. Sallie Mae will function mainly as a bank aimed at college students and their families, offering private student loans, insurance and other banking products such as credit cards, as Navient takes over the federal student loan business.

Navient plans to service about $300 billion.

5/10/14 Sallie Mae Board Approves Strategic Separation of Navient Corporation, Sets Record Date and Distribution Date
Students who borrow money starting in July 2014 will be allowed to cap repayments at 10 percent of income above a basic living allowance, instead of 15 percent. Moreover, if they keep up payments, their balances will be forgiven after 20 years instead of 25 years — or after 10 years if they are in public service, like teaching, nursing or serving in the military.

COLLECTION AGENCIES

U.S. Department of Education to End Contracts 5 Private Collection Agencies
Coast Professional, Enterprise Recovery Systems, National Recoveries, Pioneer Credit Recovery, and West Asset Management.
http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/us-department-education-end-contracts-several-private-collection-agencies

How the Dept. of Ed Gets Paid
For instance, agencies receive a commission projected to be up to 13 percent of the loan amount when a borrower is rehabilitated out of default to begin payments, according to the center. In contrast, the commission for getting a borrower to consolidate a loan is 2.75 percent of the loan amount.  Debt collectors receive a flat fee of $150 for helping borrowers achieve another resolution, such as having the loans discharged because of a death or disability. And because debt collectors are not currently penalized for having a high number of consumer complaints, the center said the department is not doing enough to make sure that debt collectors don’t overreach in their efforts to collect payments.

https://twitter.com/OHIOStudents @OHIOStudents https://twitter.com/AssataDaughters @AssataDaughters https://twitter.com/RiseUpGeorgia @RiseUpGeorgia

WHO OWNS YOU?
ED Releases Student Loan Debt Collection Contract Performance Report for 2012

Rules of the Game like You don't have to talk to them.

@SenWarren calls for Dept of Ed to crackdown on pvt student loan servicers.

Identity Chaos, Courtesy of Your Federal Government
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/17/your-money/identity-chaos-courtesy-of-your-federal-government.html
Debt collectors working for the Department of Education were eventually able to confirm that her own debts had a zero balance. But then, over the phone, she said, they accused her of taking out debt for a child. When she explained that she had no children, they accused her of borrowing for somebody else’s child. “I swear, that’s what they said to me,” she recalled in one of a series of conversations we had over the months that she, and eventually I, tried to get to the bottom of all of this.
Eventually, one of the debt collectors took pity on her and informed her of the existence of an ombudsman’s office at the Department of Education. “She told me that she wasn’t supposed to tell me about that,” Ms. Schindler said.  
The next move soon became clear: It was the Department of Treasury that had the sole power to stop taking Ms. Schindler’s Medicare money. But it would not do so without a letter from the Department of Education confirming that this was all a big misunderstanding. And Ms. Schindler was unable to get the Department of Education to hand over that note.  At that point, I started making some calls and Ms. Schindler soon heard from apologetic Treasury employees who explained what happened. She did not believe it at first, and neither did I, but this whole incident seems to have happened because she is a woman.  
The Department of Education sent the original student loan debtor’s Social Security number to the Treasury Department to begin the garnishment process. Garnishment can happen when, at the behest of another entity of the federal government, the Treasury Department takes, say, your income tax refunds or Social Security checks. But when Treasury ran the debtor’s Social Security number through its systems, what came back was the federal Employer Identification Number for Ms. Schindler’s psychology practice. Those two numbers were identical, which the federal government freely allows and is a story for another day. Bureau of Fiscal Service

Debt Collective @0debtzone
The debt collective helps people join together to fight back against creditors. In 2012, a group of activists inspired by Occupy Wall Street came together to raise awareness about debt, forming what they called the Rolling Jubilee, a "Variety Show and Telethon to Benefit the 99 Percent" that raised funds to buy distressed medical debt. John Oliver's team explicitly contacted the Debt Collective about reusing the idea.
 

John Oliver the biggest television cash giveaway of all time $15 Million forgiven debt.

The ongoing efforts of the Debt Collective have had actual, material effect beyond its media presence. They have helped organize debt refusal by students of now-defunct Corinthian colleges, and connect students from other institutions like ITT Tech and the Art Institutes, the latter a rapaciously for-profit chain of art schools. These actions have already brought the issue to light, and even led to reforms: On the heels of the Corinthian debt strike, the Education Department announced in March that students of the chain were eligible for debt forgiveness.

Defeat the Business Model:
Buy the original debt at its usual deep discount,
then, instead of going after the debtors, simply cancel it.

IMAGINE SOMETHING BETTER - ROLLING JUBILEE

Imagine us the 99% people paying for a service we want and need called the Rolling Jubilee.  
They keep on buying then dismissing our debt for pennies on the dollar, breaking the banksters back. We’re also willing to pay for things because we love them and we want them to exist. 

Larry Lessig is working very hard to bring a new model to life, where every voter gets $50 of government funds to give to politicians who can use the money to campaign.

STUDENT DEBT

No statue of limitations on defrauded students! @StrikeDebt @HigherEdNotDebt @usedgov

SOLUTION

DEFEND YOURSELF

 AGAINST BANKSTERS

Strike Debt

Strike Debt
151 1St Ave #222
NY, NY 10003 https://debtcollective.org/
Corinthian (Everest, Heald, and WyoTech) is failing...
Corinthian is a scam school that relies on massive amounts of federal funding.

Strike Debt is a nationwide movement of debt resisters fighting for economic justice and democratic freedom.  

Debt is a tie that binds the 99%. With stagnant wages, systemic unemployment, and public service cuts, we are forced to go into debt for the basic things in life — and thus surrender our futures to the banks. Debt is major source of profit and power for Wall Street that works to keep us isolated, ashamed, and afraid. Using direct action, research, education, and the arts, we are coming together to challenge this illegitimate system while imagining and creating alternatives. We want an economy in which our debts are to our friends, families, and communities — and not to the 1%.

Corinthian (Everest, Heald, and WyoTech) is failing... Corinthian is a scam school that relies on massive amounts of federal funding. The Department of Education is refusing to do its job and protect students. The Corinthian Collective offers you both individual resources and a platform to come together to demand what is rightly yours: debt discharge and free education.

2/19/15 An Ontario regulator has shut down U.S.-based Everest College, a chain of 14 private career schools. The school is owned by U.S.-based Corinthian Colleges Inc., which was a Nasdaq-listed public company until it was delisted this month for failing to file financial information with regulators in a timely manner. That came after allegations of falsified job placement and grade data last year led Corinthian to agree to shut down and sell numerous locations as part of a deal with U.S. lawmakers.

Debt Collective ‏@debtzone The future is now.
Everest College students announce historic debt strike! 

What if hundreds of thousands or even millions of students defaulted on their loans as a form of protest—a massive movement to "burn" the promissory note?   Andrew Ross, a professor at New York University, wants people to do just this.  "It's a widespread consensus that this is a huge crisis for future generations," Ross says.  Ross was an early member of the Occupy Wall Street movement. He is the author of a book called Creditocracy: And the Case for Debt Refusal. He also contributed to the Debt Resisters' Operations Manual, published by Strike Debt, an offshoot of the Occupy movement.

The average college senior who graduated from a public or private nonprofit college in 2013 owed $28,400, according to a report by The Institute for College Access & Success.  Some simple math would lead one to conclude that if 1 million people were to default, this would mean a $28 billion bargaining chip for "conscientious student-loan defaulters."  "You really have to break that up in two different parts," says Douglas Webber, an associate professor of economics at Temple University. "There are government-backed student loans and private student loans, and it's very easy to predict what will happen in the private market."  In the private market, Webber says, that massive default would increase existing student-loan interest rates. Lenders would reduce the amount of money they loaned to students, and possibly, stop lending altogether.

The Occupy movement has focused a lot on debt, having created organizations like Rolling Jubilee, which buys health care and student debt (about $32 million so far, according to its website), and the Debt Collective, which helped organize the Corinthian student-loan protests.  The reason for the debt focus, Ross says, is because an education is the best way to improve a person's standing in life, yet the U.S. educational system is widening gaps of inequality. "It's been turned into the cruelest of debt trap," Ross says, "where students from only the most well-heeled families can escape."  Student Debt Crisis is another organization that focuses on student debt. And while it supported the Corinthian 100, Executive Director Natalia Abrams doesn't ask people to default. What the group has done is propose two federal bills in 2012 and 2013 that would have repurposed money from corporate welfare to help pay off student debt, a move the group believes would have stimulated the economy from the bottom up.

How Do We Strike Debt? 
Strike Debt, an offshoot of Occupy Wall Street, emerged out of a series of open assemblies in the spring of 2012 with the aim of sparking conversations about debt as a global system of domination and exploitation. Debt resistance can take many forms, and Strike Debt is developing tactics, resources, and frameworks for generalizing the fight against the debt system. Few people realize that their debts are sold on shadowy markets to speculators hoping to cash in on suffering and misfortune. The Strike Debt recognizes that the impact of debt cancellation, even on a mass scale, would be negligible unless it was coupled with a far deeper restructuring of our economic system. 

The Debt Resisters’ Operations Manual
http://strikedebt.org/drom/

Written by a network of activists, writers, and academics, The Debt Resisters’ Operations Manual reveals how the predatory debt system works to increase inequality, undermine democracy, and ruin lives. It provides detailed strategies for fighting common forms of debt and lays out an expansive vision for a societal movement of debt resistance. The full text of the manual is available for free.

Everyone should have access to both health care and education

1. How far to free? http://strikedebt.org/update4/
2. Making All Public Higher Education Free 
   http://futureofhighered.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/CFHE-Working-Paper-Free-Higher-Ed.pdf
3. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, student loans represent ten per cent of all debt in the United States, making it second only to mortgages.

Poof !!
2000 students
are free
of debt
now

9/12/13 Occupy Wall Street activists buy $15m of Americans' personal debt

Rolling Jubilee spent $400,000 to purchase debt cheaply from banks before 'abolishing' it.

FREE INDIVIDUALS FROM THEIR BILLS.

4/14/15  Education Management Corporation For-profit school firm 100,000 students!  Restructures

Pittsburgh PA Eight directors of a city-based firm that runs for-profit trade schools and colleges have resigned as the company restructures to cut its debt in the wake of financial losses and struggles with federal regulators.  Education Management Corporation announced Tuesday that the resignations from the 11-member board are the second part of a restructuring plan that also gives several creditors majority control of the company in exchange for cancelling more than $1.3 billion in debt.  The company runs 110 schools in 32 states and Canada for chefs, artists and other trades, including The Art Institutes, Argosy University, Brown Mackie College and South University.  

The company is still attempting to settle U.S. Justice Department litigation accusing it of illegally using enrollment incentives to pay its recruiters, and Tuesday's moves are believed to be part of an overall effort to solve the company's regulatory, legal and financial troubles.  The company lost $684 million last year and could face penalties from the federal government based on the alleged recruiting violations as well as a class-action suit by investors filed in U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh in September.  

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Pittsburgh, which is handling the federal litigation for the Justice Department, declined comment on the restructuring and whether it relates to the litigation.  But a federal judge last fall agreed to delay action on the recruiting lawsuit - filed in 2010 - while the company negotiated a settlement with the government. The shareholder's lawsuit has been assigned to a mediation program, according to court records.  In general, both lawsuits claim EDMC exaggerated its career placement abilities and signed up students it knew likely wouldn't succeed or finish its programs, by paying recruiters using enrollment-based incentives. The Justice Department and attorneys general from 13 states want the school to forfeit more than $11 billion the company received in federal and state student aid it's received since 2003, though EDMC is hoping to reduce that potential penalty by settling the litigation.  

FAILS CODE OF CONDUCT Edward H. West 48 years old an EDMC CEO & CFO, declined comment on the litigation and the restructuring, referring
Total Calculated Compensation  $3,524,864 http://www.edmc.edu/About/Officers.aspx
Corporate Compliance Hotline:  Call: 1-866-439-6805

Hardman wouldn't say if any jobs would be lost as part of the restructuring, but confirmed that EDMC and its schools still have about 22,000 employees, including 2,000 in the Pittsburgh area. About 500 of those are employed by EDMC itself, and the rest by its area schools.  EDMC's president and chief executive officer Edward West will remain on the company's smaller board and said, "The new capital structure will allow us to focus on providing an exceptional educational experience to over 100,000 students."  The company withdrew its stock from the Nasdaq index last year, saying the cost of complying with Securities and Exchange Commission regulations outweighed the benefits of being publicly traded.  The company is now privately held and two of its new board members announced Tuesday are John Danielson, chairman and managing director of the Chartwell Hamilton Group LLC, a New York-based educational consulting firm; and Johnathan Harber, the founder of Schoolnet Inc., a firm that develops online learning solutions and helps schools implement learning standards, including Common Core.

Rolling Jubilee http://rollingjubilee.org/
Andy Stepanian, 631.291.3010, andy@fitzgibbonmedia.com
Laura Hanna 917.821.8092, laura@hiddendriver.com
Astra Taylor 718.869.2138, astra@hiddendriver.com

One goal of the Rolling Jubilee campaign has been to educate ourselves and others about how little our debts are actually worth to the creditors who control our lives. If you have a private Sallie Mae loan, you should know that it may be sold at pennies on the dollar, even as the lender and debt collectors demand full payment, plus interest, from you.

Example: The Rolling Jubilee project bought the outstanding debt for about three cents on the dollar, of nearly four million dollars’ worth of private debt from Everest College. 

2/3/15 Corinithan College students lured into "predatory" loans will receive $480 million in relief 
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-corinthian-colleges-debt-relief-20150203-story.html
As the deal was being finalized, ECMC wanted to be released from any potential liability from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau suit. To grant relief from the suit, the CFPB required that ECMC work to provide student loan relief and promise not to offer similar private loan programs for at least seven years. The student loan relief will translate into a 40% reduction in loan balances for the private loans offered by Corinthian, known as the "Genesis loan" program. The relief will apply to all current and former Corinthian students who have outstanding private Genesis loan, regardless of whether the schools are being sold to ECMC. ECMC also pledged to work with credit reporting agencies to erase any record of the private loans on former students' credit histories, and to ensure that debt collectors can't sue for unpaid loans.
ECMC and Corinthian finalized the acquisition of the 56 schools. ECMC has voluntarily hired an independent monitor that will report to the U.S. Department of Education, to ensure the new owners are appropriately advertising to students and accurately reporting job placement and completion rates.  ECMC Group, which will operate under the name Zenith Education Group, will reduce tuition for current Corinthian students by 20%. Students enrolled in programs found to have low job placement rates will have the option to transfer into another program or withdraw and receive a full refund.

9/17/14 Occupy activists abolish $3.85m in Corinthian Colleges students' loan debt  - Comments
Over the last few days, over 2,700 Everest College students woke up to find that someone had paid off their private student debt. This was no act of goodwill by the government, which is currently suing Everest parent Corinthian Colleges for its predatory lending practices. Nor is it a gift from Everest itself, which is expected to shutter its doors and possibly leave 72,000 students out of their time and tuition.
Last year, the group Rolling Jubilee http://rollingjubilee.org/ managed to buy $13.5m of medical debt owed by 2,693 people as well as $1.2m of other personal debt for a total of $400,000.

7/16/14 Corinthian College Sued For Predatory Lending

9/17/14 The Occupy Movement Takes on Student Debt The New Yorker

Rolling Jubilee Announces Abolishment of Nearly Four Million Dollars of Student Debt, Launches New Debt Collective 
On the third anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement, the Rolling Jubilee has, for the first time ever, bought and abolished student debt: $3,856,866.11 of student debt owed by 2,761 people across the United States.

While medical debt is widely available to debt collectors on secondary markets, most student debt is not, because it is guaranteed by the federal government. The debt purchased by the Rolling Jubilee is private debt from Everest College, which is part of Corinthian Colleges, Inc., a nationwide system of for-profit colleges that receives approximately 90% of its funding from federal student loans.
The Debt Collective which will create a platform for organization, advocacy, and resistance by debtors. “Just as the labor movement demands jobs, higher pay, a safe work environment, and time off, The Debt Collective will challenge the 1% creditor class by empowering members to renegotiate, resist, and refuse unfair debts while advocating for real solutions including free education and universal health care,” says Thomas Gokey, a Debt Collective organizer.

BANKS CAN AND WILL

ERASE STUDENT LOANS

IF THEY WANT TO!

MY BANK ERASED MY $600,000 STUDENT LOAN

I had two kinds of loans: one bad, one good. My government loans had decent payment plans, low interest rates, and forbearance options.   My private loans were accompanied by angry calls and ever-climbing minimum payments. I didn’t have the income to pay the bank what it insisted on. Paying any bill beyond my federal loan would have left me immobilized: unable to save, take risks or survive an emergency.   So I paid the government loan and ignored the private one. Six years later, the government loan was paid off. The bank loan took a different route.

I heard somewhere that your debt disappears once the statute of limitations on it runs out. Your credit score would be nil, but you wouldn’t have debt any more. For a long time, I held this thought. It sustained me through spells of under- and unemployment.

In 2014, I received a letter informing me that the bank was writing off my student loan. Wiping it out. I didn’t owe it any more. $60,000 in debt, gone. It turns out that having your student loan written off is not unheard-of – but neither is it cheap.   He listed the consequences. I’d have to claim the written-off debt as taxable income (there are a few exceptions, like insolvency). What he couldn’t tell me is why my debt was being forgiven. I do have a theory: my original lender was acquired by a second bank, so it’s possible the second bank didn’t prioritize collecting the debts it inherited. More likely, my loan was consolidated upon acquisition – transforming it from a student loan into something more generic, something more “worthy” of forgiveness.

Everyone should have access to both health care and education

Learn How Debt Works
The business model: Companies are owed money—whether in the form of credit-card debt, unpaid medical bills, or student loans—they can sell the obligations to other firms. These forms of credit often aren’t repaid, making them a high-risk purchase, so buyers typically pay only a tiny fraction of the debts’ face value. Then the new owners seek out the original debtors and try to claim the full amount.

Defeat the Business Model: Buy the original debt at its usual deep discount, then, instead of going after the debtors, simply cancelled it.

Example: The Rolling Jubilee project bought the outstanding debt for about three cents on the dollar, of nearly four million dollars’ worth of private debt from Everest College. Poof 2000 students are free of debt now.

'Bad Paper' Explores The Underworld Of Debt Collection

Jake Halpern looks at the industry, where having a criminal background is no barrier to entry. He explains debt buying and how little regulation gave rise to a chaotic marketplace. Consumers need to be protected from these predatory lenders. the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or the CFPB, is monitoring and policing 175 of the biggest debt collectors in the business. The catch is there are over 9,600 collection agencies in the United States, so in order for that enforcement to really cover the full scope of the industry it needs more resources. Right now, they're doing what they can and they're doing a pretty good job of it but, you know, it's not enough.
Older than the statute of limitations and that can be three to six years old. If your debt is beyond the statute limitations - particularly if you're in a state where it's just three years old, there's not a legal reason you should pay it in terms of any risk of being brought to court. The other issue is your credit report. So most major data about your credit history goes off your report after seven years. So if you have a debt that's five years old, six years old, it's either beyond the statute of limitations or it's about to go off your credit report. It doesn't necessarily make sense that you should take out all home-equity line of credit against your house or tell your kid they have to go to a state college or whatever, that's much cheaper, that you're not as happy about. I mean from a purely self-interest perspective, it may make sense not to pay it. I mean, the other reason that you might want to consider not paying the debt is the reason of - does the person on the other line of the phone even own the debt that they're calling me about? Because there's so much business with, you know, loans being doubled and tripled sold and you want to be very careful that you, you know, know that you're not being hustled in some sort of scam.

CALL THE COPS AND ARREST THE DEBT COLLECTOR

11/18/14 Georgia debt collectors posed as FBI agents to intimidate victims into making payments. 
The ring of scam artists face criminal charges for alleged harassment of 6,000 Americans into making payments on debt that sometimes did not exist. The officials could not help making criminal-justice jokes. “After years of threatening false arrest, these defendants are the ones who now find themselves in handcuffs,” said Bharara. FBI assistant director-in-charge George Venizelos called the defendants “bullies with bogus badges”. Bharara compared the methods of the Williams Scott employees to the extortionate techniques of the mafia.

What To Do When Debt Collectors Won’t Stop Calling