RE: https://infosec.exchange/@ubernostrum/116184516972371923
I’m still looking for resources here if you know of any (tl;dr a company threatening debt collection over an account they admit is not mine).
I suspect a single piece of correspondence on law-firm letterhead resolves this, but for every firm I've talked to the dollar amount at issue is too low to even justify talking to one of their attorneys.
Or the police, to report attempted theft, harassment and coercion.
Ignore. It is not your debt. The law firms basically gave you free advice.
Someone wants you to become the collection agency for them based upon an email.
If you had never seen the email, what would the situation be?
Answer is the same: Not your problem.
@ubernostrum it's going to cost you $300-600 for that letterhead. Your options are that, pay the amount they're pestering you about, or ignore them.
Or, perhaps a secret fourth option, you could try calling their legal department and let them know that you will pursue legal action unless they desist. Make sure you have a one sentence ("I received a collections notice for an account that doesn't belong to me"), 30s, and 2m summary of your issue so you can escalate appropriately
@ehashman It's an interesting and frustrating situation. When I was younger and living in pretty significant poverty, there probably would have been a legal-aid society or something that could have helped me with this. Or if I were significantly richer than I am, I'd likely have an established regular relationship with a law firm and could just have them deal with this as part of their ongoing work for me. But in between those two economic extremes, there's basically not a lot of help available, because not a lot of firms want to take a case this small as a one-off even with a client who could easily pay them to do it.
Though I am admittedly guessing at the amount in dispute, because I literally don't know what it is. Their systems (correctly) identified that I'm not the account owner, so wouldn't let me actually see the tickets they were filing for past-due amounts, even though they were also emailing me about those tickets.
For now, I'm continuing to work leads, and have also filed a complaint with the state attorney general's office, to see if that'll get anywhere.
They admit the account is not yours.
Does your state have laws about bill collector harassment? That does not cost anything to pursue, and there may be provision for you to get something out of it.
Bill collectors hope to intimidate you into throwing money at them.
If they were dumb enough to take you to court, they would lose. They would end up paying your lawyers and maybe a penalty.
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